Topic: Memories of Celcata.

[X]

Picked up this game on Jan 3d though honestly I was not expecting it to be at EB games that soon. Finished it on Jan 6 or so and while it has many things I like there are also things about it that I felt disappointed with.

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The original story is roughly all there but there are new bits added in as well. I guess this is Falcom's idea to help modernize Ys 4 a bit, and to help integrate it with not just the old remakes but the newer Ys titles (6 & 7) as well. I felt some of the new additions were unnecessary. Other aspects of the story were also changed which kind of alienated me from enjoying the game much more.

Gone completely is Adol's return to Esther and the whole connection between Ys 4 and the first two Ys adventures. This I felt was a drastic change to the story that didn't need to happen. Instead Falcom introduced new characters for the newer story segments. This I feel was the biggest blow to the game and as such was let down by it.

The old SNES music (though redone) is pretty much all there which was a good thing as the music from 'Dawn of Ys' (though higher quality) was inferior to the 'Mask of the Sun' tracks (at least in my opinion). There is also some newer music put into the game as well and I found myself liking one of the pieces very much.

One of the things I was not expecting is how short the ending was. In fact I guess you could say that there almost was no ending. Another blow to what could have been an awesome title.

The gameplay was like it's Ys 7 counterpart which I don't have any problems with. However I personally think that it should have been like Ys: Oath of Felgahna as originally Ys 4 was just Adol running around and not a whole party.

On a whole I can safely say that while good, this game just doesn't stand up for me as does Ys 4: Mask of the Sun, which I will always consider to be the true canon game of the series.

[Claimh Solais]

I got this game but haven't played it yet since I'm still playing Seven, but it looks pretty awesome. It's just the characters don't seem as likable as the cast of Seven that bugs me. Duren's redesign is also exceedingly weird, why they'd change him to a Dogi-clone is beyond me. I love Karna's redesign but I'm really biased toward her original look.