YS(pronounced "iiiish"): The Ark of Napishtim is the sixth installment
in the YS series, and picks up three years after the conclusion of YS V
which debuted on the SNES about 14 years ago. So, if you've never heard
of this series that’s probably why. If you do remember this series, and
are still playing games, have no fear as everything you both loved and
hated about the previous titles is intact one hundred fold. The story
goes something like this. You once again don the guise of red haired
hero Adol Christian, and in the games intro you and your friend Dogi
are offered an adventure by some pirates, however, the Romun Army comes
to arrest you and thus you are driven to flee with the pirates. During
the ensuing battle with the Romun Navy you are knocked overboard while
trying to save a fellow pirate crew member and are swallowed by the
great vortex, a mysterious place from which none have ever returned,
and is rumored to house a great treasure at its core. Of course the
battle has to conveniently take place immediately outside of this
thing. After being devoured by the vortex you wash ashore on an island
badly injured and are nursed back to health by Olha and her younger
sister. These two girls are strange elf/cat people that belong to a
tribe known as the Rheda, and inhabit the small island chain inside the
great vortex that you are now on. I won't go on, as I think you can see
where this is going, but needless to say the hack and slash solo
adventure begins in all its simplistic, clichéd, stereotypical glory,
and will take you no longer than 20 hours complete.
Now let’s not beat around the bush anymore, ok? This game has some of
the worst graphics seen in any recent RPG on any system. The sprites
lack any form of detail and the environments are grossly simplistic. In
fact, the sprites are so bad that you could actively compare them with
those of Final Fantasy 7, a game that was released back in 1997 and
didn't even have sprites its characters were simply raw polygons. The
environments look horribly dated, though no where near to the extent
that the sprites are. There is at least some form of cover up here;
however, as the game attempts to use pretty patterns and repeated
textures to hide its nudity. What is nice about the environments though
is that in many cases they come with some pretty nice watercolor, oil,
and acrylic painted back drops, and multiple layers, all of which look
great and do a good job establishing unique YS fantasy feel.
The characters are much like the environments in this game. They
contain a beauty that is out of reach. Perhaps this is because the
games voice acting is beyond god awful. However, there are a few gems
and familiar faces here and there such as Sonny Strait (most known for
voicing Krillin in the Legendary Dragonball series) who plays the town
peddler. You have two options when it comes to the games dub. You can
either leave it on, or turn it off. There is no Japanese audio readily
available on the disc. However, you can activate it with the proper
code from the cheats menu that is available when you go to start a new
game. While it's nice that it's still in the games code, I don't think
I'm alone in saying that this should have been a feature in the options
menu. Not something you bust your ass for in order to “unlock it,”
especially since it is considerably better than the poor job done by
the American actors. Also once that code is in the system and you've
saved that game with that code on it to your memory card, that “cheat”
is permanent for the life of that game. That's right permanent, there
is no way to turn it off if you want to, and that goes for all cheats,
not just the voiceover, many of which are legitimate. However, it’s not
really an overly big deal since you can only play with one cheat on at
a time. The cheats and terrible dub aside, in terms of characters, you
will run across a few old faces from pervious YS games that practically
no one will remember for a short nostalgia high. You will also
encounter a horde of new characters, many of which are terribly
unoriginal, and a few of them look like cheap bootlegs of other well
known RPG and Anime Series stars. However, the one cool thing about the
characters in this game is that their depth and story are exposed
gradually over the course of the game. This is because the game
constantly recycles you through the same environments while gradually
expanding them and introducing you to new ones. While at first glance
you may think this a horrible thing, it’s really not. In fact, it's
pretty cool, because what it dose is give the game a large amount of
the depth for the small scale that it takes place on. This isn't like
Final Fantasy or Grandia where you adventure around and meet people
once, get their lines and then are done with them. In The Arc of
Napishtim you constantly go back and talk to everyone you have known
since the games beginning. This let’s you see how everyone changes in
response to your actions and everyone else’s reactions to each other in
regard to your actions, as well as the events that come up in the
story. After a little while you see that everything is connected and
entwined to everything else in the game, and it’s pretty cool. This
makes every character in the game 3D and breathes an insane amount of
life into the game world. After the initial meeting you feel like you
are in a real town and with real people. They gossip. You can feel
their tension, their emotion, their stress, and their feelings toward
one another, as well as towards you, be they fellow ship wreck
survivors, natives, or any of the other groups of magical beings you
meet in this adventure. Plus, to top everything off, because new
material is constantly coming up going back and talking to the same
people never gets old, and you will find yourself constantly coming
back for more, even if it’s not important.
Game play is by far Ark of Napishtim's strongest suit. It’s not more
than shallow hack and slash, and the interface is clunky and dated. The
fact that you can't access your inventory during boss battles, for
instance, makes them down right infuriating. However, the simple play
control and fast pace of the hack and slash action will have you
mindlessly addicted to the very end. Battles never get old, no matter
how many of those stupid little green gem's you need to collect to
upgrade any one of your three magic swords, or how many monsters you
need to kill to level. In fact, and I know that others can attest to
this, if this game had a co-op story mode it would be THE HOTTEST thing
to hit any console since Square’s “Secret of Mana,” back in 1993. Yes,
despite the bad things I've said this game IS that good, and it's all
thanks to mindless fun of the combat system.
My only complaint when it comes to the battle system is its simplicity
is its downfall. The reason for this is after the first boss battle you
start to get the games elemental swords. There are three in all, each
coinciding with one of the games elements, one wind element, one fire
element, and one water element. Each is given to you, just as every
typical RPG does, after beating a boss. Now while each sword has its
own special and moves, the problem is that there is no elemental base
to this game. That’s right, there is no table of elements in YS: The
Arc of Napishtim. So because of this you do just as much damage to the
giant ice golem over there with your level 7 water sword as you do with
your level 7 fire sword and level 7 wind sword. This situation
shouldn't be the case! One of your swords should do extra damage, one
should heal the enemy, and/or not have any effect on him like the third
sword. Anyone who is remotely familiar with RPG’s knows this, and by
not having it apply there is no point in the second and third swords
being in the game. Instead, the developers opted to make everything in
the game is level based. What dose this mean? It means that all you
have to do is over crank your sword(s) and you will be able to run
through the game slaughtering anything that gets in your way. Worse
yet, if you build your swords evenly and kill enough enemies to use the
swords special attack and then go into the boss battle and let loose on
him with your swords, those nightmarish boss encounters mentioned
previously become a joke, and the game looses all it’s challenge, minus
the annoying plat-forming elements in the dungeons.
All and all, YS: The Arc of Napishtim is a lot of fun despite its many
problems. Music, something the YS series is known for, is nothing
you'll want a soundtrack of, but nothing bad either. While the story is
pretty stereotypical and clichéd, the way that the other characters in
the game unfold and open up to you as the game progresses still makes
it interesting and keeps you thinking. The combat system, which is
simplistic and yet fluid, is by far and large the games mind, body,
heart and soul. Everything else in the game is an afterthought in
comparison to the combat. Most of your time playing will be spent going
around in the wild and slaughtering everything that dares to cross your
path, simply because it's just so much fun. The game has a new game
plus mode, well sorta, similar to “Chrono Trigger’s,” which unlocks
when you beat the game for the first time. However, this new mode is
mostly just a bunch of crazy added and unnecessary challenges that you
can undertake, and upon completion, reward you with either an automatic
sword upgrade of your choice, an item, or piece of equipment that is as
crack-fiendish as the challenge was. Upon completing these challenges
there are slight alterations to the ending, though it's nothing to
write home about, and most people will definitely be able to get by
without it. This added mode feels tacked on at the last minute, and is
simply there for what die hard fans of the YS series remain. The one
thing this game really leaves to be desired is an option to play co-op
with a friend, simply because the combat is much fun, and so
reminiscent Secret of Mana. Also, if co-op was present, then this would
be best RPG to hit consoles since Secret of Mana in 1993. SoM was an
unforgettable experience that causes me to salivate when I think about
repeating that experience in a new game. Sadly YS: The Arc of Napishtim
is not that new game. However, the game definitely shows enough
potential to see that it could have easily been said game if its
developers had just taken a little more time, and aimed a little
higher. Depending on how you look at it. The Arc of Napishtim does and
does not have trouble competing with other modern RPG's and old school
RPG's on the market. Its graphics are bad. Its sound is nothing
special. Its story is cliché, but its game play is awesome. Once you
take into account that it’s first YS game in nearly 14 years, it’s easy
to see that it’s everything it should be, even though it fall's short
of everything it could have been.
