Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter

Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished - The Final Chapter (イースII) is an action role-playing game developed and published by the Nihon Falcom Corporation, and first released in June 24, 1988 for the NEC PC-8801. It is the sequel to Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished, and takes place immediately following the end of the first game.

Like its predecessor, Ys II was ported to various other platforms following its first release, such as the NEC PC-9801, X1turbo, FM-77AV, MSX 2, and Famicom. It was also ported to the TurboGrafx-16 by Hudson Soft as part of Ys I & II; for many years this was the only version of Ys II that received an official English release.

Years later, it was remade for Microsoft Windows-based PCs as Ys II Eternal, and later as Ys II Complete. Versions of the game have also been developed for mobile phone platforms.

Ys II was most recently remade for the Nintendo DS. An English translation of this version was released by Atlus in North America, along with the DS version of Ys I on a single card, as Legacy of Ys: Books I & II in 2009. The Japanese version had been released as a single game when it came out in 2008.

Plot
Ys II picks up immediately where Ys I left off. Adol Christin is transported to the floating island of Ys, where he meets a young girl named Lilia. She takes Adol to her home, Lance Village. It is here that he will begin his quest to unravel the secrets of Ys, and finally rid it and Esteria of evil.

Gameplay
The player controls Adol as he battles his way across the land of Ys. As in the first game, Adol's strength is measured in a typical RPG fashion: He has numerical statistics such as HP, Attack Power, and Defense Power that determine his strength. These stats are increased by raising his experience level through battling.

Also returning from the first game is the combat system. The player attacks enemies by running into them, and the enemy takes damage according to Adol's Attack Power. A new addition to Ys II is the Magic system: Adol can acquire several different spells he can use throughout the course of play, such as a Fire spell for attack, and a Time spell which can stop enemies as long as it is active. The use of magic consumes Adol's MP stat.

Music
The soundtrack to Ys II was composed by Yuzo Koshiro, Mieko Ishikawa, and Hideya Nagata.

Several music CDs dedicated to the music of Ys II have been released by Falcom. They include:
 * Music from Ys II (1988): Contains the soundtrack to the original PC-8801 edition of Ys II, along with four Ys II tracks arranged by Hiroyuki Namba and one vocal track.
 * Perfect Collection Ys II (1990): A two-CD set, the first of which is a complete arrangement of the Ys II soundtrack by Ryo Yonemitsu. The second disc contains assorted arrangements from Ys I, II and III.
 * Music from Ys II Renewal (1995): The entire Ys II soundtrack, reproduced on more advanced synthesizer equipment.
 * Ys & Ys II Eternal Original Sound Track (2001): This two-CD set contains the soundtrack to the Windows-PC remakes of Ys I and II.

Reception
The game was reviewed in 1991 in Dragon #172 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.