Greetings all, we are back to work with the Ys marathon. If you’re coming here directly from the Mask of the Sun review, welcome. We aren’t quite done with Ys IV yet, so let us get down to the end of this tale. This is Ys IV: Dawn of Ys!
Introduction & Pre-Production
As we have already discussed the circumstances leading to the creation of two Ys games for 1993 I’m going to keep this exceedingly brief and discuss pre-production as it relates to Dawn of Ys. In short, Falcom had created narrative and design outlines in preparation for development of Ys IV but ended up outsourcing development of said game to two separate companies. Last week’s topic Mask of the Sun was developed by Tonkin House, whilst today’s game was developed by Hudson Soft.
In comparison to Tonkin House, Hudson Soft was a MUCH more experienced developer and business partner for Falcom. As Hudson Soft had collaborated with Falcom on a number of titles, including but not limited to; Ys Book 1 & 2 Remake for the PC Engine, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, Legend of Heroes: DragonSlayer 1 & 2. Hudson Soft had also developed their own library of games, but they were the primary partner for Falcom as it concerned bringing their games to the PC Engine/ Turbograf 16. An important factor to note is that early on in their career Falcom was exclusively committed to the PC-88 and later PC-98 whilst other companies would approach Falcom to develop versions of their game for additional platforms, hence why Ys I & II saw release for over a dozen different platforms.
Given Hudson’s familiarity with Falcom in this era the fact that they were chosen as one of the studios to develop one of the outsourced Ys IVs was not especially surprising. This however would be the first time that Hudson Soft had developed a Falcom game from the ground up, as the Ys I & II remake did have a foundation in the original duology and unlike Tonkin House, Hudson Soft had experience in developing a bump combat Ys game.
The project was directed by one Tomonori Matsunaga whilst design was overseen by Taiichi Matsuda. The original Ys IV score was composed by Falcom Sound team JDK. However much like Mask of the Sun, Dawn of Ys had tracks composed exclusively for that version. These exclusive tracks came from the minds of Atsushi Shirakawa, Naoki Kaneda, Takahiro Tsunashima, and Masaru Nakajima. Much like previous PC Engine Ys games, the score for Dawn also had arrangements done by Ryo Yonemitsu
Synopsis & Writing
Much like Mask of the Sun, Dawn of Ys picks up two years after the event of Ys 2 in which Adol and Dogi return to Esteria after an unspecified adventure. The pair meet up immediately with a returning Goban and tour Minea, seeing how things had changed since the defeat of Darm. However, before Adol can reunite with the likes of Luta Gemma and Lilia he hears a tale of trouble in the neighboring land of Celceta from patrons of a local bar as well as a returning Sara from Ys 1 (more on THAT later).
So, without telling anyone Adol grabs his trusty cleria armor and sword and boards a boat for the border town of Promalock and begins to make his way to Celceta on foot. On the way there he is apprehended by the Romn army where he meets an information dealer named Duren and a Celcetan warrior named Karna and the trio bust their way out of the prison. From here Adol’s journey begins in earnest to find out Romn’s ambitions for the land of Celceta as well as to stop the Clan of Darkness (or darklings depending on your persuasion) from seizing the power of the Eldeen.
Dawn of Ys may carry the same overall skeleton of Mask of the Sun in the core overarching story, but it does a great number of things differently. The ambitions of Romn, Gruda and the darklings as well as the movement of the fallen Eldeen Eldeel… ring the same and are close to their Mask of the Sun counterpart, but Dawn makes some narrative decisions to set itself apart, some of which bring the story closer to their source design notes, with other decisions not so much.
Mask of the Sun for example saw Duren presented just as an information dealer with no significance to the plot beyond that. Dawn brings his role closer to the source material revealing that he too is a descendant of the darklings and that he too seeks to stop Gruda’s ambitions. But there is plenty that not only contradicts Falcom’s script notes for the Ys IV narrative but that is also inconsistent with the original duology.
As alluded to in our intro Sara the fortune teller and descendant of the Six Priests of Ys who put Adol on the path to recover the books of Ys in the original game, is alive and well in this tale. For context the original script sees her explicitly killed by Dark Fact whilst certain translations such as Hudson Soft’s Book 1 & 2 remake saw her flee the land of Esteria instead(in a rather out of character move) and Dawn saw fit to bring her back.
Putting canonical inconsistencies aside, bringing her into this story does little more than provide a piece of exposition and serve as a call-to-action for our protagonist Adol. The exact same purpose she served in the original game. But if Hudson Soft was going to do their own thing, why not further explore the concepts you’ve introduced? Sara plays no role in the events of this story beyond the intro, which makes me wonder what the point of bringing her into this story was at all. Dawn of Ys also gives much different locales as the towns of Selray, Komodo, Highland, and Danan from the likes of Mask of the Sun and Memories of Celceta are replaced by locations such as Arieda, Raparo, and Libra village with elemental motifs for each. Falcom themselves would reference these locale names when making the Memories of Celceta remake. The Esteria locations made the cut as well as the border town of Promalock.
Despite taking many liberties with the source material, Dawn still imparts a great deal of Eldeen lore much like Mask of the Sun did detailing the fall of their society, some of which would be retconned when Ark of Napishtim was released in 2003. But the same also applies for Mask of the Sun. Now, while Mask of the Sun saw its own share of deviations from the source material, it was largely irrelevant to the overall saga past this game.
Hudson Soft took it a step further and decided they were going to write an ending to the series in which Adol settles down and has kids with Lilia. Series fans may raise an eyebrow at that nowadays as series lore has told us that Adol went missing in the north during his 60s after having 100s of adventures. When viewed through the lens that Mask of the Sun and Dawn of Ys are interpretations of Falcom materials, we can view it as just that, an interpretation. In the grand scheme of the franchise this doesn’t mean anything. BUT if Hudson Soft was going to write an ending for the franchise why not just wake Feena up and have her and Adol ride off into the sunset? That makes a lot more sense than Adol settling down with a character with little to no connection to him and had little to nothing to do with the events of the original duology or even this game.
Narratively Dawn of Ys is very much doing its own thing, but as someone who has experienced every entry of the franchise outside of this one I welcomed this story as an experiment and a different interpretation of Falcom’s original story. Mask of the Sun may run closer to Falcom’s vision for Ys IV, but this story is definitely the more entertaining of the two.
Gameplay
Now here is where Dawn of Ys truly shines. Much like Mask of the Sun and the original duology we are back to a top-down perspective with bump combat putting an emphasis on hitting enemies off center to deal damage whilst avoiding taking damage. Fundamentally, this is the same as what Mask of the Sun offered. However, we have a couple of substantial mechanics that set this apart, along with a wealth of quality-of-life features that serves to make Dawn far more enjoyable than Mask of the Sun.
For starters, for the first time since Ys II we have a proper magic system that sees Adol be able to be a fireball wizard once more, transform into a Roo to be able to swim and communicate with demons, and for convenience, magic that allows you to fast travel. That is what mechanically sets Dawn apart from its Mask of the Sun counterpart, but the game overall operates much differently.
A keynote of difference is the movement speed. Mask of the Sun saw characters moving faster than any Ys game prior, often to the detriment of the game’s design and the player’s experience. For its part, Dawn slows things down considerably. The pace of movement is noticeably slower in comparison to Mask of the Sun and later on the upcoming Ys I & II remakes such as Eternal, Complete, and Chronicles. But it very much is in line with the (at the time) recent release of the Book 1 & 2 remake for the PC engine as well as the original releases for the PC-88. This is consistent with and calls back to a core design tenet of the original duology in which positioning was crucial. Combine this with bosses once again emphasizing picking your moments to take advantage of their vulnerability, and it makes for boss fights that reward intention and patience above all else.
We’ve also got a handful of firsts and quality-of-life features present that would go on to become series staples. For starters, this is the first Ys game in which players can move in eight directions, as the original duology and Mask of the Sun only allowed for movement in the four cardinal directions, whilst Wanderers as a side scrolling RPG only allowed for movement from left to right. Next up is the inclusion of continues. For context, Ys up to this point has allowed players to save at any point, exceptions being when in a boss room. This was highly forgiving in comparison to what we will see later. But every Ys game up until Ys VI would see players revert to their last save upon death; regardless if it was 2 minutes or 2 hours ago. Dawn of Ys generally follows this rule if you die in the field or a dungeon, it will revert to your last save. However, if you die against a boss you will instead be dropped right outside the boss room, introducing SELECTIVE continues.
When comparing Dawn of Ys and Mask of the Sun as gameplay experiences it is night and day, in terms of the overall experience. Hudson Soft had much more experience working with this style of Ys and the end product is reflective of that additional experience. This would also be the last Ys game that placed a great emphasis on gameplay-narrative integration and is a fine farewell to bump combat Ys, at least until Falcom would remake the original duology three more times in the next two decades.
Presentation & Score
Naturally, since Dawn was working with the PC engine instead of the Super Famicom like Mask did, the developers were able to be much more ambitious in telling the story as well as how they presented it. We have many cutscene stills and facial animation during said scenes, as well as a wealth of voice acting, which the game uses to communicate most of its story. The PC engine allowed for some impressive things for the era. The Sanctuary of Storms dungeon in this game is rather unique in that there are no loading zones between the individual rooms, only a floor change to the second half of the dungeon. In this dungeon if you don’t kill all enemies before moving on to the next room those enemies will follow you into the next room. We don’t see anything like that again in the series to date even with technology having come so far. Dawn of Ys is also the first game in the series to feature allied artificial intelligence as the second dungeon has you team up with Karna and she assists you in the lava caves. Allied A.I. was kind of a fever dream for Ys outside of escorting unarmed NPCs until the likes of Ys Seven in 2009.
When it comes to the score, I don’t find it entirely fair to compare it to Mask of the Sun’s score as Super Famicom’s cartridge based sound chip can’t compete with the PC Engine and its CD quality audio. As mentioned previously in last week’s piece, Sound Team did compose the general score for both versions that would then be arranged by Hudson and Tonkin staff respectively to fit on the sound fonts for their respective development platforms, Both studios would also compose tracks specific to their version. That being said, Dawn’s score is something else. A lot of tracks do overlap with Mask’s score due to reasons previously mentioned but the enhanced instruments really help the score to shine in this version. The entirety of the score is available on platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify as part of the Perfect Collection Ys IV: Volume 1 & 2. (This article is not sponsored; the music is just a fine listen and recommended highly.) Unfortunately, several of the strongest tracks didn’t come to the Memories of Celceta remake, such as a personal favorite of mine “Walking the Path of Legends”.
Conclusion
Following the success of Ys I & II, Falcom was in a very weird position in an attempt to make a follow up; Ys III was a massive departure from the formula presented in the original installments. Following this Falcom let someone else attempt to make a Ys game whilst providing slight direction for Tonkin as they developed Mask of the Sun. However, that too failed to live up to that legacy. Dawn of Ys however? Feels like a game that builds upon what made those first two games so beloved and brings new stuff to the table. Given that Dawn of Ys is considered the narrative black sheep of the series due to its non-canon status and is the most overlooked given that it was only released in Japan, it is the strongest game to be made post Ys II that i’ve covered thus far and I can’t recommend it enough. Stay tuned for next time as Falcom returns to the Ys series with Ys V: Kefin Kingdom of Sand! Special thanks to OmgFloofy for collaborating on this article!
Patron Shout-Out
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