Ys Wiki

Welcome to Ys Wiki

Warning: Some of the pages on this Wiki may contain SPOILERS. Please be discrete when navigating this wiki.

READ MORE

Ys Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Maia-128 Maia: "This is just another dream of mine..."
This story sits outside of the timeline.
The content of this article is not canon to the timeline of the Ys world.

"A game destined to become the real-time strategy benchmark title on Nintendo DS" ~ Ys Strategy Tagline

Ys Strategy (イース ストラテジ?) is a real-time strategy game developed by Future Creates exclusive to the Nintendo DS. It was published by Marvelous Interactive (now absorbed into its parent company, Marvelous Entertainment) in Japan and Rising Star Games in Europe.

Plot[]

The story focuses on a young, red haired swordsman named Abel Renford, who allies himself with the Esteria kingdom. Joining forces with Princess Rione, it’s up to your army to defend the neighboring lands from the invading Romun Empire.

Gameplay[]

For the most part, the game is exactly like Warcraft. You command peasants to harvest three resources (food, wood, and Cleria), build up your town, start producing soldiers, and then eventually move in to attack. There’s a reasonable amount of depth, including three primary foot soldiers (swordsmen, archers and spearmen), magicians, monsters and hero characters, as well as the ability to upgrade structures and abilities. The bottom screen is where the action takes place, and the entire game is controlled with the stylus. The upper screen shows a map and various unit information. There are multiplayer options for up to four players, although each person needs their own copy of the game, and there isn’t much in the way of customization options.

The game is pretty sluggish. Peasants shuffle about their chores. Soldiers meander across the battlefield. the only way to move the viewpoint efficiently is by clicking L to bring the map to the lower screen, touching the destination, then switching back to command the characters. The action grows even choppier when lots of characters are on the screen. Additionally, trying to give out orders in the chaos of battle is unpleasant, as it’s extremely difficult to pick out individual units. There’s also an option to manually take control of hero characters and move them around with the d-pad, but it’s terribly clunky. On the other hand, directly controlling a hero results in a major strengths and speed boost, which completely breaks the difficulty balance. The storyline unfolds with long unskippable cutscenes.

Music[]

The music is closer to Fire Emblem than traditional Ys, and relies mostly on the same few orchestral and electric guitar samples for practically all of the songs. An official soundtrack CD was available as a pre-order bonus[1].

Gallery[]

References[]


Advertisement