Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana review: Short, but sweet

As a classic Japanese RPG series from the earliest days of PC gaming, Ys has seen a lot of ports and remakes over the years. Ys 3: Wanderers from Ys was a weird one in particular, shifting from the Zelda-like top-down adventure with auto-attacking combat (fans call it the “Bump” system) to a, well, Zelda 2-like side-scrolling adventure. Many years later Ys 3 was remade for PC and PSP as Oath in Felghana, taking a new form as a 2.5D action game as was the Ys style at the time. Now Oath in Felghana is back with "Ys Memoire" branding added on top, so folks brought on board by recent Ys fare can check it out on the PlayStation 4 and 5, or the Nintendo Switch.

The third, but now fourth technically, adventure

Ys games can dance around chronologically, but until recently, Ys 3 was the third one in every way. Luckily you don’t really need to know what happened in the first two games, nor Ys X, to follow what’s happening in Oath in Felghana. Adol Christin is a red-haired adventurer who crashes ships and gets involved in local politics for funsies. His buddy Dogi has blue hair and big muscles, so he breaks rocks and stuff. Oath’s story sees the pair visiting Dogi’s hometown, which is currently dealing with a corrupt Count putting the town’s mining business in jeopardy. Turns out there’s a long-lost history involving a hero and cosmic horror sealed away by a few mysterious statues, and there are forces at play trying to break the seal. Adol can’t help but get involved, and lots of monster fighting and double-jumping awaits.

The earlier Ys games are light on story and heavy on action and metal. This PSP-era Ys title sits somewhere between Zelda and Dynasty Warriors, with lots of fast, but shallow combat driving the player through various dungeons full of puzzles and hidden treasures. Massive, difficult boss fights punctuate each dungeon, each one challenging reflexes as much as pattern recognition. Oftentimes the strategy is simply “don’t get hit,” and this game in particular goes out of its way to make that a pain in the butt as much as possible. But the fast pace and a generous retry option make Oath a breeze anyway, clocking in around 12 or so hours of old-school action.

What's new? Not much, honestly

If you already played Oath in Felghana on the PC or PSP, there isn’t much in the way of new stuff to gawk at here. Adol, longtime silent protagonist, was recently given a voice in Ys X, and now has some very simple voice lines in this game. You can also select a new set of “Refined” character portraits, and some of the difficulty options have been tweaked. Otherwise you’re looking at the same game that was released on the PSP, albeit with slightly better performance. It looks and feels great on Switch, which feels like the perfect successor of a platform for games like this.

If you’re new, Oath isn’t going to blow your mind, especially if you’re used to the current Ys era that started with Ys 8. But it is a fan-favorite for folks who have been around for decades. This is 2000s Falcom, which released games that looked kind of old even when they were new. But the visuals have a distinct flavor to them, and the fast and furious gameplay feels distinct even today. The old school Ys loop can be a little annoying, as solving dungeon puzzles often means finding an item tucked away in a hard to see spot, such as having to take a leap of faith in the volcanic dungeon to find boots that let you run on lava. Boss fights can often feel pretty unbalanced, with you having to deal way more damage than you can take, and gimmick attacks that may as well be one-shots unless you overgrind can make you want to tear your hair out. But once things click and you understand when the game wants you to chill, and when it wants you to swing your sword like an unhinged goblin-person, the cheap-feeling deaths start to dissipate.

Diving into Ys history is a fun exercise for a few reasons, especially as Falcom continues to grow and capture more and more mindshare in the RPG community. Because the series has gone on so long through so many platforms, there’s so much variety between each game and each version thereof, from what each one plays like to what each one looks like. There are identifiable eras you can group them in, and Oath in Felghana is a key representative of its group. This game was available before on Steam, but Ys Memoire is the most refined version, even without the couple extra flourishes sprinkled on top.

Ys Memoire: Oath of Felghana is available on January 7, 2025 for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. A Nintendo Switch code was provided by the publisher for review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.