Speaking of complicated: This is essentially a current-gen port of 2005’s Ys: The Oath in Felghana, which is itself a remake of 1989’s Ys 3: Wanderers from Ys. Long story short, if you’ve played The Oath in Felghana on PlayStation Portable or PC back in the day, Memoire is essentially that but with some extras thrown in. It’s not a major overhaul, serving as a means for PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch players to experience a venerable classic, and that’s perfectly fine. Things would be awkward if it didn’t quite hold up to current-day standards, but thankfully, that’s not the case.

"The opening is also voiced and lends an epic air to the proceedings, though Adol’s character development and role are pretty much the same in the grand scheme."

When considering the old-school and new wave of Ys games, The Oath in Felghana falls somewhere in the middle. There’s no bump mechanic or overhead view – instead, it opts for a side-scrolling perspective and fast-paced combat. Don’t expect any teammates to have Adol’s back, which would change in Ys Seven and serve as the formula for Ys 8 and 9. However, it represents some incredible action RPG design and pacing, further added by features like Turbo Mode for even more speed (and cutting down on tedious backtracking).

As for the narrative, you probably know the drill: Adol and his best friend Dogi arrive at a location and find themselves embroiled in incidents. This time, it’s Redmont, Dogi’s hometown in the Felghana Providence, and the hunt for some important statues. The plot quickly thickens, as Adol runs afoul of Chester (the brother of Elena, Dogi’s childhood friend) and eventually learns the truth behind said statues. It isn’t overly complicated, but the interpersonal relationships add some welcome depth, backed all the more by solid voice acting which still holds up.

The opening is also voiced and lends an epic air to the proceedings, though Adol’s character development and role are pretty much the same in the grand scheme. At least the new character illustrations showcased during cutscenes look nice, though if your mileage varies, you can always revert to the classic designs.

Of course, the action constitutes the main appeal of a Ys title and Ys Memoire is no slouch. Like many other aspects, it seems simple on the surface, as Adol can execute multi-hit slashing combos on the ground or leap into the air for attacks. However, the latter is also useful for plunging strikes which can stun enemies. You also have Boost, which enhances Adol’s damage and speed for a period, and elemental attacks, unlocked by acquiring different bracelets throughout. Some also aid exploration and open up new paths.

"There’s a Zelda-esque aspect to some fights as they’ll necessitate using a recently obtained ability to defeat the boss."

Again, it all sounds so simple, especially compared to all the mechanics of contemporary games. However, that’s the joy of Memoire’s combat alongside the fluidity and responsiveness that defines the Ys series. Decimating enemies feels satisfying but you won’t immediately bulldoze through all of them – certain types are weak to specific attacks.

Once you’re in the flow, all this starts to feel like second nature. Foes will drop pickups like health and bonus stats, further fueling you for the next fight and keeping the action rolling. Environmental layouts are similarly streamlined, keeping the focus on the action but still offering plenty of exploration and light puzzle-solving. While not extensively nuanced, they serve the purpose.

Then you have the boss fights, a hallmark of many Ys titles. The first won’t exactly stress your skills, but from then on, every battle can be a frantic exercise in jumping, dodging, and fighting for your life to survive. There’s a Zelda-esque aspect to some fights as they’ll necessitate using a recently obtained ability to defeat the boss. Granted, the sheer number of unlockable skills isn’t that high, but each boss still stands out in unique ways, offering up different challenges and pushing you to adapt.

"It quickly draws you in with its excellent combat and boss fights while the plot and characterization ensure you’re hooked throughout."

The final key to the experience is the music and suffice it to say that The Oath in Felghana represents some of Falcom’s best work. Between the emotional violin of “The Boy Who Had Wings”, the fast-paced rock of “Be Careful” or the intermixing of techno and guitar play in “Illburns Ruins,” there is much to like. All of it adds to the atmosphere and Memoire allows for swapping between the multiple versions released throughout the title’s history. Your mileage may vary at some renditions but it’s still a great option to have.

Perhaps the only real downside to the experience is its visuals. Though it’s running at high resolutions, the environmental textures, details, and effects are starting to show their age. Yes, there’s a charm to them that feels timeless but don’t expect any significant differences from the PC version. The sprite work and animations are still very fluid, though, and the boss designs hold up exceptionally well.

Overall, Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana is an essential action RPG, both for fans of the genre and the series as a whole. It quickly draws you in with its excellent combat and boss fights while the plot and characterization ensure you’re hooked throughout. The gameplay loop may feel overtly rudimentary in this day and age, but that throwback feels essential given the series’ direction as of late. Sometimes, it’s nice to hop into a straightforward yet elegantly crafted hack-and-slash experience such as this.

"It’s not overly long but also doesn’t feel bloated or needlessly extended for the sake of it. And even if the visuals aren’t super amazing on a technical level, I still like the old-school aesthetic and character designs."

Revisiting The Oath in Felghana in this fashion, especially after experiencing so many other action RPGs and dungeon crawlers through the years, it’s impressive just how much the experience (and the fantastic music) holds up. It’s not overly long but also doesn’t feel bloated or needlessly extended for the sake of it. And even if the visuals aren’t super amazing on a technical level, I still like the old-school aesthetic and character designs.

Then again, time marches on, and Falcom will undoubtedly focus on revamping the series once more with its next mainline entry. And that’s all well and good, but making its older experiences available for a new generation is great, extra bells and whistles notwithstanding. If Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana accomplishes anything beyond serving as an enjoyable action RPG, it’s providing that further “Memoires” are necessary, if only to preserve the experience for future generations.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

It’s coming to Nintendo Switch and PC and features many new features. A new trailer is available, which highlights the different potential companions that protagonist Micah can engage with. There are 11 in total, the series’ highest, and include the somewhat standoffish Raven and the apprentice witch Marian to fishing enthusiast Carmen and the vain Sofia.

Thanks to Newlywed Mode, players can pursue new adventures after a wedding with a companion. There’s also a new Hell difficulty for veterans to spice things up.

Rune Factory 3 Special launches on September 5th for Nintendo Switch and PC. Stay tuned for more gameplay and details until then.

Rune Factory 3 focuses on Micah who, like previous protagonists, awakens in a town without his memories. After meeting Shara, Micah sets about farming, fishing and foraging along with dungeon exploring to take on monsters. The title also introduces new mechanics to the series, like AI with dynamic schedules, Wooly transformation, and villagers joining as companions in battle.

Newlywed Mode from Rune Factory 4 Special is also included, providing new adventures for each of the 11 companions after marriage. There’s also Another Episode, which offers “fully-voiced picture stories narrated by those same characters,” and “Hell” difficulty for series veterans.

Marvelous also confirmed that a new Rune Factory series is in development. No further details were provided, except that it’s coming in “the future.”

Much like Bravely Default 2, Grasshopper Manufacture’s trippy action sequel No More Heroes 3 was slated to release in 2020. A delay was announced last month, which was reiterated in a new trailer from the recent Nintendo Mini Partner Showcase. However, there’s some good news – No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle can be played right now on the Nintendo Switch.

As HD remasters, both titles have been discounted at launch to $17.99 each. The first game sees Travis Touchdown fighting his way through the top 10 of the United Assassins Association to become number 1. The sequel sees Travis down on his luck and having to battle vendettas to survive. New playable characters include Shinobu and Henry, Travis’s brother.

Check out release trailer for both Switch versions below. As for No More Heroes 3, its development faced hurdles due to the COVID-19 pandemic which caused “unforeseen delays.” Things are back on track with creator Goichi Suda promising to put “every effort” into its development. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8TNX-iUv4E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdBBGEw9cLg

Xseed Games had announced earlier last year that the PS4 remasters of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 1 and 2 would both be coming to the West in early 2019, and we’ve been waiting for concrete release dates for both of them ever since. We now know that for at least one of them.

Xseed and Marvelous have confirmed to Game Informer that The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel will be arriving on the PS4 on March 26. As we already know, the remaster contains dual audio options, and additional recorded lines in the English dub that were previously only available in the game’s PC version. A release date for Trails of Cold Steel 2’s remaster hasn’t yet been announced, but we can probably expect to hear more about that at the Dengeki Game Festival next month.

There’s even more Trails stuff to come beyond that, though. Trails of Cold Steel 3 will be launching in the West later this year, while Trails of Cold Steel 4, which launched in Japan in 2018, might soon receive a western release date as well- or so we hope, at least.

I haven’t yet played Ys 8 – I’ve been waiting for the Switch release, which is next week – but not counting that one, the best game in the Ys series for me is Ys: Memories of Celceta, a remake of the fourth installment in Falcom’s cult classic JRPG series that launched exclusively on PS Vita almost five years ago.

And that right there is the problem, right? The fact that it was just on the PS Vita, a system that never quite got anywhere with anyone, means that it didn’t really have much of a shot at getting a large audience. It was a niche game stuck on an even more niche system.

Thankfully, that’s about to change, with the previously announced PC release of the game. That release, XSEED has confirmed, will be coming this Summer- a new stream showcasing the PC version was where the release window was narrowed down. We also got to see the game running at 130fps, alongside the confirmation that the PC version will have an unlocked frame rate.

If you take my word for how great Memories of Celceta is, and don’t want to wait for the PC release, go buy it on Vita right now. While you are at it, also buy the PS Vita- it was a pretty neat system that could have done well, and ended up dying due to Sony’s negligence.

XSEED is launching their 2006 Xbox 360 millitary action title Bullet Witch, on Steam and Humble Store on April 25, bringing the third person Western styled action title with Japanese Dark Fantasy elements to a new audience of players who can now join Alicia on her journey. For the launch week, those interested will receive a 10% discount off the $14.99 MSRP.

Bullet Witch tells the story of Alicia, a witch with her trusty broomstick like gunrod, fighting off the demonic hoards that have brought humanity to the brink of collapse. The re-release will alter game balance and bumps the resolution, frame rate and lighting, but keeps the original textures.

Some footage of the PC version has been shared by XSEED which you can see just below. The release will also include all of the DLC costumes and bonus missions from the original release for free, some of which might need to be unlocked through gameplay. Are you going to check out the game? Let us know in the comments below.

XSEED will be bringing North American players Marvelous’ Story of Seasons, which is supposed to be a new chapter in the ‘Bokujo Monogatari’ series, a long-standing and top-selling farming/life simulation franchise. And while they have (wisely and obviously) changed the name in bringing it over to western coasts, they are promising that everything that made those games so appealing to begin with- customizable farms, animal care, and relationship building in the hopes of getting married and starting a family- has made it over intact.

Basically, yes, think of these games as something like Harvest Moon, and you get the idea.

Story of Seasons will be releasing exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS, via the Nintendo eShop, and at retail. For a while, XSEED plans on offering a bonus for purchasing the retail version, a plushie of the game’s mascot, Angora rabbit.

For more on the game, stay tuned to GamingBolt.

The result? On a system otherwise starved for quality RPGs, Ys shines. But that’s not it- on any platform, Ys: Memories of Celceta would have been great. On the PlayStation Vita, it just feels special.

"Thankfully, the story never interferes with the game, nor does it intrude. It fades into the background, providing little more than an overarching context and backdrop for your adventure, leaving you to immerse yourself into the game's admittedly rich world at your own pace."

Like all other games in the series, Memories of Celceta follows the adventures of the young explorer Adol Christin. However, you need absolutely no prior knowledge of the series and can jump right in, as the game is fairly self contained. In an almost groan inducing retread of a familiar JRPG trope, Adol wakes up with amnesia, and he must work his way back trying to regain his memory, as he also tries to save the world from the typical bad guy with world domination aspirations.

If that sounds cliche, that’s because it is, but the game must be cut some slack, considering it is from an era when these stories were still new and a big deal. If a plot like this is cliche, it’s because Ys in large part set the cliche in the first place.

Thankfully, the story never interferes with the game, nor does it intrude. It fades into the background, providing little more than an overarching context and backdrop for your adventure, leaving you to immerse yourself into the game’s admittedly rich world at your own pace. The otherwise standard story is also done huge favors by the game’s excellent writing. At the beginning, you might find the game’s usage of contemporary language and lingo a bit jarring, but it all ends up lending it a unique flavor, one that you can’t help but enjoy.

"Combat itself can feel almost disappointingly shallow at first, until it opens up and you find yourself spoiled for choice."

In any case, in a game like this, the story hardly matters. It’s all about the actual gameplay, and incredibly, in spite of a nearly two decade old game design template, Ys shines in this area. For those unfamiliar with the series- and that’s all of you reading this review- the series has always best been described as a more combat focused Zelda, and the comparison holds merit. Combat is fast and frenetic, and dungeons that in other, turn based RPGs, would take you hours to complete can be blazed through here.

Combat is incredibly streamlined, and yet it gives you an almost absurd degree of control- at any given time, you are allowed to have up to three party members (choosing which ones becomes an exercise in delight later on, as you try to keep one step ahead of whatever the game might throw at you), with direct control over one of them, while the CPU controls the other two. However, you can easily switch to whichever character you want on the fly with the press of a single button, allowing you to co-ordinate complex attacks on some of the larger foes with astonishing ease.

Combat itself can feel almost disappointingly shallow at first, until it opens up and you find yourself spoiled for choice. For example, each character’s weapon has its own unique strengths, meaning attacking the enemy with the right character (and by extension the right weapon) is extremely important to achieve maximum damage, throwing a nice bit of Pokemon into your Zelda here. Moreover, as you move deeper into the game, enemies get more and more ferocious, retaliating with vicious swipes that can deal a lot of damage. The only way to avoid the blow is to time the perfect counter or dodge.

"Ys: Memories of Celceta is a great game, then. It's among the best purchases on the Vita at the moment, and a darned accomplished action RPG in its own right."

There’s so much more that the game throws into the mix that ratchets up the intensity- there are crafting systems, special attacks, skills, skill points, and more. The depth of what is on offer here is staggering, and it is genuinely enthralling. The incredible part of it all is how fast it all moves; it’s never bogged down by its intricacies, and you can get just as much or as little from it as you want.

Memories of Celceta is originally an SNES game, but it doesn’t look like that. That’s not to say it looks too good either, though. It looks like an enhanced PSOne game, with janky character animations and a distinctly low res air about it. However, on the other hand, the art is beautiful, and the colors eye popping. It just feels like a bit of a shock when you boot it up the first time, and the character animations look distinctly artificial.

On the other hand, it sounds great. The voice acting can, in true XSEED style (they localized this), get really annoying at times, but the music is wonderful, and the nu-age rock soundtrack can, again, feel a bit jarring at first, until you realize how much weight it lends to the atmosphere. It can sound distinctly epic while also jiving with the fast paced frenetic action all at once.

Ys: Memories of Celceta is a great game, then. It’s among the best purchases on the Vita at the moment, and a darned accomplished action RPG in its own right. Falcon has taken control of its past, trying to reshape it into something that fits its vision of its series, and hopefully, we can now expect a new Vita entry in the series from them that is just as accomplished, if not more.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation Vita.

The new Killer is Dead trailer has now been released by UK published Deep Silver, the trailer is titled as ‘Mondo Girls’.

Check out the trailer below:

Killer is Dead also has a released date for US and Europe. Suda 51 also recently spoke to CVG about his next upcoming project. The project will feature a ‘unique online twist’. GungHo Online is cooperatively working with Grasshoper to develop this new upcoming title.

Killer is Dead will be launching worldwide sometime this summer for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Will you be picking up a copy of Killer is Dead when it comes out? Stay tuned on GamingBolt for more news regarding Suda51’s next project and our review of Killer is Dead when the game hits the store shelves this Summer. Leave any comments down below in the comments section.