Ys Memoire: The Oath In Felghana is the first Ys game I’ve ever played, and it won’t be the last. The game is neither ambitious nor unique, but I can’t help but respect how it’s so confident in what it is: a vertical slice of trends that never overstays its welcome.
The Oath In Felghana is a remaster of the 2010 PSP remake of the 2005 original, which was itself a reimagining of 1990’s Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. It’s a long legacy for just one game, though not one you need to understand. Ys games are (mostly) an anthology series, following the various adventures of Adol Christin as he explores the world in search of new horizons. Oath in Felghana has him winding up in the eponymous region as he quickly gets wrapped up in its affairs.
The game does let you use the music and portraits from any previous version of the game too, if you’d prefer that classic feel.
All Lean And No Fat
I could go on to summarise the story to you, but it’s not anything you haven’t seen before. Family members that are traitors, a despotic tyrant that is actually controlled by an even greater ontological evil, there’s a redeeming moment for the traitorous family member, et cetera, et cetera. It is so obscenely generic, so why do I like it so much?
It feels like comfort food. You know what to expect. It doesn’t have grand notions about what it wants to be, but it’s not just thrown together either. It’s made with a love that you can pinpoint in every ingredient. How it came together, what inspired it, and why you even like it. Oath in Felghana is a classic JRPG. It’s also partially a hack-and-slash game, has pieces of Metroidvania influence throughout, and is even a bit of a platformer.
Instead of feeling like incongruous slop, it’s more of a harmonious stew. Oath in Felghana frontloads the experience with all of its characters, and has you get to know them all as you travel back and forth between dungeons and the main town of Redmont. You get to see how the tyrannical Count McGuire is beating down the mining economy of the town, how reliant the people are on the local church, and the effect that even one person leaving town has on everyone. You get the sense that it is a small community that cares for one another.
The game keeps itself short too, around 15 hours, meaning you never get tired of these townsfolk, but each of them is given enough of a highlight for you to understand their placement in the world.
Much of the same applies to combat. Everything is intentionally simple, giving you almost every gameplay mechanic immediately. You can perform multiple sword slashes, use magic bracelets for spells, and jump around, while you have a Boost ability that increases your attack power, defences, and combo length. That’s it. Sometimes a new enemy will appear who tests those abilities, but they never evolve. Instead, the game promotes its combo meter, giving you bonuses, such as increased EXP, the higher your hit rate. The game wants you to go fast and not think too much. Just have fun.
Gaming’s Mirepoix
Oath in Felghana does have its own flair, though. The diorama presentation feels like a miniature world with small models running about it rather than the typical 3D worlds you might be used to. The camera does a lot of work in preserving this appearance with its locked perspective, making it more visually enticing than it might seem at first glance.
This changes for dungeons though, where the camera alternates as it wants. It can be isometric one moment, and then in the next room shift into a side-scroller with a platforming focus. Surprisingly, the controls never feel ill-suited to this, with you adapting seamlessly to the moving camera. One of my favourite areas is in one of the last dungeons of the game as you move up a spiral staircase. Rather than staying locked, the camera pivots around you, moving up and down in tandem with the rising staircase. It adds extra motion to the scene, making the climb feel all the more dramatic when it is just an ordinary set of stairs.
Metroidvanias are amongst the game’s strongest inspirations, though not with the depth you might hope for. If you’re looking for non-linear exploration with optional tools that you can gain in a relatively free-form manner, Oath in Felghana is not that. It’s much closer to Metroid Fusion in terms of linearity. There are powerful optional items, such as the Spirit Cape that restores your HP whenever you stand still, though these items never dramatically change how you explore the world like you would in a traditional Metroidvania. You’re unlikely to ever get lost, and items are typically never so game-changing that missing them would lessen the experience.
Another thing that should be commended is its performance. I played on Nintendo Switch and, outside of some rare slowdowns with a large amount of particle effects on screen at once, the game runs at a flawless 60fps all the way through. The loading times are obscenely short too, taking a second or less to load in most scenarios. With how fast-paced and bite-sized the game is, that helps make it more digestible when you go backtracking through older areas with new tools.
Sometimes, a game like Oath in Felghana is all you need. When you get home after a long day, you’re not making a five-star meal for yourself. But that doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy it. It’s something you’ve gotten so used to that it brings you comfort just to eat it. You’ve probably played hundreds of games like this before, but Oath in Felghana knows that. It’s not a groundbreaking game, but it’s not trying to be. It has all the basic ingredients you need, without any of the extra spices. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s comforting. It wants you to sit back and enjoy the experience, savouring every drop of its familiar flavour.
- Released
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January 7, 2025
- Developer(s)
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Nihon Falcom
- Publisher(s)
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Nihon Falcom
, XSEED Games
- Short and sweet playtime.
- Inventive camera work that makes the areas more visually enticing.
- Combat has just enough depth to fit the game?s length.
- Woefully generic plot.
- Tools and abilities don?t have much extra use in exploration.