What’s up everyone? The beginning of Ys IX starts quite innocently. With no animated intro or preamble to be found. You are given control of your character immediately after your journey begins.
When this article was made ys IX has not yet been released on the Switch. I will update it later already a pre-order. This article is based on the PS4 version.
Then, several battles and minutes later, you plunge into the darkness. You are then shown what looks to be written text, accompanied by a haunting narration that continues to set the mood. These first few moments say much about what you’re about to experience in Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. A dark, gothic adventure that’ll enrapture.
You with its mysterious and twisted tale. This review was made possible by audience like you. Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is an action RPG with dark, gothic themes, developed by Falcom and published by NIS America, who provided this PS4 review code shown running on the PS5. This game coming soon into nintendo switch.
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You play the role of Adol Christin who, along with your friend Dogi, happened upon the Prison City of Balduq at the end of a long journey. But things quickly turn for the worse, as Adol is sent to prison for his involvement in several questionable incidents in his past.
Making him a fugitive wanted by the Romun Empire. A fortuitous moment allows Adol to escape his confines, which leads him to cross the path of a mysterious woman who curses him with the powers and responsibilities of the individuals known as Monstrums.
As the Crimson King, Adol is forced to fight to defend the city of Balduq from the darkness of the Grimwald Nox. While, at the same time, trying to uncover the truths hidden deep within the city’s imposing countenance.
If you’re like me and you’ve immensely enjoyed Ys VIII’s battle system, then you’ll be happy to know that Ys IX retains much of what makes that battle system great, albeit with a few new additions. For the uninitiated, Ys IX features a fast-paced party based battle system that allows you to quickly change from one party member to another while you relentlessly attack your enemies.
You’ll also have use of powerful Skills that you can either use in rapid succession or tie in with your combos, which can be quickly activated by holding R1 and pressing the corresponding face buttons. You won’t be able to use these Skills forever of course, as you’ll be spending an SP meter that can only be replenished by attacking and defeating enemies with your regular attacks.
New to Ys IX is the Boost gauge, which takes Ys VIII’s Extra gauge and makes it a ton more useful. Much like the aforementioned SP meter, you’ll be able to build your Boost gauge simply by attacking and defeating enemies. As soon as you’ve filled up at least half of this gauge, you can activate
Boost, which grants you increased HP and SP generation, movement speed, and heightened defense, attack, and skill damage!.
Once activated, the Boost gauge will start ticking down until it’s completely emptied. While Boosted, you’ll also be able to unleash a powerful Extra Skill, which deals massive amounts of damage to surrounding enemies. Using your Extra Skill will consume all of your remaining gauge, and given that the damage it deals isn’t affected by it.
I usually use it as a means to close out my remaining Boost. Also new to Ys IX is the ability to pull yourself towards your opponent quickly by way of the Crimson King’s Crimson Line, which lets you extend your combos by zipping around the arena with ease.
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This ability isn’t limited to the Crimson King, as every Monstrums special abilities are available for the entire party to use! Yet my favorite aspect of Ys IX’s battle system has less to do with how you’ll inflict massive amounts of damage to your enemies.
But how you can render their attacks powerless. You’ll accomplish this
utilizing Flash Move and Flash Guard. You can activate either by dodging
or guarding attacks at the last minute respectively, and each Flash
ability grants you different perks. Flash Move will grant you temporary
invulnerability and increased mobility, whereas Flash Guard will fill the Boost
gauge and briefly guarantee critical
attacks.
Additionally, activating these Flash abilities will slow your enemies attacks down to a crawl, allowing you to take advantage of their momentary weakness. Being able to weave both at the right moment, while smacking your opponents with relentless attacks and Skills, is key to mastering Ys IX’s combat.
The various dungeons you’ll be exploring in Ys IX have a gameplay-centric design that’ll have you exploring every nook and cranny to uncover boatloads of hidden treasure. Ys IX’s dungeons feature tons of rooms that serve as large arenas, with interconnecting sections that feature lots of fun platforming and traversal opportunities.
Traversal is king in Ys IX, and you’ll find yourself gliding across crevasses, running up walls, and even grappling towards hard to reach vistas just to see what’s beyond your reach. The town itself was designed to be completely scalable, and you’ll find various points of interest in the most unexpected of places.
It’s really a joy to try and collect every single collectible in town, and every time I encounter a treasure chest in a dungeon or district, I’m always ready and willing to try and figure out a path that’ll take me to them. Apart from dungeons, you’ll also encounter monsters while exploring about town, hidden behind black tears in space.
Touching these tears will create a small arena in the immediate area and initiate battle with no break in the action whatsoever. I tend to trigger these when I’m traveling from one location to the next just to get some extra money and experience, and is a worthwhile distraction from turning in quests across town.
Perhaps my least favorite part of Ys IX’s combat has to be its Nox battles, which occur on large scale battlefields that require all of the Monstrums participation. These are very much similar to the raid battles in Ys VIII, and these wave-based skirmishes are usually activated when the Nox meter hits at least 100.
These battles also occur when areas of the town need to be uncovered, so you tend to run into these more often than you’d think. While I didn’t find these battles all too difficult, I’m indifferent with their implementation. Despite that, any opportunity to test our combat proficiency is a good thing.
And admittedly, there have been several waves of enemies that were quite fun to just slice and dice through during these battles. Setting aside the nuances of its combat, character progression still utilizes the familiar experience based leveling system, and upgrading weapons and armor are still very much the same in this game, requiring you to gather materials needed to increase each gear’s stats.
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Ys IX feels as though it offers a better balance with how you’re able to obtain upgrade materials that seems less tedious. Any excuse for me to dive back into battle to find the necessary materials is a great incentive, though I’m thankful that I didn’t have to do much of that in order to get better gear.
Despite having an incredible battle system to play around with, there are a few aspects of Ys IX that might affect your enjoyment of it. For starters, Ys IX contains several references to previous games that are weaved into the story for various reasons. Seeing these references brought up serves as validation for long time Ys fans who have stuck with the series for a long time.
But for newcomers, some of these will come and go without any fanfare. That said, knowing these references aren’t required to understand the game’s overarching narrative, only that your experience will be enhanced if you’ve had prior knowledge.
As I am fairly new to the series, these references served to make me
curious about playing the previous games, so I’ve no doubt that it’ll have a
similar effect on others as well.
One aspect of Ys IX that affected my experience more than it should was the size of its UI elements. I typically play games on a 50” TV sitting roughly 10 feet away, so UI legibility is always important to me.
This is what my experience looked like while playing Ys IX. As you can see, it’s quite difficult to make out both the iconography and the background color used when locked onto targets, which are used to help identify what kind of attack the enemy is weak to. It would’ve been really nice to have some sort of UI toggle that’ll help make these icons bigger.
While I appreciate this functional design when it comes to combat, it can make traversing some of its dungeons a bit frustrating given that there are only a few ways to tell rooms apart, forcing players to constantly check their map to make sure that they’re headed in the right direction.
The town’s plentiful spires and landmarks make navigating through its streets and walkways easier, providing noteworthy points of interest that’ll help orient yourself should the need arise. And yet, in hindsight, the choice to depict. Its locales in this manner might be a clever and minimalist way for Ys IX to get you to empathize with the citizenry’s hardships.
This dreary aesthetic contrasts heavily with the design of Ys IX’s Monstrums, depicted with strong colors and ostentatious garb that easily helps them stand out from crowds and their environment, despite their desire to be hidden from plain sight.
It’s through their appearance that the Monstrums literally and figuratively represent the splashes of brightness and hope that’s eating away at Balduq’s ills, which is further reinforced each time Adol unlocks a new part of the city to explore. And in many ways, the Monstrums designs also remind me of the visual key movement, a Japanese version of glam rock that’s still popular to this day.
When you put the Monstrums alongside imagery of some visual, the similarities are uncanny. Though it’s easy to dismiss this as sheer coincidence, the idea that Falcom was inspired by visual kei extends to the style of music featured within Ys IX.
While the previous game never shied away from showcasing its guitar laden battle anthems, Ys IX utilizes classical instruments such as the harpsichord to tighten its connection with its gothic themes.
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The way it seamlessly blends these elements with its electric guitar riffs and melodies is strongly evocative of the visual movement. It’s in this sense that anyone expecting a Western interpretation of gothic themes might be disappointed. However, its unexpected ties to a movement that I’ve had the pleasure of discovering years ago brings me sheer joy, as it is the perfect combination of an aesthetic style that’s inspired by the West, along with sensibilities that are purely and distinctly Japanese.
With so many opportunities to explore and be involved in Ys IX’s world, you might even forget that the game also features and engaging and riveting story. Much of the game’s chapters are dedicated to getting to know specific Monstrums, allowing us to learn more about their backstories and motivations, as well as giving us fulfillment that was lacking in the previous game’s storytelling.
Hidden beneath all of this character development are opportunities that Ys IX smartly uses to weave in little hints that build up the mystery behind the existence of the Grimwald Nox. Apart from that, there are legitimate concerns from long-time Ys fans that Monstrum Nox might lean heavily towards a darker tone.
Being a setting that immediately follows the wonderfully colorful and
vibrant locales of Ys VIII’s Seiren Island, the Prison City of Balduq stands in stark contrast with its
dreary atmosphere and seemingly uninspired
aesthetic.
But as the age old adage goes, looks can be incredibly deceiving, and anyone who chooses to look past its outward veneer will find an engaging and well told story that not only recognizes and celebrates Adol’s past.
But also seems to plot a new course for the series. Ys IX won me over with every deliberate step forward, with its focused narrative structure providing me the direction I needed every time I wavered.
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is an adventure unlike anything you’ve experienced in the series’ decades long history, and both newcomers and fans alike will have a great time unraveling its many mysteries.
