Famitsu has released its weekly charts for video game software and hardware sales, and the week ending May 19 has been a fairly slow one. Days Gone, which has been on top of the charts ever since it launched a month ago, has finally relinquished its hold, while the newly released PS4 version of Ys: Memories of Celceta debuts on top with over 13,000 copies sold.

Days Gone, meanwhile, has fallen to fifth place, selling just over 6,000 copies across the week. The evergreen Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe are in second and third place, with sales of over 8,000 units and over 7,000 units respectively. Other consistent Nintendo performers like Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 2, and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe also feature in the top 10.

On the hardware front, the Nintendo Switch continues to reign supreme, leading the charts with sales of over 34,000 units across the week. The PS4, meanwhile, sold over 9,500 units.

You can check out the full software and hardware charts below.

Software Sales (followed by lifetime sales)

01.[PS4] Ys: Memories of Celceta – 13,895 / NEW 
02. [NSW] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 8,507 / 3,085,499
03 [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 7,258 / 2,302,993
04. [NSW] Minecraft – 6,954 / 783,332
05. [PS4] Days Gone – 6,276 / 166,459 
06. [NSW] Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! / Let’s Go, Eevee! – 5,991 / 1,530,747 
07. [NSW] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 5,087 / 616,477
08. [NSW] Splatoon 2 – 4,524 / 3,067,711
09. [NSW] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild- 4,518 / 1,319,464
10. [NSW] Yoshi’s Crafted World – 4,068 / 134,812

Hardware Sales (followed by last week’s sales)

Nintendo Switch – 32, 564 (41,736)
PS4 – 9,560 (15,002)
Nintendo 3DS – 2,529 (5,176)
PS Vita – 290 (544)
Xbox One – 112 (191)

[Via ResetEra]

With the Ys franchise chugging along and Trails of Cold Steel having reached its conclusion (at least for now, anyway), Nihon Falcom’s RPG output has been quite impressive lately. Not too long ago, in fact, they ported over one of their earlier releases, the PS Vita title Ys: Memories of Celceta to the PS4. But that might not be it for them as far as similar re-releases are concerned.

While speaking at a stage event at PlayStation Festa in in Seoul (via Gematsu), Nihon Falcom CEO Toshihiro Kondo spoke about remasters and re-releases of older games on the PS4 in vein of Ys: Memories of Celceta, confirming that more of similar releases are being considered, and that they will depend on what fans want.

“In Japan, we have already decided to port Ys: Memories of Celceta to PlayStation 4,” Kondo said. “While I can’t promise anything for sure right here and now, starting with Memories of Celceta, we’re considering moving little by little to make previous titles playable on platforms like PlayStation 4. If there is a title you would like to play, I definitely want to hear your thoughts.”

The publisher is also remastering games from the Trails of Cold Steel series for the PS4, with the first one launching in the West this month itself, and Trails of Cold Steel 2 due out later this year. They’ve also confirmed that they will be making announcements at the Dengeki Festival later this month, so perhaps we’ll be hearing about more ports then. Stay tune to GamingBolt for more info.

The Ys series has seen an incredible resurgence over the past few years (not counting the controversies surrounding Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana’s localization issues). From Ys 6: The Ark of Naphishtim and Ys 7 releasing on PC to Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana, the franchise is still going strong. That continues today with the launch of Ys: Memories of Celceta. It’s available for PC via Steam.

Ys: Memories of Celceta is a port of Ys 4 on the PlayStation Vita. It’s actually the third version of Ys 4 to release, the other two being Ys 4: Mask of the Sun and Ys 4: The Dawn of Ys. Developed by Nihon Falcom, Ys: Memories of Celceta focuses on Adol Christin. Waking up in the strange land of Celceta and only remembering his name, Adol ventures forth to regain his memories. Along the way, he’ll encounter his old friend Duren while discerning who can be trusted.

Ys: Memories of Celceta boasts up to 4K resolution support, improvements to Time Attack and Boss Rush, and Adol’s Travel Journal which was previously exclusive to the Vita version. Retailing for $24.99, the game is currently discounted by 10 percent until August 1st.

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.

Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana still hasn’t received a release date for PC but Xseed Games is already preparing to port another title to the platform with Ys: Memories of Celceta. Originally released on the PlayStation Vita  in 2012 and later to the PC in China in 2015, Ys: Memories of Celceta is considered the “canon”  version of Ys 4.

Why “canon”? Because there are two more versions of the game – Ys 4: Mask of the Sun and Ys 4: The Dawn of Ys. Nevertheless, this is the official version that’s been developed by Nihon Falcom which takes place one year after Ys 2 and prior to Ys: The Oath in Felghana. It will be coming to PC with options for remapping controls, improved visuals, an unlocked framerate and support for 1080p resolutions and above.

Ys: Memories of Celceta is out on PC this Summer. More information on the price, release date and pre-order bonuses along with gameplay footage should be revealed in the coming months.

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.