At the end of December, 1995, Falcom released Ys V for the Super Famicom, choosing to take a gamble and radically alter the gameplay formula of the series to mixed reviews. The game is now much more in the vein of Zelda, though it's not nearly so involved as those games. New to the series is the ability to jump and manually swing your sword/hold up your shield, as well as a rather interesting magic system, based around the notion of alchemy. Different spells are created by combining three elements of varying types, for a decent amount of variety. The game received a bit of a lashing in the press for how easy it was, and an update, Ys V Expert, was released only three months later. This update primarily raised the difficulty and added a time attack mode.
The game spent many years as the sole entry in the Ys series never to have been seen in English, in any form, and for good reason; the process of hacking this game has been a nightmare and has been plagued with dozens upon dozens of crashes. Said crashes were crippling to my motivation to work on the game, but the translation is now complete. Enjoy!
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