It is the first major installment in the Ys series not to center on Adol Christin. The initial campaigns follow the trainee knight Yunica Tovah and the sorcerer Hugo Fact, while a third campaign starring Hugo's elder brother Toal is unlocked through play. The three routes use the same broad tower setting but differ in combat style, character relationships, events, and narrative revelations. Falcom and later retrospective coverage identify Toal's route as the version that leads directly into the continuity of Ys I and Ys II.[1]
Ys Origin uses a further refinement of the fast action framework developed for Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim and Ys: The Oath in Felghana. Unlike most entries, the adventure is concentrated within Darm Tower, combining real-time combat, platforming, environmental puzzles, character progression, and large boss encounters.[2][3]
Xseed Games released an English-language Windows edition internationally on May 31, 2012, adding true widescreen rendering and Steamworks features.[4]Dotemu subsequently adapted the game for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch between 2017 and 2020. The releases received generally favorable reviews, with critics commonly praising the combat, boss design, soundtrack, and distinct playable characters while noting repetition across the three campaigns and the age of its visual presentation.[5]
Gameplay
Structure and progression
Ys Origin is presented from an elevated perspective and is structured around the ascent of Darm Tower. The tower is divided into themed regions containing enemies, traps, platforming sequences, puzzles, locked paths, and boss arenas. Although most progression is upward, newly acquired items and abilities allow the player to open previously inaccessible passages and return to earlier floors through goddess statues that function as save and teleportation points.[3][6]
Enemies are fought in real time. Defeating them provides experience and SP, the latter of which can be spent at goddess statues on permanent blessings such as increased defense or resistance to environmental effects. Enemies and breakable objects can also release health restoratives and temporary bonuses to attack, defense, experience gain, or SP acquisition. Maintaining a chain of defeated enemies increases the effectiveness of these temporary bonuses.[6][7]
Each protagonist can jump, perform ground and aerial attacks, evade, and use three artifact-based skills. The skills consume a rechargeable magic gauge and serve both combat and exploration functions, including extending jumps, breaking obstacles, creating defensive effects, and activating mechanisms. Finding corresponding gems increases their strength and enables charged versions.[1][3]
A Boost gauge fills during combat. Activating Boost temporarily increases the character's offensive and defensive abilities; later progression adds Burst, a powerful area attack that can be performed while Boost is active.[1]
Playable characters
The original story mode initially offers Yunica Tovah and Hugo Fact. Yunica fights at close range, first with an axe and later with a greatsword. Her moves include rising and descending attacks, broad combinations, and skill variants designed around direct melee combat. Her play style most closely resembles the close-range action associated with Adol in the preceding games.[3]
Hugo attacks from a distance with a staff and two floating magical devices called the Eyes of Fact. They fire alongside him and allow him to damage enemies while maintaining distance. His versions of the artifact skills emphasize barriers, projectiles, traps, and other ranged effects.[3]
Completing the initial campaigns unlocks Toal Fact, initially identified as the Claw. His short-range claw attacks emphasize speed, mobility, and sustained combinations, and he can transform by releasing the demonic factor implanted within him. His route differs more substantially from the other two and supplies the principal resolution of the prequel's story.[1]
The characters traverse the same broad sequence of tower regions, but their movement, reach, skills, boss tactics, dialogue, and encounters differ. Some events that occur in one route are replaced or reinterpreted in another, presenting the story as three parallel versions rather than as three simultaneous journeys.[1][3]
Additional modes
The game includes Time Attack, which allows previously defeated bosses to be fought under fixed conditions. A post-release expansion program added Very Easy and Nightmare difficulty levels, Arena Mode, enhanced variants of the three protagonists, a bonus shop, additional costumes and encounters, and two versions of Adol based on Ys VI and The Oath in Felghana. Adol is playable only in Arena and Time Attack rather than in the story campaign.[8][1]
Plot
Setting
Seven centuries before the adventures of Adol Christin, the kingdom of Ys is governed by the twin goddesses Feena and Reah and the descendants of six priestly families. The Black Pearl, a sacred artifact associated with the goddesses, grants magic to the kingdom's people. They develop the silver metal Cleria, which amplifies that power, and Ys becomes prosperous.[1]
An army of demons then invades the kingdom. The goddesses and priests use the Black Pearl to raise Solomon Shrine and the surrounding population into the sky, while knights including Saul Tovah and Toal Fact remain below to hold back the attackers. The demons construct Darm Tower in an effort to reach the elevated sanctuary and continue sending winged creatures against it.[3]
Feena and Reah disappear from Solomon Shrine and return to the surface. The six priests organize a search party of knights and sorcerers, including Saul's daughter Yunica and Cain Fact's younger son Hugo. Demonic interference disrupts their teleportation, scattering the party near Darm Tower. The Roda Tree informs the survivors that the goddesses entered the tower, leading the search party to establish a base at its entrance and begin climbing.[1][3]
Scenarios
Yunica joins the mission despite lacking the magical ability expected of a descendant of the Tovah priestly family. She searches for the goddesses while confronting her insecurity, learning of her father's death, and developing as a knight. Her route emphasizes her relationships with Feena, the search party's knights, and the warrior Kishgal, who fought Saul during the defense of Ys.[1]
Hugo is a gifted but embittered sorcerer ordered by his father Cain to find and kill Toal, Hugo's elder brother. Toal had abandoned his position as a knight and joined the demons under the identity of the Claw. Hugo's route centers on his resentment of Toal, his isolation from the other members of the search party, and his developing relationship with the enemy warrior Epona. Dalles, leader of the demon faction in the tower, attempts to exploit Hugo by implanting him with a demonic factor.[1]
The third route reveals that Toal entered the demon faction to investigate and destroy the source of its power. The demonic factor allows him to survive among Dalles's followers, but he remains loyal to Feena and Reah. While moving between the demons and the search party, he helps Yunica, confronts Hugo, and learns that a member of the priestly leadership has betrayed Ys.[1]
After Toal defeats Dalles, Cain Fact appears and reveals himself as the traitor. Cain absorbs the source of the demons and fuses with the Black Pearl, becoming the demon ruler Darm. Feena gives Toal a silver sword empowered by the search party, allowing him to break Cain's defenses and destroy Darm's physical form.[1]
Feena and Reah seal the demonic power inside the Black Pearl and enter a long sleep. With his demonic factor removed, Toal leaves the silver sword beneath the Roda Tree as a weapon for the future, returns to the elevated kingdom, and succeeds his father among the six priests. The books and artifacts left by the priests, the sleeping goddesses, the Black Pearl, and the surviving power of Darm establish the conditions encountered in Ys I and Ys II 700 years later.[1]
The Yunica and Hugo campaigns provide alternate resolutions to portions of the conflict. They reveal character relationships and events not shown from Toal's perspective, but Falcom's retrospective chronology identifies Toal's campaign as the route that connects directly to the first two games.[1]
Development
Concept and series position
Falcom developed Ys Origin after Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim and Ys: The Oath in Felghana. The game continued the action system introduced in Ys VI and refined through The Oath in Felghana, adding character-specific skills, Boost and Burst, platforming interactions, and boss mechanics built around the different protagonists. Kondo later called it both the final game and the completed form of the action-combat style that began with Ys VI.[2]
The project departed from the series' normal framing by removing Adol and setting the story entirely within the age of the ancient kingdom. Kondo said that making an Ys game without Adol was a difficult decision because the association between the series and his adventures was deeply established for both Falcom and its audience. He characterized Origin as a spin-off that became possible when several production conditions aligned.[2]
Rather than sending the protagonist through a new country, Falcom concentrated the game inside Darm Tower, the climactic dungeon of Ys I. The tower is divided into regions with water, fire, desert, demonic, and illusion-based hazards, allowing a single location to support distinct visual and mechanical stages. Familiar enemies, artifacts, melodies, and locations were reinterpreted to connect the prequel with the first two games.[3]
Kondo said the original release was not a major commercial success, but that Falcom was proud of the result achieved under its limited conditions. He later expressed surprise that outside partners continued bringing the game to new platforms more than a decade after its Windows debut.[2]
Scenario and character design
The story was organized around multiple protagonists rather than a single route. Falcom initially promoted Yunica and Hugo as two characters with separate stories and contrasting melee and ranged combat, then revealed the Claw as a third protagonist before release.[9]
The routes were designed as parallel versions of the same crisis. They reuse Darm Tower's broad geography while altering enemy appearances, confrontations, dialogue, and the order in which information is disclosed. Contemporary Japanese coverage found that alternating between the initial routes emphasized how each perspective expanded the central mysteries.[3]
Yunica was designed as an accessible close-range character whose inability to use ordinary magic forms part of her story. Hugo's ranged attacks and Eyes of Fact produce a substantially different rhythm, while Toal's unlockable route combines rapid melee combat with a demonic transformation and provides the canonical narrative resolution.[1][3]
Music
The score was composed by Falcom Sound Team jdk members Hayato Sonoda, Takahiro Unisuga, and Ryo Takeshita. It combines original compositions with arrangements of music associated with the ancient kingdom, Darm Tower, Feena, Dalles, and other elements of Ys I and Ys II.[10]
The soundtrack uses orchestral, rock, electronic, choral, and ambient arrangements. Familiar themes such as "Tower of the Shadow of Death", "Feena", "Dreaming", "Over Drive", and "Termination" are reworked alongside new area, character, and boss compositions. RPGFan's soundtrack review noted that the older material was often rearranged in substantially different styles rather than reproduced directly.[10]
Falcom released the two-disc Ys Origin Original Soundtrack on March 29, 2007. It includes the game's music and the previously unreleased full version of its opening theme, "Genesis Beyond the Beginning".[11] Falcom followed it with Ys Origin Super Arrange Version on June 28, 2007.[9]
Release
Japanese Windows versions
Falcom released the original Japanese Windows version on December 21, 2006 for Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP. The first edition was distributed on DVD-ROM and included a 120-page color visual book.[9][1]
In March 2007, Falcom announced a feature expansion program for owners of the original edition. It added Very Easy and Nightmare difficulties, Arena Mode, a bonus shop, additional character variants and costumes, hidden encounters, and versions of Adol for Arena and Time Attack. Distribution of the program was initially tied to Falcom's email newsletter and a limited CD-ROM offer.[8]
A Windows Vista-compatible edition containing the expansion was released on March 29, 2007. Falcom later issued a Windows 7-compatible edition in December 2010 and a Windows 8 edition on March 22, 2013.[8][12]
Mobile adaptation
Taito adapted the three scenarios for Japanese i-mode mobile phones. Ys Origin: Yunica's Chapter was released on June 12, 2008 for compatible NTT Docomo handsets. It retained three-dimensional graphics and reformatted the game for a vertically oriented QVGA screen.[13]
Hugo's Chapter followed on August 7, 2008.[14]The Claw's Chapter, released on November 27, completed the mobile trilogy. Unlike the original Windows release, the mobile version allowed the third chapter to be purchased without completing the first two.[15]
Xseed Windows release
Xseed Games released an English-language Windows edition through Steam on May 31, 2012. It included the expanded Japanese content, a new English localization, configurable high-resolution graphics, true widescreen support, improved controller compatibility, Steam achievements, cloud saving, and leaderboards.[4][16]
DRM-free editions were released through GOG.com and the Humble Store on February 19, 2015.[17] Xseed added French, German, Italian, and Spanish localizations to its Steam and GOG releases in December 2023.[18]
Console versions
French publisher and developer Dotemu licensed Ys Origin for modern consoles. Dotemu chief executive Cyrille Imbert said the company selected it because the staff were familiar with Japanese role-playing games and regarded Origin as both a well-regarded and unusual installment that deserved a wider international audience.[2]
The PlayStation 4 version was released on February 21, 2017. It adapted the Windows release with revised interfaces and effects, trophies, online leaderboards, and French, German, Italian, and Spanish text in addition to Japanese and Xseed's English translation.[19] The PlayStation Vita version, originally planned alongside it, was released on May 30.[20]
An Xbox One version followed on April 11, 2018. It added a speedrun mode and an adjustable option controlling the amount of blood displayed.[21]
The Nintendo Switch version was released digitally on October 1, 2020.[22] Physical editions were produced in multiple regions. In Japan, 3goo published PlayStation 4 and Switch special editions containing a soundtrack set, a 72-page art book, and a poster.[2]
Ys Origin received "generally favorable" reviews on each platform with a published aggregate, according to Metacritic.[24][25][26][23] The aggregate scores increased across its later console releases, from 76 out of 100 for the international Windows edition to 82 for Nintendo Switch.
Critics commonly praised the speed and responsiveness of the combat. RPGFan highlighted its controls, boss balance, soundtrack, and constant forward motion, while Destructoid praised the mechanical distinction between the protagonists and the amount of play offered through multiple routes and difficulty settings.[7][27] Nintendo Life similarly found that simple movement and attacks remained engaging because the game continually introduced stronger enemies, hazards, secrets, and bosses.[6]
The boss encounters received particular attention. Reviewers described them as pattern-based tests of movement and positioning, often requiring the player to use a character's skills for both defense and access to vulnerable points. Some reviews noted that character levels have a pronounced effect on damage, making short periods of additional leveling an effective response to difficulty spikes.[3][6]
The three campaigns were praised for providing different combat styles and viewpoints. Game Watch found that altered character interactions and enemy appearances allowed the shared tower route to expand the central mysteries, while Push Square regarded the separate arcs as a source of replay value.[3][29] Critics nevertheless differed over whether the variations sufficiently offset revisiting the same environments. Nintendo Life noted that the second initial campaign changed relatively little outside the story and remixed elements, while several Switch reviews cited repetition within the tower as a limitation.[6][23]
The concentrated structure was also received in different ways. Some reviewers praised its brisk pacing and lack of lengthy diversions, regarding the tower regions as tightly designed action stages.[7][6] Others found the narrow focus tiring or monotonous over multiple campaigns. PC Gamer criticized occasional exploration frustrations, and Push Square considered the limited variety increasingly repetitive despite the fast combat and regular bosses.[28][29]
The visual presentation was commonly regarded as dated in later releases. RPGFan criticized the graphics while praising the music and controller support, and Nintendo Life described the environments as functional rather than technically impressive while noting stable performance on Switch.[7][6] Keyboard controls in the Windows edition also drew criticism from RPGFan, which strongly preferred a gamepad.[7]
The soundtrack was among the most consistently praised elements. RPGFan gave the sound category its highest component score and highlighted the mixture of fast combat music and rearranged series themes; Nintendo Life also identified the soundtrack as one of the Switch version's principal strengths.[7][6]
Legacy
Ys Origin occupies a distinct position in the series as its only major installment set entirely before Adol Christin's lifetime and the first to replace him with other central protagonists. It expanded the history of the twin goddesses, the six priestly families, the Black Pearl, Cleria, Darm Tower, and the demon Darm, converting background material from Ys I and Ys II into a complete prequel narrative.[1]
The game completed the sequence of internally developed action titles that began with Ys VI and continued through The Oath in Felghana. Kondo described its combat as the finished form of that design lineage and contrasted it with the party-oriented systems Falcom adopted beginning with Ys Seven.[2]
Its multiple-route structure allowed Falcom to preserve alternate character interpretations while identifying Toal's campaign as the principal historical account. That route explains the origin of the Book of Fact and silver sword, the goddesses' sleep, the sealing of the Black Pearl, and the circumstances behind the conflict encountered by Adol centuries later.[1]
The game's commercial life extended far beyond its initial Japanese Windows release. Kondo said it had not been a major commercial success in 2006, but repeated localization and porting allowed it to continue reaching new audiences. Dotemu cited its unusual position within the series and existing reputation as reasons for adapting it to successive consoles.[2]
The mobile adaptation, Xseed's international Windows release, and Dotemu's console editions preserved the game across several hardware generations. By 2020 it had moved from a Japan-only computer release to internationally distributed versions on Windows and all three major console families of that period.[4][2]
↑イース・オリジン オリジナルサウンドトラック[Ys Origin Original Soundtrack]. Nihon Falcom (in Japanese). March 29, 2007. Retrieved July 18, 2026.
↑会社沿革（2010年～2019年）[Company history, 2010–2019]. Nihon Falcom (in Japanese). Retrieved July 18, 2026.
↑タイトー、iモード「イース・オリジン ユニカ編」配信開始[Taito launches Ys Origin: Yunica's Chapter for i-mode]. Game Watch (in Japanese). Impress. June 12, 2008. Retrieved July 18, 2026.
↑イース王国の過去に迫る「イース・オリジン」に第2弾、「ユーゴ編」配信[Second Ys Origin mobile chapter, Hugo's Chapter, released]. ITmedia Mobile (in Japanese). August 7, 2008. Retrieved July 18, 2026.
↑iモード版「イース・オリジン 鉤爪の男編」3部作が遂に完結[The i-mode Ys Origin trilogy concludes with The Claw's Chapter]. 4Gamer.net (in Japanese). November 27, 2008. Retrieved July 18, 2026.
↑多数の追加要素＆多言語に対応！ PlayStation 4版『イース・オリジン』2017年2月21日発売決定[PlayStation 4 version of Ys Origin scheduled for February 21, 2017 with additional features and multilingual support]. Nihon Falcom (in Japanese). December 5, 2016. Retrieved July 18, 2026.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
