Adol Christin has been on a lot of adventures over the last nearly four decades since he first rocked the PC-88 back in 1987. While there have been numerous ports and remakes, canonically speaking the Ys series has eleven chapters to it so far. In some form or another, we’ve seen seven of those games come to the Nintendo Switch so far. We can now make that eight with the arrival of Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta, a lightly enhanced version of the PlayStation Vita remake of the extremely troubled fourth entry in the series.
Upfront, I’ll say that Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta (or Ys: Memories of Celceta, as it was known in previous releases) is one of my least-liked Ys games this side of the millennium. It’s not that it’s a bad time, and it certainly does its job of reconciling the complicated nature of the games it’s based on. At the same time, it feels a little low-energy for an Ys game. Perhaps it’s an unfair comparison, but Ys: The Oath in Felghana felt like it was doing a lot more with its source material. But I suppose there’s something to be said for that source material, so let’s talk about that a little.
Ys: Memoire: Revelations in Celceta is based on the fourth game in the series, but it’s more complicated than it seems. After the success of the PC Engine ports of the first three Ys games, Hudson was eager for another installment. It talked to Nihon Falcom about the idea, but the latter was short-staffed at that moment due to a number of team members departing at the same time. Not only could Nihon Falcom not create a new Ys itself, it wasn’t even able to offer up much more than a basic scenario and soundtrack to Hudson. This material resulted in the PC Engine game Ys IV: Dawn of Ys. Nihon Falcom then shopped its skeleton of a game around to various parties for versions on the other 16-bit consoles. Tonkin House bit on the Super Famicom version, known as Ys IV: Mask of the Sun. A third version, planned by SEGA for the Mega Drive, never saw release.
The weird thing about these two Ys IV games, apart from them not being up to the standards of the previous three games, is that they’re quite different from each other, both in gameplay and story details. As one might imagine, this ended up creating some slight chaos in the Ys canon for a while. Fans preferred Dawn of Ys, while Nihon Falcom opted to canonize Mask of the Sun. If this wasn’t messy enough, Taito did a remake of Mask of the Sun on the PlayStation 2 that put its own spin on the events of the game. Thankfully, Nihon Falcom finally decided in 2012 that it was time to crack its knuckles and make its own version of that chapter of Adol’s story. That’s the game we know as Ys: Memories of Celceta, and it incorporates aspects of all the previous takes on Ys IV while adding some new bits and excising certain characters or events entirely.
The story in this version starts with Adol wandering the streets of a city called Casnan, suffering from a nasty case of amnesia. We soon learn he has returned from a journey to the forest of Celceta, a seemingly dangerous place where people rarely come back from. When trouble starts brewing, he’s enlisted to help out along with his somewhat reluctant friend Duren. Together, they’ll explore Celceta, beating up baddies, helping people out, and piecing Adol’s memories back together. This is set between Ys II and The Oath in Felghana, so it’s pretty early on in Adol’s career. It’s a decent enough story, though even with the additions, there is a decidedly old-school flavor to it that might not impress more recent fans of the series.
The original Vita release of the game came between the PSP Ys Seven and the major series overhaul that was Ys VII: Lacrimosa of DANA, and the game feels it. The gameplay and overall feel of the game more closely resemble that PSP outing than anything else. I know a lot of people really enjoyed Ys Seven, but I found it a bit clunky and undercooked. The concepts it was going for weren’t realized to a satisfactory level until Ys VIII, and despite being a polygonal game, it somehow felt less impressive than the 2D entries that preceded it. Ys Seven was also the first game in the series to bring in party members, and here again, it felt like all the kinks had yet to be worked out.
Many of my issues with Ys Seven’s gameplay are present in Ys Memorie: Revelations in Celceta. Even worse, we’re down a Dogi. Sorry Duren, you’re no Dogi. The additional visual kick afforded by the Vita’s hardware somehow resulted in a game that looked and ran in a way that felt cheaper. This Switch version of the game at least improves on the original’s technical performance, with a better framerate and resolution. If you’re playing on the original Switch, you’ll be dealing with an inconsistent attempt at 60 frames per second in handheld mode. Jump over to the Switch 2 in Boosted Mode, and you get a handheld version of the game that runs quite smoothly. Well, if you’re rocking the original Switch and are an Ys fan, you’re probably used to performance issues in handheld mode.
Other than the graphical improvements, the only bonuses the Switch release has to offer over the Vita version are dual language options and a new arranged version of the soundtrack. The former was already seen in other post-Vita ports, but the arranged soundtrack is fully new to this release. Tastes are tastes, but I ended up switching back to the original soundtrack after a while. It’s nice to have the option, though. You may well like it better than I did, and if you don’t, then you can roll with the strong original tracks instead. Basically, if you’ve already played Memories of Celceta on a previous platform, there’s not much new to see here.
I may sound like I’m really down on Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta, but it’s really only weak in the context of the overall Ys series. This franchise is one of the gold standards of the action-RPG genre, and even a lesser entry is still going to give you a very good time. Revelations in Celceta has a bit of a slow start, as Ys games sometimes do, but once you get properly stuck into it you’re going to have a hard time putting it down until it’s over and done with. The action feels good, the boss battles are wild, and when the music hits just right, there’s nothing else quite like it.
Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta is a slightly spiffed-up version of a game that is very much of its time and place in the history of the series. While it’s not the best Ys game you can play on the Switch, or even the second-best, going on a journey with Adol rarely shortchanges the player on thrills. Those using a Switch 2 will find this to be a particularly comfortable handheld experience, but there’s a satisfying quality to it wherever or however you choose to play it.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review Copy Provided by XSEED Games
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