Y's Seven: Premium Edition

This just arrived in the post for me today. I usually never get special editions of games since they are just bundled with overpriced useless tat but in this case I feel it was worth it. I’ve heard people say that the PSP has become the Sega Saturn of this generation, a console that is effectively dead in the West but kept alive by hardcore gamers in Japan. It says a lot about a system when the excellent Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker can’t sell well on it. However it does mean that there have been a lot of excellent niche Japanese titles making their way on to the format, such as the Persona remake and the recently released Valkyria Chronicles 2.


Small publisher XSeed recently signed a deal with Falcom to publish in the US three games in the Y’s series (Ys Seven, Ys: The Oath in Felghana, and Ys I & II Chronicles) and three titles from the Legend of Heroes series. I hope this works out for XSeed but it does seem like financial suicide. Bringing out six very niche games to a system that is dead in the US is very brave but admirable since otherwise these games would never have received an English language translation. I thought splashing out on the Premium Edition in this case was worth it because, you know, every little helps and I hope it works out for them.

Anyway here’s what you get in the Premium Edition:

• Y’s Seven game
• Oversized cloth map of the world that Y’s is set in
• 60 page Y’s artbook
• And most important of all, Y’s Seven music selection.

The cloth map might be a bit useless but I’m very impressed by the size and the quality of it. A music CD is pretty much essential for any Falcom game because they are legendary for their excellent soundtracks. I’m also very impressed with the quality of the artbook which has art from all three of the Falcom games that XSeed are publishing including some great art from the eighties for Y’s I and II. It stinks of printing fumes so you can tell it’s really high quality. I haven’t played the game yet but I hear it’s a superb action RPG so that’s good to hear as well! Here are some samples of the art badly photographed by me.

That's about as risque as it gets you sick Moe fans!

So if you have any interest in owning one of the best RPGs of the year I suggest you import the Premium Edtion. It’s only a fiver more expensive than the standard edition and about the same price as what you would pay for a PSP game in the shops here.