The History of Ys Book I & II

The numbers were the announcement: 732 megabytes of CD storage holding 41 music tracks, 24 minutes of character voice acting, and 20 minutes of animated cutscenes, at a moment when cartridge games were measured in single megabits. It was one of the first games to use CD-ROM at all, and its English localization was one of the first to use voice dubbing. The two computer games were rebuilt to run as one continuous adventure: Adol Christin washes ashore in Esteria to hunt the six Books of Ys, and the ending of the first game lifts him directly into the floating land of the second. No standalone English Ys II existed; the sequel has only ever travelled in English inside this compilation and its descendants.

Combat is the series' famous contact system: Adol damages enemies by running into them, angled so he is not struck squarely in return. IGN's Virtual Console review called the ramming incredibly simplistic and interestingly addictive, a design that streamlines the whole experience in the plot's favor. Ys II adds the magic system its sequel chapters kept.

The music became the game's second reputation. The soundtrack has been named Best Game Music of All Time in awards and polls recorded from Atlus, Gamasutra, GamesTM, GameZone, Hardcore Gaming 101, RPGamer, and RPGFan. TurboPlay in 1990 gave it the reviewer's vote for the greatest sound and music track ever recorded for a video game, and Computer Gaming World's Roe R. Adams praised speech heard in real voice, not digitized.

The dissent lives in the later ports rather than the original: the DS and PSP Chronicles releases aggregate at 67 and 63 on Metacritic, respectable and a full class below the TurboGrafx original's standing, a reminder that this game's reputation belongs to the 1989 CD production itself. IGN's Top 100 RPGs lists placed the compilation at number 100 in 2012 and number 87 in 2017.

Before Lunar, before the PlayStation era normalized all of it, Ys I & II demonstrated what CD-ROM was for: voice, animation, arranged music, and two full games as one object. The TurboGrafx-CD library's crown rests here, and every CD RPG on either of this build's shelves is working in its precedent.