But you're still hungry.

Just finished. This picks up some unspecified time after Ys II. Adol and Dogi have been adventuring together and return to Dogi's hometown, where strange things are happening, and it's up to Adol to resolve them.

Unlike Ys I & II, Ys III is a side-scrolling platformer. No more bump combat, either: you have to actually stab people. Like Ys I & II, the way stats work means that you have the worst time at the beginning and at the end (because you hit the level cap so the monsters are actually balanced for someone with maxed stats). I spent the first chunk of the game figuring out movement and trying not to die from getting touched by flies in the mines. With some grinding, the middle part is trivial: you can one- or two-shot bosses with the power ring. Then you fight the last two (I guess three?, but two of them are the same) bosses and they're actually meant to take like 100 hits at max level, which is not a fun time. Lots of save states were used. Also, the game's hitboxes are fairly precise (I guess that's putting it diplomatically) – if your sword isn't touching the enemy, no damage. So standing on top of someone isn't going to do anything except damage Adol if e.g. they're at your feet, because you can't stab downwards. You also have to be somewhat good with the timing of your stabs for the same reason – if you swing too early, you'll hit air, your enemy will walk into you, and that's that. Although I thought the combat and movement were awkward, once I got used to the controls I was fairly happy. I did spend a lot of time crawling on the floor on stabbing to the left/right; besides flying enemies, this is hands down the safest way to beat most enemies while taking minimal damage. The worst part was the jumps. Sometimes I couldn't jump anymore because I was on “stairs” and it took me SO MANY TRIES to make it through the bell tower because I kept mistiming the jump and just falling. Boo.

The level design and story were straightforward: you go to town, they tell you to go to X place, you “fast travel” there on the world map, and every few bosses you trigger an event that brings you back to town. There were only a few forks and most forks resolved very quickly. You could always backtrack, except when you fall into the lava pit, and leaving a dungeon regenerates your health quickly, which makes it easy to farm. I didn't really make use of rings except in boss fights because the ring power drained so quickly. I also only used the power ring (except this one time I emergency healed), so frankly I have no idea what the point of the other rings where. I can see how people complained about how short the game was and how uneven the difficulty was. Really nothing like making a boss that's suddenly 300x harder than any other content and expecting players to be OK with it.

I'm not sure how I felt about Chester being like “I was helping the king summon this demon because I wanted it to blow up in his face” but he does save you in the end so I guess it's OK. Also, there is a girl who has a crush on Adol whom he saves, and at the end he leaves her behind to go on more adventures. Sigh. Music was good! I didn't get bored and I liked the music changes in different environments.

Meme: there are random typos in the localization. Most hilariously, herbs are called “harbs” in the shop and when you pick the “harb” from the lava mountain place, but they're “herbs” in the item screen. “You've got harb.”

Confession: I modded the ROM to make the last boss do 1 damage on his attacks because I had no idea how to hit him without taking damage in his last form. I will never figure out how to actually do it and that is fine.