Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta review

It feels like just yesterday I covered the Ys X: Proud Nordics on Switch 2, and now we've got the next game chronologically in Adol's adventures on the same platform: Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta. This is an enhanced rerelease of a game that released on PlayStation 4 back in 2020, which itself was a remaster of a PlayStation Vita title from 2012, which itself was a remake of two different games from 1993, both of which were called Ys IV. One of those titles, Mask of the Sun, was also remade for the PlayStation 2 in 2005, but even that's getting a bit too in the weeds for me so we'll stop the history lesson here. The Vita remake is the now-canon version of Ys IV, and Revelations in Celceta is the most feature complete version of that game.

Revelations takes place about a year after Ys X, and finds Adol in the country of Celceta, exploring a mysterious forest. On his adventure, however, he somehow loses all of his memories, and finds himself back in a town just outside the woods. Here, he is reacquainted with a friend and information dealer known as Duren, and the pair are tasked with mapping the forest for the Romuns. The key to restoring Adol's memories and finding out what happened to him lies somewhere within the forest, so the pair might as well make boatloads of cash as they explore.

For the first few hours, Revelations' plot doesn't really get more complicated than this. You're simply exploring for exploration's sake, forging your own path, and I found that pretty refreshing. You, of course, come across some settlements within the forest, both of which lead you on to the grander story at work here, but I enjoyed these simple opening hours greatly. Revelation's plot isn't exactly bad, but once you find out why Adol lost his memories and what he was doing before the game started, it loses a lot of steam in its transition to grander stakes. It all just feels very anticlimactic, without spoiling anything.

Gameplay is what you would expect from the majority of Ys games. You have a party of up to three characters, each of which have one of three attack types: slashing, piercing, and blunt. Some enemies will be weak to one of these damage types and resistant to others, so it's important to keep a balanced party. As you get further into the game, however, these damage types start to matter less and less, since any character can sufficiently damage any enemy enough to take them out quickly and some foes just don't have any weaknesses/resistances. I don't find it that much of an issue though, as characters still have unique stills, both in and out of combat, that set them apart. For example, Duren has powerful punches and kicks and can also pick open otherwise inaccessible chests. You can swap party members in and out at will, so pick whoever you like and then swap others in as needed.

Picking three members for your main combat team is probably the best strategy here with Revelations' unique upgrade system. As with most Action RPGs, finding or buying new weapons and armor is the best way to increase your stats, but in between big upgrades you can upgrade your gear with materials you find and refine throughout the world. You can increase a weapon's attack stat or a piece of armor's defense, but more useful is using materials that allow you to inflict status effects with normal attacks or resist those same effects. Let's be honest, in most games, status effects are pretty useless. But here, give Adol a sword that applies poison, burn, paralysis, and steals HP on top of that all with one swing and you'll quickly see just how useful they are here. Of course, bosses will still resist all of them, but you can easily mow down hoards of normal foes with these effects. It's a system that's very expensive to engage with, even late into the game, but very much worth the investment.

That's pretty much all Revelations in Celceta has going on. Like the story's opening hours, it's simple but fun. Also like the story, however, by the end I was ready for it to be over; it's just a little too long to really sustain itself. If you've played a previous version of this remake, Memories in Celceta, there's nothing new here to double dip into—just another soundtrack option. It's nice to have the game on Switch, though, and looks great on Switch 2 using Boost Mode in the system settings. It's still a Vita game, but I found myself really appreciating the more simplistic visuals here in the middle of the stagnating graphical arms race. There is a lack of anti-aliasing, but that's really the only visual blemish here.