Outside of a questionably designed final boss fight this is probably the best Ys game I've played thus far. The changes to the gameplay coming from Ark of Napishtim make it a much faster game that encourages quick movement between groups of enemies and keeping up multipliers of various stats and the new magic system is a big upgrade. Rather than slowly building it up over time it's a regenerating meter and all of the magic abilities now have some utility for exploration and/or movement. To match that this game also has in some areas a sort of pseudo-metroidvania style of level design that makes backtracking through areas not nearly as tedious as it has been in previous entries.

Oath of Peak.

If you like Ys because of hero fights monster and save girl and defeats dark lord in big explosion while hero metal plays w/gigachad adolface in the wake then this is more of that.

ADOL