Ys IV: Mask of the Sun - A New Theory

"Finally, it's not embarassing to say that you enjoyed Mask of the Sun..."

Right. So, I imported the latest of Taito's remakes of Ys III - V, the remake of what is most likely the most disliked game in the series. It's easy to see why, since the other Ys IV, Dawn of Ys, was a fantastic game in every respect, while the Super Famicom game, Mask of the Sun, was underwhelming in everything. The music was better in Dawn of Ys, the graphics were better in Dawn of Ys, and generally, Mask of the Sun had horrible gameplay compared to any other title in the series.

That said, the remake of MotS is far beyond the quality of the original release. And when it says -A New Theory-, it means a new theory. The entire game has been redone, the environments shifted around and redesigned, and even the plot tweaked to make it flow better and create a better realisation of this version of Celceta. As of this writing, I can honestly say that I now have no preference of either Ys IV. Both have produced an excellent version and I feel that neither is better than the other, as both now have their strengths.

Battle is fairly simple, but it works well in the Ys world. Not unlike Ys VI's Livart sword, carefully timed attacks in succession can lead to a magical extra final strike. However, this is with every weapon. And there's lots of them. There's a grand total of six elemental swords for the entire game, and a bunch of regular swords too. The regular swords are generally all the same, with no charge magic and just a generic wind blast after a successful combo. For each elemental sword, a different result is attained. With the Darkness sword, it's a ball of energy that surrounds Adol and damages whatever it touches in a succession of powerful quick hits. For Fire, it's a stream of fire that goes off in the direction Adol is facing. And so on for Earth, Lightning, Ice, and Light. And attacking is done with three separate buttons; Square for a fast/weak horizontal slash, X for a normal thrust of medium strength and speed, and Circle for a slow, powerful overhead slash. By combining the three attacks, a combo can be attained, allowing for a change in tactics for boss battles from the general slash/hack of random wandering foes.

Magic is handled by charging up the sword, releasing the charge to create a jewel, and then striking it. Depending on the strike type, different effects can happen. Hit a jewel with a weak slash, and it becomes the self-effect type of the magic, which can increase attack, increase defense, or even cause regenerating healing. Thrusting at the jewel jams it forward as a missile, which can destroy enchanted barriers as well as seriously damage any foes caught in the way. And smacking the jewel with an overhead smash causes its elemental power to manifest in a shockwave that can damage as well as change the environment. Too dark to see? Smash a Lightning jewel to light everything up! Switch won't stay down? Smash an Earth jewel and push it onto the switch! Needless to say, it adds variety to the gameplay and dungeons, and gives Ys a not-to-complex yet welcome addition to just wandering and slashing. As well, this definitely helps in boss battles, as the self-effect magic can be just as useful as a combo, if not more.

The areas are large and fun to go through, filled with hi-res enemy sprites. Some people complain that they're mainly palette shifted, but I feel that's fine since the area of an Ys game was never meant to be large and similar enemies make it feel like one single region rather than a bunch of cobbled together towns. As well, in some of the latter dungeons, such colour-swapping is neccessary to indicate element. The areas themselves range from beautiful, such as the final areas and the village of Komodo, to bleh like the Crater and the forest regions. However, it's still very fitting of the gameplay and gives Ys IV a good, if not outstanding, overall feeling.

Music is still not up to par with Dawn of Ys' incredible OST, but it tries. This time, Mask of the Sun has a fantastic rearranging of its songs, and all of them fit and are eminently listenable. It's very nicely handled, and aside from a town theme, I couldn't find anything that was repetitive or irritating, and actually quite liked everything. There were nice subtleties in the songs that weren't present in the original version, and I have to say that it's a change for the better. A couple songs from the original MotS were removed and replaced, but that's not a large thing to worry about, since overall it's a very satisfying effort.

As for plot... it's an Ys game. That doesn't matter. Eldeil is still being a jerk in Celceta, and it's just some tweaking of the plot and ending and the order that they were in. The end result is the same, though, and it's just typical Falcom filler that's just there for great gameplay. It may be just 'go to the [insert place]' level sometimes, but really, if you're looking at this game, you're probably not thinking about story. You're thinking about hacking and slashing your way across Celceta, more likely.

The challenge level of this game is rather low, with most bosses being very easy to defeat, and only the later bosses really putting up a fight. The biggest challenge in the game, IMO, was the areas where fireballs and mages both launched attacks at me simultaneously. However, the final boss for this game was a fantastic battle, and is definitely my favourite final fight in any Ys game. A lot of inspiration seems to have been taken from Ark of Napishtim for some of the workings, but I can honestly say that this boss feels more polished and fun than Napishtim's was. In fact, most of the final battles were very fun on the whole and satisfying.

The only real downside to this is the lack of cutscene cinema (which I could care less about), and the loading times. While not as bad as, say, Shining Tears... the loading times do get in the way at the start of the game. Thankfully, by the end, the areas are large enough that you barely notice them since you've got an hour of dungeon crawling between a load, most times. In any case, those, along with a lack of polish overall for the game, detract from the entire experience. Also, like most Ys games, it's fairly short, though it did take 11 hours and 30 minutes to finish, which was a good time for an Ys game as far as I'm concerned, but could turn off many. Also, this game is definitely for the hardcore Ys fan more than anything. While I would recommend it to anyone who really enjoys the Ys games, in any version over any console, to a casual fan that started with VI or just someone who's looking for a quick ARPG fix but hasn't followed the series, it's definitely not for either.

This remake is a very nice effort from Taito to spruce up a game that really needed some help getting it all together, and has me looking forward to increases for the Ys V remake.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/10/05