Vay

Never would I have thought that Vay, of all games, would be available on Steam. But here we are. Vay is my guilty pleasure retro game. Even back when it was released on Sega CD, it was a mediocre game. Yet somehow, I love it. Maybe it's Working Designs translation (which today is extremely dated) which the pre-teen me thought was hilarious, the robots in a fantasy setting, or there's a certain 'scene' in this game (people who have played this previously, you KNOW the one) that made the 13 year old me's jaw drop. It's just comfort food, yanno? But when I say dated, I really mean a buggy mess. Working Designs tweaked the difficulty in all the wrong directions that the gameplay was completely out of whack. Spell costs made spells so worthless you'd stock up on items, the combat rate was through the roof, and enemy, experience, and boss stats were so off that you'd grind for hours to gain a level, only to die on a boss with stats so high you'd die in a hit. In the mid 90's, you weren't a true RPG badass unless you could beat the Wind Elemental on your first try. Yet at the same time, people who played RPGs were like, "Why the hell are you playing Vay? Do you hate yourself that much?" This port fixes all of that. Want the challenge of the Working Designs version? You can pick that. Want a way more balanced game? Go normal! (This is how the MegaCD version from Japan played). Want to speed up the battles? Done! Want to speed up exp and gold acquisition? The world is your oyster. It makes Vay breezy, quick, and easily approachable. Musical tracks finally loop, and it plays perfectly on the Steam Deck. I also kinda dig the new sound effects and the transitions into battle. Vay never had that, ever. It's the little things. That being said, there is work for SoMoGa to do to make it better. Like many have said, this is a port of their iOS port from 2008 and it's looks like it's still from 2008 (thought the interface is closer to the SegaCD version, which is nice). In their 2008 iOS port they redid the character sprites and backgrounds in this horrible Kingdom Hearts style with big feet and out of proportion arms and legs. Go on, look it up. Look at Pottle's anorexic arms and legs but size 13 adult feet. Or Nina's hand that somehow twists into an unnatural angle. It was bad, y'all. BAD. They got rid of the character art and went back to the original 16 bit sprites, which is great! But they kept the cartoony backgrounds. It doesn't work. The backgrounds look fuzzy, the character sprites look BAD and out of place, and don't get me started on how compressed the cutscenes are. I did read that they're giving people the option to go back to the 16 bit background in a future update, but the compression and blurriness of the sprite and cutscenes is kinda inexcusable. As of this review, they also do not have steam state support (Why why why?) and you can't tell who can equip what armor and if it's an improvement on what your characters are wearing. Hopefully this will be updated soon. The rewriting of the script is very hit and miss. It is a closer translation to the original but I think SoMoGa was trying so hard to emulate Working Designs humor that many jokes just fall flat. Also, most of the jokes were not updated for 2024, so you're gonna chuckle (if you do) at jokes that were relevant in 2008. I really wish they toned back on the humor and just let the script speak for itself. Or at least updated the jokes. Despite these quibbles, this still is the way you should experience Vay if you never have before. It's so customizable and plays so nicely on my Steam Deck that my comfort food itch is scratched.

My favorite game console is the Sega CD, so Vay has a special place in my heart. There were CD-ROM based consoles that predated it, but Sega had so much market share that more companies jumped at the opportunity to produce and localize games with awesome FMV and redbook audio in the west. Vay is essential playing for anyone with a passing interest in JRPGs shift from game cartridges to CD-ROM technology. It's firmly rooted in the traditions of the former and stumbles figuring out how to implement the latter with spontaneous, short cutscenes. The first time I played Vay it was an absolute grind, with insane encounter rates that made gathering your bearings incredibly difficult. The final dungeon required me to grind my characters SEVENTEEN levels, which took days. I had a lot of time to do this when I finished college, willfully unemployed while I waited to get my teaching certificate, but now I couldn't really manage that. The game is actually the weakest in the Sega CD library after Dark Wizard, Lunar, and Shining Force CD, but it still has that early CD-ROMantic quality that makes me feel like a kid again. With all the quality of life improvements, I managed to skid through the game in 7 hours! Who cares if a fully fledged RPG isn't great when you can finish it in a few evenings? I used exp and gold multipliers and only turned off random encounters during one super long series of backtracking quests. Some people are complaining that this isn't the Working Designs port, but Vay was their weakest localization anyway. This is essentially the same experience with a lot of cool features, making it THE definitive version. A must for people interested in this interstitial time when CD-ROM tech was rapidly becoming mainstream, bad for anyone who dislikes old school grinding.

Vay is not a classic RPG. It's an average game, an okay game. But I had a Sega CD when I was a kid and I played this title a lot. This port adds some great features to make this grind heavy JRPG a lot /less/ of a grind fest. You've got experience and gold modifiers, faster running speeds, and the ability to turn off enemy encounters. These features make an unforgiving old RPG a lot more enjoyable. But this is not a good port. This version is based off of an old mobile port and you can tell. Blowing up the game to full screen immediately introduces blurriness and artifacting to the graphics. There is a toggle to turn off dithering to get rid of the blurriness, making the pixels of the sprites pop. But this only affects the graphics on the world map. Battle sprites are still very blurry. But the biggest offender are the cutscenes. These are so blurry and so bogged down with artifacting that they are almost unwatchable. Also if you are expecting a nice new translation, you will be disappointed. The terrible pop culture reference filled Working Designs localization has been replaced by the terrible pop culture reference filled Somoga localization. You have references to Aliens, Princess Bride, and most astonishingly there is a sequence where a character tries to placate a monster with NSync lyrics. Also, achievements are busted. Not for everyone, but for some people. This should be an easy thumbs down, but... I am giving it a thumbs up. Yes, it's not a great game. Yes, the port is not great. Yes, the translation is horrible. But... It is a port of an old RPG that is impossible to play anywhere else. Somoga have taken something inaccessible and made it accessible. And it looks like they will be providing updates. So I have to give them praise. Vay might not be the port I would like it to be, but maybe Somoga have it in them to give it the facelift needed to make it a great one.

I ordered this game because I had originally played it on the Sega CD over 30 years ago. Unfortunately, I opted for a refund because this version is not the Working Designs version like I hoped it would be (In hindsight, I should have researched it more before buying it in the first place...lesson learned). The music and game play are virtually the same; however, the cinematic audio has been completely redone and it's horrible. I'm a purist; so, these types of changes are bothersome to me. As enjoyable as the original version was, I don't think this game was influential enough in its heyday to warrant a re-release especially if the original folks couldn't be involved.

A very simple 90s jrpg. Completion took around 10 hours. The last dungeon is absolutely terrible and was the longest one. The game does have random difficulty spikes throughout. This version does offer cheats and will make it substantially easier. For the price it is definitely worth a look, but I would live to have lunar.

It was hard to get a hand on the original game back than (in Germany). And I can only remember that I played the game...but not good or bad parts of it....that means back than it was an game without anything special....only noteworthy because of the lack of JRPG for the Mega. Now this game....My guess is that no one would complain if they had improved the game. Especially the low-res graphics. And I can't think that the game was that easy to play (usually you needed to gain 4 - 5 levels before even thinking about going into the first dungeon). Maybe this is a game for those playing an JRPG for the first time...no, if they would do they would never play an JRPG again. Left only nostalgic players....but even they (my guess as one of them) would be dissapointed.

I wasn't sure what to expect going into this. The Sega Genesis was one of the only consoles I never had growing up. So I wasn't sure if the positive reception to this remaster was nostalgia fuelled. It wasn't. This is a fun li'l game (with admittedly silly voice acting - I've been told the original was much better on that front). It's your typical linear fare of olde, with "you're the only one who can save the world go get all these things that were scattered across the land" type plot. But the added quality-of-life features, such as rapidly increasing the rate (4x!) you get experience and gold, to turning off random battles entirely, make this an excellent jaunt for a busy girl like me. Pleasantly surprised by this one.

I love the original with all my heart, but I still can't decide if this is worse than that god-awful mobile version that came out like 15 years ago or not. The visuals are distorted and seem compressed, the colors are off, the audio is awful and out of sync, and the voices are terrible. I did at least find out you can turn off that awful dithering. You'll definitely want to play on hard mode to get a taste of how it was in the original version. Speaking of which, just download a Sega CD emulator and play the original version the way God intended. EDIT: Pretty sure "hard mode" only increases the encounter rate and doesn't change the balance to be more like the original. Shame.

A gem from the 16-bit era, Vay was originally released for the Sega CD by Working Designs and was featured in full-page magazine ads at the time. This version of Vay is a major improvement over SoMoGa's previous iOS port,. You can make this game as retro or as modern as you like in regards to appearance and gameplay, especially if you want to relive the experience of playing this on Sega CD. The story and gameplay engine in themselves are pretty basic, but are well done. The playable characters are charming. The soundtrack, while not especially remarkable, is still entertaining enough and captures the sound of mid-90s Redbook audio. Vay will scratch the itch of anybody who is looking for classic RPGs, and this port's QOL improvements smooth over the rough aspects of that time fairly well.

Oi Vay !!!