Ys: The Oath in Felghana

I found the story to be similar to Ys6 - not a huge improvement but a decent continuation.

Grinding out one more level made a huge difference in the damage taken.

I would even go so far as to say that it's on par with, if not harder than games renowned for their difficulty, like Dark Souls.

I was thoroughly impressed with the voice acting as I think this is the first Ys game where about 50% of the dialog is voiced.

Instead of the classic bump combat, you now have real-time hack-and-slash combat with jumping, double jumps, aerial attacks, three elemental bracelets that grant different magic abilities, charged attacks, and much more dynamic movement.

The graphics of the game are reasonably good for a sprite based game.