Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga Review – Ambitious Arena Brawler for the Faithful

Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga Review

Ys vs. Trails in the Sky was a PSP exclusive from 2010 that didn’t leave Japan until 2025. It’s a 3D arena fighting game crossover between the Ys and Trails in the Sky series. There are sixteen characters in total, all from Ys Seven and Trails in the Sky. This crossover fighter doesn’t cover either series beyond those two games. Since the original game’s release, both of those series have grown in popularity in North America, so Nihon Falcom has ported the original game to modern consoles as Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga.

Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga has a fairly robust Story Mode. The plot is about a land called Xanadu that’s being terrorized by a Dragon King named Galsis. It’s summoning warriors from the Ys and Trails in the Sky universes to do its bidding. Story Mode has five different paths from the POVs of Adol, Estella, Geis, Cloe, and Tita. As the player’s chosen hero travels through Xanadu, they battle the other brainwashed characters. When they’re defeated, they come to their senses, and search for other characters to free, with the goal of overthrowing Galsis. It’s a pretty weak narrative, but I applaud Nihom Falcom for coming up with some kind of reason for this crossover. The story justifies the game’s structure, but is definitely not Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga’s main draw or strength.

Ys Combat

Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga’s combat system is taken straight from the Ys series. The camera is zoomed out, and characters free roam the 3D arena stages. Face buttons attack, jump, dash, and guard. The player can hold the attack button for a charge attack. Midair attacks change depending on whether the character is ascending or descending. Characters won’t take damage while guarding, and guarding right as an attack is about to land repels the opponent and grants temporary critical hits. Each character has a stamina gauge that depletes when dashing and guarding. If the stamina gauge runs out, the player gets temporarily stunned.

    

Holding R2, then pressing a face button, uses an equipped skill. Skills are mostly special attacks that consume SP. SP is refilled by landing normal attacks or taking damage. There’s a diamond shaped “Extra Gauge” behind each character portrait. When filled, the player can activate a powerful “Extra Skill” by pressing L1. Once per battle, the player can hold L1 and press R1 to summon a support character to fight alongside them for a limited time. Pressing two face buttons at the same time uses 20% of a character’s remaining HP to perform a knockback burst attack.

Status Ailments

Like in JRPGs, characters can get status ailments. There are ten status ailments in total, including poison, burn, freeze, petrify, confusion, heavy, paralysis, blind, rage, and DEF down. They all have the expected effects and debuffs, and disappear over time. The stages have breakable objects like chests, pots, and statues. Broken objects drop items that refill the gauges for HP, SP, stamina, and Extra. They also might drop a Roda Leaf, which removes status ailments.

Characters gain experience points from battle, and level-up, which results in stat increases. Experience points are also gained in Arcade Mode and Free mode. Players also gain Mona points, which can be spent in Mona’s Shop. Mona’s Shop has skills, weapons, and collectables for sale. The player can also level up skills and equipment by spending Mona points. The shop levels-up as points are spent, which opens-up more unlockables. After each battle, in Story Mode, the player is sent to a world map. The world map lets the player choose between taking on their next opponent, or replaying an already defeated one. The player has a few options between battles too. They can customize their chosen character’s skills and equipment, shop, save, go to options, and check tutorial instructions.

Not a Deep Fighting Game

The combat is excellent in the Ys action JRPGs. For a fighting game though, there’s not a lot of depth. Because of the JRPG elements, Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga has tons of content. I love the idea of integration of experience points, equipment, status effects, etc. in a fighting game. But the mechanics are not complex at all by modern fighting game standards. Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga is fanservice to Ys and Trails fans, but really only provides a gameplay experience for the Ys fans who absolutely love the combat. The whole game feels like a multiplayer mode that could’ve been easily tacked onto Ys Seven.

Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga has lots of modes and options in addition to the main Story Mode. There’s an Arcade Mode, where the player can just battle through a gauntlet of consecutive battles. Network Mode lets 2-4 players battle online. Free Mode is like a versus mode for 1-4 players. All the Free Mode battles involve 4 characters, which can be set to 2-4 different teams. There’s a main menu customize section where characters can be pre-equipped with their equipment, skills, and support characters gained from Story Mode. Mona’s Shop can be accessed for all unlocked characters.

Lots of Options

There’s a Collection section where players can view the wallpapers and game openings they’ve unlocked, as well as listen to unlocked music. Finally, there’s a system menu with game options, tutorial cards, gameplay records, file save, file load, and file delete options. The options menu lets players adjust autosave, camera, text speed, etc. There are five difficulty options. I found Normal to be a perfect challenge for me. Players can adjust network frame delay. There are English and Japanese voice options, and volume settings.

Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga’s story is told through static character portraits over static backgrounds. It has a strong visual novel feel. It’s obviously a budget presentation, but the art looks great. The English voice acting is pretty bad. I like a lot of the voice acting in the Ys series, but the performances in Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga are all stiff and obviously sound like line reading. The music is truly phenomenal though. The Ys series has some of the best video game score of all time, and I’ve recently discovered the Trails in the Sky music is quite good too. There’s tons of it, and the sound test section of the collection menu is deep. Fans of 80s/ 90s Sega arcade game, and traditional JRPG score are in for a treat.

In Conclusion

Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga has a lot of content, but it’s still not a very deep game. It’s made for fans of the Ys and Trails series. Its release is timed well to coincide with the release of Trails in the Sky: 1^st Chapter. But Ys Seven is trapped on the PSP, and the only modern access is as a crappy PC port. It’s amazing that Nihon Falcom has released Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga for their fans. But longtime Trails and Ys fans will find a lot of their favorite characters missing. Hopefully Nihon Falcom will make a proper Ys Seven modern console port soon.

***PS5 code provided by the publisher***