Looking back three years ago, the high quality of Ys VIII : Lacrimosa of Dana made it and Persona P5 the two heroes of the Japanese RPG revival. The unanimous praise from new and old players has brought new vitality to this classic that has been alive for more than 30 years.

After achieving initial success, the Ys series did not stop there, but actively made more innovations. Therefore, after three years of dormancy, Ys IX : Monstrum Nox has brought surprising upgrades in all aspects. Although the game still has some minor flaws due to the limited human resources and investment within Falcom, it is enough to show Falcom ‘s determination to continue to explore the potential of this classic.

( PS : Due to the need for review, the following text contains some spoilers, readers can watch it at their discretion)

Walking on the walls in a Japanese-style garden

One of the innovative breakthroughs of “Ys IX ” is to design a scene exploration capability that is different from the past around the theme of “monsters”.

From the beginning of the game, players are given double jumps and actions similar to grappling hooks. As the plot progresses, players can further acquire various weird abilities such as wall climbing, gliding, and drilling. Through these unique abilities, players can freely climb up the walls and towers like in “Assassin’s Creed” and walk through the buildings in the scene. With the addition of the vertical coordinate, the explorable space in the game has naturally increased exponentially. The small Japanese-style garden in the past finally has space to expand upward and downward.

Based on this basic premise, Ys IX carefully constructs scenes and mazes that are used in conjunction with these abilities. This game changes the previous logic of focusing on the wild and mazes and neglecting the city strongholds, and instead fixes the main scene of the story in the prison city of Baldok. This giant city is divided into several areas with different functions. The scene construction in and between areas is not flat, but with a lot of height differences and obstacles. In the main branch, players must frequently cross various areas. If they use the monster’s ability to climb over the wall to travel, they can get twice the result with half the effort.

At the same time, similar to the current 3A sandbox approach, Baldok’s platform buildings are scattered with various collectibles and treasure chests. If you want to get these rewards, you naturally need to use the weirdo’s ability to climb over the eaves and walls. Many tricky locations require players to spend some time thinking, which gives players the urge to “explore in depth”.

In addition, the mazes that serve as battle scenes in the game also incorporate a lot of designs that require the use of monsters’ abilities. Appropriate climbing and jumping plus the rewards of treasure chests not only break the boring experience of running through the map in the past, but also make the process of running through the map that used to be a one-way path to kill monsters have a qualitative change like “a sparrow turning into a phoenix”.

The combination of strange people’s abilities and scene depth, coupled with the seamless large map of this game, gives the new gameplay a foothold. It brings an unprecedented strong sense of exploration in the series, giving the game more freshness and playability. This is also the most eye-catching change of “Ys IX “.

A steady and solid ARPG

Since Ys VII first introduced the concept of “three-person team combat” and the combination of keys to release skills, and added three-attribute restraint in Sea of ​​Trees, as well as the two advanced systems of “high-speed defense” and “high-speed dodge”, this combat framework has become the fixed foundation for subsequent works. Even the excellent Ys VIII only brought back the jumping action of the sixth generation on this basis.

So in the new era of Ys IX , will this fixed team have any changes? The answer is not much. In addition to the smoother action design to improve the rhythm of the battle, the only new thing in the battle system is the lock-on and close-in design of Atrus’s hook ability. It can be said that the battle system of Ys IX is basically a reproduction of the previous game.

Whether it is “three-person team combat”, “high-speed defense” or “high-speed dodge”, they are all familiar to you and me. Old players can wake up their dormant muscle memory as soon as they get started, and new players can also quickly get started within 10 minutes and fight happily.

Of course, this is not a problem worth complaining about. After all, the entire battle system of the Ys series has evolved into what it is today, which is the best result of decades of experience. The combat, skills, equipment and character development systems can be said to be extremely well designed, and all the elements are linked together to form an organic whole. The upper and lower limits have been firmly fixed, and there are not too many boring parts. This is the skill accumulated by Falcom over decades, and it also reflects the deep understanding of the ARPG gameplay of this second-tier small workshop.

Daily life in a city called prison

Unlike the previous game, the storyline of Ys IX follows the seventh generation. After finishing his adventure in the Principality of Altago, Atrus came to the prison city of Baldok in the Roman Empire. Compared with the previous large-scale pattern of the creation and destruction of the planet, the story pattern of this game is much smaller, and the focus is always on the city of Baldok. 

In a small scale, Ys IX naturally focuses on Atrus and his monster teammates. The chapter structure of one monster per chapter gradually creates a group drama. Different from the series of supporting characters revolving around Atrus, each monster in this game has his own daily life. Through the concentrated narrative of the chapters, the characters’ personalities, psychology, and motivations are deeply portrayed. There are no female teammates with ambiguous feelings, and Atrus is not the center of the team, which avoids the problem of insufficient portrayal of teammates in the previous game and becoming background boards.

What is somewhat out of place is that Falcom ‘s group drama writing and dialogue always have the shadow of Trails. In addition, the stories and developments of each teammate in the first six chapters are too bland and daily, which inevitably has a Trails flavor. In addition, since the main scenes are set in the city, without the background of the wild, the sense of adventure that the series has always been focused on is reduced, and instead a sense of daily life is added. Falcom even strengthened the description of passers-by NPCs in different story chapters , which also makes the game atmosphere closer to the Trails series.

A suspenseful night of weirdos

In addition to the stories related to the weird teammates, Baldok’s prison is another core of the conflict in this game. From the beginning when Atreus was wrongly imprisoned to his escape from prison as a weirdo, to the appearance of another key character, the player’s adventure always revolves around it. Even in the side quests, you need to repeatedly go in and out of this prison with many entrances like a sieve to rescue NPCs .

In terms of the script, although this game does not have a dual-protagonist lineup like the eighth generation, it still adopts a dual-line narrative structure. The main plot is quite coherent, relying on Atrus’s small team of weirdos to solve the mystery of Grimwald’s Night and the prison, and the subplot reveals the conspiracy behind the incident from another unexpected perspective from inside the prison. The plot is full of suspense and mystery from beginning to end, and it is really amazing when the mystery is finally revealed, creating enough emotional impact through the reversal of the character’s identity. 

There is no doubt that the script of “Ys IX ” does not follow the old routine , and it maintains the high quality of the series in terms of storytelling. However, compared with the heights achieved by the previous work, there are still some shortcomings. The first of these is the hasty ending due to rushing the work. This is reflected in the saint who plays the core of the theme of the monster.

After all the weird teammates appeared in the first six chapters, the personal storyline of the Saint should have been connected. However, this key plot did not exist, and it went directly to the section before the finale. This also caused her positioning to be far different from other weirds. She should have been the center like Dana, but she became a mere background tool. It’s a pity.

Advances and setbacks in details

One particularly interesting thing about “Ys IX ” is that the official focused on selling memes in this game. Not only did they crazily complain about the fixed routine of Atrus’ shipwreck and loss of equipment in his past adventures, but they also used Easter eggs to let old players recall the classic characters in the series.

While selling memes like crazy, there are also feelings that only old players can understand.

What is even more commendable is that Falcom has also upgraded the poor plot performance in the past, and used motion capture technology for the first time in “Ys IX “. After adding separate action performances and storyboards, the character dialogue is no longer a stiff standing dialogue, which is a treatment that the next door “Trails” series has not yet had, which is enough to show that Falcom is also working hard to move forward.

The evolution after adding motion capture cannot be said to be great, only players who have been tortured by Falcom- style performances for a long time can understand it.

Unfortunately, such performance upgrades are still limited. Most of the cutscenes in this game are still frequently passed over with black screens. The plot is still not vivid and powerful enough in expression, and the transitions are too abrupt, which still reduces the overall expressiveness of the story.

Another unsatisfactory aspect is the music of this game. Due to the loss of the older generation of talent in Falcom jdk BAND , Falcom ‘s current music level is not as good as before. At least the main theme of “Ys VIII ” is quite catchy, and the songs “LACRIMOSA OF DANA” , “DANA” , and “ICLUCIAN DANCE” are also impressive with the plot performance. Mizutani Mizuki’s violin can also hold up the scene.

Unfortunately, it took another step back in Ys IX . Chairman Kato cut the music budget, not only cutting the OP performance, which is a signature feature of the series , but also causing the music level of this work to drop significantly. Listening to the entire OTS , on the one hand, it lacks a catchy main theme to match the plot performance, and on the other hand, the BGM in the scene lacks characteristics and is not pleasant to listen to. It’s really a pity.

Conclusion:

Compared with the heights reached by its predecessor, Ys VIII , three years later, Ys IX , released in every aspect, shows Falcom ‘s determination to surpass its predecessor. Especially after adding three-dimensional depth scenes and more freedom of exploration, Ys IX has reached the pinnacle of the series in terms of playability, which is not easy for a brand that is more than 30 years old.

It is particularly regrettable that, under the premise of reducing costs and resource investment, the final result of “Ys IX ” is still a little short of perfection. It is also a lament that all the advantages and disadvantages of “Ys IX ” show the best answer that this ill-fated brand can give under limited resources and manpower.

Please cherish this hard-earned Japanese masterpiece.