I've essentially been giving NightWolve a play-by-play of the game via email. I don't really feel like repeating the bulk of my impressions here since I really should be studying for tomorrow's midterm, but I'll give a few bullet-points summarizing my thoughts:
- The 3D graphics are terrible. The DS is capable of much better than this. The hand-drawn graphics take a hit in both color depth and resolution, unfortunately.
- I have some complaints about Atlus' romanizations, but I'll cut them some slack since the bulk of them are taken directly from Falcom.
- The script in Ys I is decent, if little else, whereas the script in second game really fleshes out the NPCs. I made a point of speaking to every character three times after I triggered each new plot flag.
- Many of the easter eggs from Ys Eternal were removed, even in places where it made little sense to remove them.
- The new play style takes some getting used to, but it's not bad. It makes bosses really tough since you have to time your attacks, but it's not too difficult.
- The new stage unfortunately ruins the difficulty curve of the first game.
- The music quality is so-so: not bad, but could be better. I question why some of the songs were removed (ie: "Dreaming" is no longer used in the mirror maze) or why the extra stage didn't use one of the unused songs available in the sound test.
All in all, the game is decent, but the next time I decide to replay the games, it'll be the PC version and not this.
