Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana is a remake of the third game in the series, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. It follows the franchise's titular red-haired, boat-wrecking protagonist, Adol Christin. He quickly finds himself embroiled in a world-risking adventure when he visits his friend Dogi's hometown just in time to find that something dangerous has been found in the local mine. In true Adol fashion, he is front and center into the world-changing events of the small village, setting up yet another chapter in the lengthy story of his adventures.

Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana's plot is fine but unexceptional. It's a fairly cookie-cutter story and not told with any huge twists or surprises. It makes sense, as it's functionally an enhanced remake of a game originally released in 1989. Similar to something like Dragon Quest III, it's aimed at sticking to the nostalgia of that era rather than remake it from scratch. There are some fun character moments and interactions, but Oath is really a game where the plot justifies the gameplay, rather than vice versa.

The combat in Ys Memoire is a by-the-number experience. Adol can move around and attack like an old-school Zelda protagonist, but he's far faster than any version of Link. Hitting the attack button does a combo, and you can modify that combo by moving or jumping, which causes special context-sensitive attacks, depending on when you attack during it. This lets you hit flying enemies easier or do a ground pound that can stun enemies, so you can combo them before they wake up.

Combat is modified slightly by the addition of magic bracers that give Adol the ability to cast elemental spells. The Ignis Bracelet lets him shoot fireballs, the Ventus one allows him to surround himself with gusts of air to damage enemies and cross huge gaps, and the Terra Bracelet lets him reduce the damage he takes and bust through walls. Magic replenishes quickly, so you're free to mix it into your standard attacks. Each spell is powerful in its own way, and I was hard-pressed to say one is better, but the wind spell tended to be the one I enjoyed the most.

Adol can further amplify his powers with the Boost system. By fighting enemies, Adol can build up his Boost gauge. When it's full, he can activate it to temporarily gain a huge boost to speed and damage, which is ideal for wrecking rooms full of difficult enemies or exploiting a boss's weak moments. Added in previous versions of the game and retained in Memoire is the ability to Double Boost, which requires a longer charge but further enhances the boosted abilities.

That's about all there is to combat. Adol isn't a particularly complex character to control, and instead, the focus of the game is on speed. The game heavily encourages Adol to clear enemies as quickly as possible, rewarding nonstop attack chains with gradually stacking bonuses that go higher as long as Adol is fighting. Speed is a two-way street, as regular enemies and bosses are extremely aggressive and attack nonstop, forcing you to balance being aggressive with backing off to optimally fight your way through enemy forces.

Oath's combat system is a lot of fun, but it leans heavily on simplistic and occasionally button-mashy combat. The core combat mechanics are fun, but they tend to take a second place to proper dodging and evading of enemy attacks. You have to be in the mood for something very straightforward to get into it, which might be tough if you're a fan of the newer titles like Ys X: Nordics.

That is arguably Oath's biggest potential weakness: It's very simple and straightforward. You can run through the entire thing in about 10-12 hours including side-quests, and it's pretty much all gameplay with only the occasional pause for plot. The gameplay has to grab you hard for you to get anything out of Oath, and the relatively basic gameplay means that it may not be for everyone. Even people who consider themselves to be Ys fans may not be up for the somewhat-dated gameplay.

The other potential flaw is that Oath can be extremely punishing. Unlike a lot of action-RPGs, it doesn't offer much in the way of in-battle healing or the ability to tank through enemy attacks. Even the very first boss can wreck your day in a few hits if you let him, and the game's difficulty goes up from there. There are multiple difficulty modes, so if you're looking for something less punishing, you can go down to a lower level, but Ys is clearly designed with the idea that someone will play through its relatively short plot multiple times to achieve mastery of all difficulties.

As far as a remaster of the game goes, Ys Memoire isn't the most impressive on the market. There's a new set of alternate character portraits for the cast, which is a nice feature but nothing mind-blowing, and I preferred the older look, which felt more distinctive. The option to use multiple versions of the  excellent soundtrack is fantastic, but likewise kind of niche as a feature. Probably the biggest new feature is the Turbo button, which allows you to speed up the game at the touch of a button. This feature is present in most Falcom titles nowadays, but it does hold some extra value for Ys games, where the ability to speed things up is a nice way to improve the game's difficulty without having to go to the higher difficulty modes. I enjoyed playing a 2X speed as a challenge more than I did increasing enemy health and damage numbers. Even if you don't want the extra challenge, it's a nice way to speed through empty areas.

Ys Memoire isn't an impressive-looking game. The character sprites are cute, simple and stubby little things that only have a small amount of animation outside of the big, impressive bosses. The background environments are nice enough but basic, and the remastering hasn't done a ton to change that. The soundtrack does a lot of the heavy lifting, with multiple versions of some of the franchise's best songs. Combat in Oath wouldn't be half as fun if the music weren't going so incredibly hard. The voice acting is a mixed bag. The actors do their best, and there are some good performances, but the by-the-numbers story doesn't give them a lot to work with.

Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana is a solid but unexceptional remaster of a fun but dated game. I still love Oath, and it remains one of my favorite Ys games, but you need to feel some nostalgia for the days of simple, button-mashing RPG action to get a lot out of it. If you're curious about the older Ys games, this is absolutely at the top of the list, but it might fall short compared to some of the more recent games. Ys is still Ys, and Oath is a great example of how being simple can still be fun.

Score: 8.0/10