Ys III and the Felghana Remake
The black sheep, rebuilt sixteen years later into the family favourite.
Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (July 1989) broke the series' own rules: a side-scrolling action game, openly in the mould of Zelda II, with a jump and a sword button where the bump system used to be. It was also the last Ys from creators Hashimoto and Miyazaki, who left Falcom to found Quintet. The game travelled everywhere, PC Engine CD, Super NES, Genesis, Famicom, and for years it was the Ys most Western players could actually buy.
In 2005 Falcom remade it outright as Ys: The Oath in Felghana: the same Felghana, the same Dogi's hometown in trouble, rebuilt on the Ys VI engine in full 3D with expanded dungeons and story. XSEED's PSP and PC releases made it a consensus pick for the finest game in the series.
TWO VERSIONS, ONE COUNTRY
1989 · 2005Wanderers
Lean, strange, and brief: a side-scroller whose brevity is part of its charm, carried by Mieko Ishikawa's score, the most guitar-hungry music the series had yet.
The Oath
Felghana keeps every location and boss of the original and deepens all of them. It is the argument that a remake can be a second draft rather than a photograph.
Memoire
The Oath keeps travelling: Switch and PlayStation versions under the Memoire name carried it to modern consoles in 2023 to 2025, forty years of Ys III still in print.