Paltheos
Member
Replayed Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, on Nightmare difficulty (not in conjunction with Catastrophe mode though). According to Steam, the last time I'd played was on May 15, 2015, not too long after XSeed had released it on Steam.
I remember Ys VI being brutal and not particularly fair or polished, but I'd beaten literally all of Fromsoft's modern catalogue in the interim since the last time I played this game. "How bad could it be?" My memory was mostly off the mark. The game knocks you back on heavy hits and doesn't give you i-frames at all, except on initial contact, which can be troublesome for the first phase of the final boss who can ping-pong you from 0 to death, but the pattern is clear and avoidable. The boss of the Limewater Cave has active hurtboxes on his arms as they return to neutral but it's not that hard to avoid them and the volleys of insects (although I never did figure out the ground pounds) The Ruins of Lost Time level has a boss that destroys the platforms as you fight changing the stage to a slow/poison swamp and he has a chasing spin attack, but there is or should be (if you fight right) enough space/platforms to move away and his spin is telegraphed early enough to allow getting away without taking damage. The boss of Quatera Woods and the first boss of Kishgal both have instant kill combos, but the former's fire breath is signaled differently from his claw swipe and can be baited to target the other side of the screen and the latter's mortar barrage, while inescapable (as far as I could tell), is never used if you just fight him up close.
I think the only boss I didn't like is the Romun Fleet one - slippy-slidy and damaging floors don't mesh well with a playable character who advances with his normal attacks and a boss who has a hyper-specific hurtbox. Also the optional mini-bosses - especially the plant one in the northwestern corner of the woods near Windseeker Heights - after clearing the boss rush before starting the Nightmare playthrough and struggling with him more than anybody else due to the highly damaging, infinitely spawning mobs, I did not hesitate to cheese him from outside the arena.
Knockback/i-frame issues notwithstanding, this game's better than I remember. Exploring is fun and the game puts few obstacles in your way of going wherever you want (getting murdered hard in the process if you go some place early and get hit). Adol controls well, if not quite as well as in Oath in Felghana. The music is great, with a cross of flighty, adventure, arcade game tunes with some of the synth work you might expect from the contemporary GameArts - Solid work from Ishibashi, Hattori, and even Sonoda on the sound team. It does have a common issue of these games where the highest difficulty demands some level of grinding as you won't damage enemies if your stats aren't high enough and Nightmare takes it a bit too far, but I didn't mind the extra play time because the Ys games of this era are usually short and they're fun to just play (My first run of Napishtim was around 15 hours). I still rate Oath in Felghana and Origin higher than this one, but Ark's still my favorite Ys adventure.
I remember Ys VI being brutal and not particularly fair or polished, but I'd beaten literally all of Fromsoft's modern catalogue in the interim since the last time I played this game. "How bad could it be?" My memory was mostly off the mark. The game knocks you back on heavy hits and doesn't give you i-frames at all, except on initial contact, which can be troublesome for the first phase of the final boss who can ping-pong you from 0 to death, but the pattern is clear and avoidable. The boss of the Limewater Cave has active hurtboxes on his arms as they return to neutral but it's not that hard to avoid them and the volleys of insects (although I never did figure out the ground pounds) The Ruins of Lost Time level has a boss that destroys the platforms as you fight changing the stage to a slow/poison swamp and he has a chasing spin attack, but there is or should be (if you fight right) enough space/platforms to move away and his spin is telegraphed early enough to allow getting away without taking damage. The boss of Quatera Woods and the first boss of Kishgal both have instant kill combos, but the former's fire breath is signaled differently from his claw swipe and can be baited to target the other side of the screen and the latter's mortar barrage, while inescapable (as far as I could tell), is never used if you just fight him up close.
I think the only boss I didn't like is the Romun Fleet one - slippy-slidy and damaging floors don't mesh well with a playable character who advances with his normal attacks and a boss who has a hyper-specific hurtbox. Also the optional mini-bosses - especially the plant one in the northwestern corner of the woods near Windseeker Heights - after clearing the boss rush before starting the Nightmare playthrough and struggling with him more than anybody else due to the highly damaging, infinitely spawning mobs, I did not hesitate to cheese him from outside the arena.
Knockback/i-frame issues notwithstanding, this game's better than I remember. Exploring is fun and the game puts few obstacles in your way of going wherever you want (getting murdered hard in the process if you go some place early and get hit). Adol controls well, if not quite as well as in Oath in Felghana. The music is great, with a cross of flighty, adventure, arcade game tunes with some of the synth work you might expect from the contemporary GameArts - Solid work from Ishibashi, Hattori, and even Sonoda on the sound team. It does have a common issue of these games where the highest difficulty demands some level of grinding as you won't damage enemies if your stats aren't high enough and Nightmare takes it a bit too far, but I didn't mind the extra play time because the Ys games of this era are usually short and they're fun to just play (My first run of Napishtim was around 15 hours). I still rate Oath in Felghana and Origin higher than this one, but Ark's still my favorite Ys adventure.
