Ys The Ark of Naphishtim

I purchased the PSP version when I was looking for games that seemed decent on the PSP. Since there aren't many out that I am able to enjoy. This happened to be one I may see the end to.

Sure playing one dungeon for 5 hours may be fun to some people. But it gets frustrating when you are doing it to try and jump to an invisible ledge repeatedly in the distance, and if you fail then you fall to a screen below you and need to traverse back up. Thus this means not only running back and hopefully getting it "this time" but sitting through the long LONG load times this game suffers from. It experiences lag when you Level up, decide to buy or sell your goods, or zoning. Luckily once you zone and you are in combat the game is truly fun.

It is all real time combat with a certain amount of enemies that spawn in each zone, once you leave the area and come back that same amount will return. Enemies are simple to having to retreat from them even from the very beginning of the game. This really helped me personally feel like I was getting stronger throughout the game.

Figuring out where to go can also be quite difficult since they don't necessarily say where to go unless you talk to some random NPC who tells you, you can go to a faroff area to experience one little scene that really doesn't even matter. Or the fact that there are sidequests that require you to traverse long long roads through enemies that aren't even worth killing throughout the game. So it definately would be useful to have a guide with you for these things.

The key to battle is defeating enemies to get gold to buy healing items, armor, and shields. Sometimes enemies drop little blue crystals called Emil which is used to power up 1/3 of your swords and near the end of the game, make the high leveled armors. The key to this is getting and mastering the 3 swords' secret techniques. If you use the magic bar which fills up with each time you hit an enemy, then the Water will unleash a Maelstrom around you, the Fire will shoot out a beam along the ground, the Electric one will fire a homing attack lightning bolt onto enemies. Each sword can do special triggers as well. The Water sword unleashes more hits if you time your [] button hits correctly to unleash a semi-maelstrom. The Fire sword will unleash a mini wave along the ground if you just hold the [] button. The Electric sword will unleash more attacks if you keep tapping the [] button until your character glows and eventually will lunge you into an enemy.

All of these various ways to make battles fun really helps out the game. And it would be highly suggested to at least be a rentable game if you enjoy RPGs all the way to dungeon crawling games like "Diablo". But sadly you will have to get used to load times that seem to take some time, but is bare-able.

All in all I'm giving this game a 3/5 since it could have worked out some things better (mainly the "leaps of faith" concept). I'm near the very end of the game, and in two dungeons out of roughly 3 or 4. They have all involved this concept of "dash jumps".

Still for being a fun game with a decently "ok" story, and very difficult boss battles, this game received a 4/5 for being fun.

There was a lot that this game had going for it. The visuals both in game and during the FMV moments are the best I have ever seen from any game system of the size ever, and that does got a long way towards the enjoyment of the game.The deveolpment system has been used in some form or another for so long that a lot of people who play games like the console versions of baldur's gate will have no problem dominating this game. Anyone who is a fan of hack and slash action will enjoy this game.
There are three things that made detract the one star that I did in each category. The first item is that since they push the in-game visuals so far, there is a loading screen, every time you go from map section to map section. You can actually say they went a little bit too far for the psp capabilities. There seems to be less replay value in this title than in the average handheld game.
In short:
Pros:
1. Insanely good visuals.
2. A gameplay system that's very easy to learn.
3. Enjoyable hack and slash action

Cons:
1. The visuals are so good that they push the psp to the point where there is a loading screen every time you go from map section to map section.
2. There replay value is below average.