Video - Promo

An Ys realtime strategy game? An RTS where you're mining Cleria instead of Tiberium? A production-based skirmish system where, instead of building supertanks and secret weapons, you're churning out little guys with red hair and armoured pyjamas? A DRAG AND CLICK WARGAME THAT USES THE DS STYLUS!?

Well, bugger me! We'll have a bit of THAT!

Unfortunately though, while Falcom may employ plenty of cheap Korean labour, it's plainly obvious that no Koreans were ever let within a mile of designing this game. I've never met any Korean babies, but I bet the first words they learn to say are "Ys Strategy's hero system is fucking preposterous." I'm getting ahead of myself though, let's start at the beginning. The game is cookie-cutter RTS - you start off with a town hall and a few peons. You mine gold, fell trees and farm food. You build barracks, roll out troops and buy upgrades for them. Same old, same old - except for the heroes.

The heroes are great big unstoppable tanks that can only be felled by defence turrets or seriously unfair numbers. They can also move at twice the rate of normal units using the D-Pad with a quick click of the relevant icon (effectively giving them the power to teleport around the map). It sounds like a stupid idea that can only lead to spiteful hit-and-run attacks on the opponent's supply lines, and it is. Combined with the lethargic pace of unit production, however - so slow that once things go downhill, it's impossible for a base to recover from a decent attack - it's a game wrecker.

Of course, that's before we've even got to the intelligence level of the game's AI.

On maps where you start out with a hero, more often than not the computer will start out with one as well. That'll balance things out, right? Wrong. Step one: two heroes go toe to toe until they're low on hit points. Step two: your hero runs away and goes for a fag. Step three: while enemy hero is doing nothing, your hero comes back with 200 extra HP and kicks his plums in, because - get this - EVERY UNIT IN THIS GAME CAN HEAL ITSELF, FOR FREE, AT ANY TIME. Step four - profit (but only for Falcom).

(Just in case I haven't put you off sufficiently yet, by the way, the touchscreen control is FECKLESS, IMPRECISE AND DOESN'T BLOODY WORK HALF THE TIME.)

The practical upshot of all this is that there's no possible way that the computer has any chance of victory - not in any scenario resembling a fair fight, at least. Your only chance of enjoying the game is to go to Singles Mode and crank the difficulty right up, or to give Scenario Mode a try.

This is where the biggest slice of the fanfap is going to be for the Ys cadre – Ys's narrative is gigantic and epic. It bounces insanely around the (known) world, taking in Germany, Africa, Spain, England, Italy and Scandinavia before the first third of the game is even done. A gigantic cast of characters add an incredibly rich pool of mythos to a franchise with a gameworld which was already strong. Of course, none of this is going to be any use to you if your Japanese isn't very good indeed. Admittedly this is Falcom we're talking about - the same Falcom that once gave away an entire PLAY free with one of their games - but even by their standards this is heavy stuff. Even with the button pressed down skipping the plot scenes at maximum speed, it's possible to get a ration of about one hour text to ten minutes gameplay at times.

OH JESUS! XENOGEARS FLASHBACK!

The poor quality of the gameplay thus leads to a confusing scenario where you're never sure whether you're ploughing through the text to get to the next fight, or secretly dreading it. Imagine something like this.

ROMUN ARMY: I tell you we shall drive you from this place! We will at last possess the secrets of the Eldiean race, and the superiority of the ROMUN...

(Twenty minutes of sellotaping the button down later)

ROMUN ARMY: ...and we will finally gain control the power of the Emelas, bringing your doom!

ESTERIAN ARMY: zerg rush lol

ROMUN ARMY: Shit!

Anything good about it, then? Yeah, the music's FANTASTIC. Oh, come on. It's a Falcom game, you knew THAT was coming. Seriously, folks, wait for a translation unless you're a Japanese reader or moron. Just to reiterate one more time, it genuinely is the case that no effort at pattern recognition has been made at any point in the game, no unit will defend its base or comrades and every single map can be bulldozed in about 10-15 minutes flat by running over and slaughtering all the peons (hardly the epic heroism you'd expect from an Ys game).

The heroes will not come to the rescue if you lead them out of range and then leg it, and even the lethal defences of the town hall are useless against the wily player who dashes past and chins everyone on the way through (causing them to run out of protection's way and cower in the corner of the map). Only a child, an idiot or someone who had accidentally never played an RTS in their lives could possibly get any enjoyment from this as a game.