finished off ys 1 on the switch eggconsole release a little bit ago. kind of shocked how many things i forgot since january, but it's not that weird, my ability to read japanese (especially without kanji) is not that great so i was kinda janking around with my own memories and some advice from a friend (who wasn't much available for a lot of the past month, hence why it took so long...haha). i do remember that after playing chronicles i liked 1 more than 2, but i liked this version quite a bit more than the remake, so i'm pretty optimistic going into 2. and it's not because of the fm, because i played with that soundtrack before as well.
in a way, i think that kind of remake almost makes the game seem more dated than it is. there's a kind of context that builds as you play a game as it was originally presented (more or less)...you become used to the game's ideas, and the limitations the creators ran up against. ys uses the "bump" concept from xanadu and hydlide but instead of, like, "attack from behind if you can" or hard trading hits, you want to hit them halfway-aligned. in the remake you can just ram them diagonally and as soon as you make contact you'll kind of grind them into a wall till they die, which sounds similar but is basically way more powerful, haha. it actually feels like there's a lot of finesse once you start encountering enemies which are tougher, more aggressive, and move at basically the same speed as adol. (it's also weird because in more modern games enemies are usually a bit slower, or maybe faster if they're "supposed" to catch up to you)
the thing is, given the chunkiness of the movement, scrolling, controls in the original version, this all makes perfect sense to me. it's chronicles where it seems weird because the game is so quick and responsive but then just basically everything is equally vulnerable to getting scraped down the hallway like a side-by-side car chase scene in a movie. and similarly, the rare full-screen illustrations and the like (i.e. the intro to ys 2, slow as it is) are really impressive, wow moments on a pc-88 because it's clear they can't just whip them out constantly...but on chronicles they feel more like the kinds of illustrations and anime scenes you've probably seen dozens of times if you played enough sega cd or playstation 1 and 2 rpgs. it might seem trite to talk about limitations as a key piece of creating art, but it seems easily forgotten in a world of digital downloads and giant AAA budgets...
there's definitely a few downsides to the original, though. for one thing, chronicles has single button inputs that quickly swap through your rings (and the load time for the menu that does this on pc88 is also fairly slow considering). i feel like this is going to be even more noticeable in 2, since the spells work similarly...also, as impressive as the head boss is at the end of ys 1, the amount of moving shit on screen is really rough; it's hard to convince the game you walked into a hit at the right time. in the end, with all of the best equipment, it's not unreasonably hard or anything, but it's clumsy enough that i laughed incredulously a few times. last battle was really fun though.
i do want to play ys 2 on stream soon too, as i suspect i'll similarly enjoy it more than the first time. but i'm also wanting to get back into RE stuff, and king's field, and D4E also put up legacy of the wizard/dragon slayer 4 which i'm incredibly excited about because xanadu was so cool, and i've been poking more arcade archives while i'm in an 80s games mood...i really just wish i had more time for this stuff, haha
forgot to mention my favorite effect in the whole game is when you put on the mask of eyes, the background goes to monochrome and all the monsters become invisible, so you can only see adol on screen in color next to all of it. it's really cool and a little trippy