Go directly to Jail, do not pass go.
It wasn’t too long ago that I tried my very first Ys game, Lacrimosa of Dana, the series’ eighth entry, that while it certainly had some flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Since then, I’ve also played through Memories of Celceta, a sort of remake of Ys IV. With Lacrimosa of Dana, it appeared that the series was going to adopt some strong visual aesthetics from Nihon Falcom’s other major franchise; Trails of Cold Steel. Which, if you know my history with that franchise, is a very good thing indeed. Ys IX takes the series forward in small baby steps from its last entry while making the world you explore bigger, and the stakes every greater. While I still prefer certain aspects of the previous games to what has been done here, it’s certainly a fantastic new entry in the series regardless and has had me diving back even further into its rich and vast history.
Where prior Ys games would tease the previous exploits of series protagonist, Adol Christin, Monstrum Nox goes one step further and fully embraces his past outings, something more akin to what has been done via the Legend of Heroes saga. JRPG’s rarely connect from game to game, as most publishers reinvent the wheel with each new entry; Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and the Tales games all feature new characters and new worlds whenever a new roman numeral is added to the title, or subtitle splashed across the cover; with obviously a few exceptions. While the Ys games do take place in the same world, with some of the same central characters, this new direction of referencing several of the prior games only looks to make Adol’s adventures feel more impactful to his future exploits. Will the inevitable Ys X follow suit? Well, only time will tell.
The initially bizarre titled Monstrum Nox starts as our lead hero, Adol Christin has arrived in the Prison City of Balduq, alongside Dogi, his faithful companion. Through almost no fault of his own, or rather the events of his previous adventures, Adol is immediately arrested and taken away to prison. As Adol will discover as he eventually makes an escape, he isn’t the only one locked up with no real indication as to why. During the escape, he is approached by a strange woman, clad in a cloak and armor, while some of her limbs have been replaced with metal parts. This encounter leaves Adol shot, but not dead, as this mysterious and magical bullet has somehow turned him into a magical entity called a Monstrum, an alter ego that is called The Crimson King. However exciting this new power is, it comes with a catch, Adol is trapped within the walls of the city, destined to fight a variety of deadly creatures forever.
Now, entrapping a series protagonist in a lifetime of servitude isn’t likely to stick, so Adol begins his quest to not just understand exactly what the curse is, but a way of stopping it entirely. This quest will not have Adol doing this alone, as you’ll meet the entire party roster rather quickly, introducing you to the five other characters that you’ll be able to swap to and from throughout much of the 35-40 hour adventure. Several of the game’s opening chapters have you unlocking each character individually, giving them a lot of breathing room in their own respective chapter to develop, with each of them having major arcs as time goes on. You’ll get to know them incredibly well, and the narrative built around them is often interesting, even if a few of the secret identities that they have are incredibly obvious; especially with the Raging Bull. Though, to be fair, the fact that they have secret identities becomes rather hilarious and often at odds with the whole idea due to the fact that whenever you touch the ground in Balduq, they transform back into their civilian identities, even in front of guards and other NPC’s. It’s like if Superman instantly turned into Clark Kent the moment he stopped flying. Still, landing in front of one guard and him saying “Nope, certainly didn’t see that.” sort of made it all worth it, so who knows…
Previous Ys games often had you progress through dozens of hours before you’d even be introduced to your entire roster, and while you won’t have access to control many of them for quite some time, you’ll briefly meet them during an initial story event that brings everyone together. You have Hawk, White Cat, Raging Bull, Doll, and Renegade, who each again have secret identities. At first, I wasn’t a huge fan of either Hawk or Renegade, but the ways in which you get to know them, and the arcs they both have, really made me open up to them eventually, especially Hawk, a character I often had on the bench. White Cat and Raging Bull are both aesthetically fun and have some rather hilarious moments, it was The Doll that really stole the spotlight for me, especially when you interact with her true form. Collectively they are not my favorite group of characters the series has placed in our path thus far but still are remarkably well developed and each has a variety of special abilities that make them a blast to use in and out of combat.
Now, how each of them became Monstrums is tied directly to some of the game’s big reveals, and while I wasn’t entirely sold on some aspects of the story early on; as its pacing is not terribly great, the game has several big mysteries that are extremely well executed; especially the scenes that take place in the prison at the end of most of the game’s nine chapters. These moments often left me with more questions than answers, but in a good way as it kept me guessing until the answers became a tad bit obvious; but I still adore how they handled a lot of this intrigue. While there is a lot of backstory and lore to dive into regarding just exactly what is going on here, it’s explained and rolled out in a way that makes sense, avoiding the convoluted nature we often see in even the most simple JRPG’s narratives.
While much of the story is conveyed in a ‘show, don’t tell’ format to keep that mystery going, you’re often drip-fed more story as you start to collect more of your party, and take on missions through Aprilis, the woman that shot Adol at the start of the game, gifting him his powers. Aprilis, who is sadly not playable, has several mysteries of her own, and as many characters will often say, it’s up to Adol and his party to see the truth with their own eyes, rather than be told just exactly what is going on. As you perform missions for Aprilis, as well as taking out threats that linger around town, you’ll gain access to more of the city and its outskirts, learning more about being a Monstrum and how several of the main cast are thankful for the curse, in their own unique way.
Revealing more of the city itself is through a process similar to the defense excursions in Ys VIII, but are a lot more simplified as a result. As you perform certain actions across the city, such as defeating enemies or completing side quests, you’ll build up a Nox meter. Once it’s filled, you’ll be able to jump into another realm called the Grimwald Nox. You’ll perform one of two actions here; defeat waves of enemies to defend a crystal or shatter several dozen crystals of your own. Completing these challenges are sometimes tied to the story as not only will you unlock new areas, but the bigger events around these locations start to fill out the story a bit more. As you progress through said story, you’ll be able to upgrade your defenses during the protection mode of this event, placing decoys and more to aid in your battles. While these events usually don’t take too long, it’s a shame there wasn’t more variety as they do tend to get pretty repetitive as time goes on, even going so far as repeating many of the bosses you’ll take on within them.
Exploring Balduq, both in and outside the city, will require specialized methods of traversal. These come in the form of abilities you’ll gain from each of the Monstrums that join your party. While they don’t go full-on Metroidvania with the use of these abilities, you will find yourself returning to previous locations to track down the odd secret or two. White Cat, who is the first to join your party, gifts you the ability to run up walls, even if having that and the dodge roll on the same button can often have you rolling off to the side a bit too much. The Doll allows you to use a type of vision mode that allows you to see hidden switches, objects, enemies, or the locations of nearby chests. Raging Bull allows you to bash down destructible walls, and The Hawk allows you to glide through the air, expending a stamina gauge to keep that and all powers in check. While you’ll use Renegade’s ability to turn into a ghostly spirit to move under small gaps a few times in the city to track down a few chests, it’s the only ability that you’ll rarely use apart from the few dungeons that are built around it, and even then, I think it’s used a maximum of maybe ten times. Lastly, of course, Adol has his own ability as well, a mystical grappling hook that works on various parts of the environment, and also to pull yourself towards enemies as well. This is easily the mechanic you’ll use just as often as the gliding and wall running.
Breaking away from the maze-like zones we’ve seen in the past, much of what you can explore in Ys IX is through a series of large almost open-world locations, and a considerable amount of interior environments; ruins, and various catacombs of the past. While this open freedom does allow for a lot of the traversal systems to feature prominently, there lacks a lot of the variety and level design that I loved of the previous games. This leads to levels that often feel big for big’s sake, lacking any real personality to any single location. Even Balduq, with all its separate districts, simply just bleeds together and doesn’t feel as robust and varied as it could have been. Each location does contain several of each type of collectible to track down, a few with a narrative for their purpose, but apart from the game rewarding that element of exploration, there isn’t a single location that I point to and really reflect back to. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy wandering about, but it was the combat, traversal, and other gameplay systems at play that led to that enjoyment, instead of the levels themselves. It was an issue I also had with much of Final Fantasy XV as large chunks of that world was just not interesting, apart from the battles you’d take part in.
Between missions, and even during them, Adol and his companions will retreat back to the Dandelion, a bar that is the Monstrum’s home base of sorts. It’s here where you’ll interact with your allies, give gifts, spark conversation, level up your weapons, and procure new items. While there are shops all over the city, you’ll eventually gain an ally that will condense most shops into her own, allowing no real need to traverse all over town trying to find that one particular vendor. Though, you’ll still need to do that for the aforementioned gifts which are items that can increase certain stats those allies bring to the table if you max out their friendship. As you progress throughout the story, you’ll gain missions to breach the prison’s walls, rescuing those who are in need and they will often return the favor by working at the bar, such is the case with Iris, a character I found incredibly interesting, but sadly is not playable, despite being an assassin. While there are narrative reasons for additional characters not being part of your rotating party, it’s a shame since I enjoyed the arc they gave her and several others.
As you begin each chapter, or after certain moments within one, you’ll unlock side quests that reach you through a community board in the bar itself. While you’ll find the occasional secret quest out and about, almost every activity you do in the game is through this board. Many of these quests are tailored between increasing public positivity towards the Monstrums, or part of developing your companions, playable or not. As the story progresses, the quests you’ll complete start to deal a lot more with the fallout of certain reveals, events, and where each character is at in the story, deepening the storytelling and making side quests feel more like mandatory parts of the story. Each completed side quest will also increase the Nox buildup you have in your meter, so it’s always worthwhile to track down each and every one of them to unlock new areas that much quicker.
Now, all that said, the game has a very formulaic structure that can become a tad tedious in the first 15-20 hours of the game. You’ll start a chapter, complete your side quests, tackle the main quest that involves unlocking a new party member, dealing with the revelation of their identity, then tackling a mission in the prison. This loop repeats almost exactly for the first 6 or 7 chapters. It’s not a bad loop per say, but is something I wanted to mention as it can cause the game to feel very repetitive in several ways. Also, each time you get a selection of side quests for each chapter, you’ll have one that has you tracking down a monster to kill as well. This side quest and monster killing structure has been a staple for The Legend of Heroes saga as well, further proof that Ys is moving into a direction to mimic a great deal of what we had with Trails of Cold Steel.
Now, one major difference between Trails of Cold Steel and the Ys franchise is in its combat. Ys is a real-time combat system where you’ll have a standard attack alongside specialized abilities that vary from character to character. Your party of three can be swapped in and out during combat with a simple button tap, and you’ll use the RI button to pull from a selection of attacks that you’ll assign to each face button. You’ll eventually earn more types of attacks than you can use at once, so you’ll want to change it up from time to time to see what each character is fully capable of. As you fight, you’ll earn the required energy to use those attacks, which have various levels of damage as well as a cost to use them. As you progress through fights, you’ll have a separate meter that can boost your attack, grant health regen, or spend it all to perform an ultimate attack, dishing out some pretty substantial damage.
Each character is also designed to reflect a certain attribute; slash, strike or pierce. These specific damage types will do bonus damage towards enemies who are weaker to that specific one. You can also use items to change those attributes, which comes in handy if you use a particular character and want them to reflect a certain damage type. You can also trigger a breaking state that will see enemies take considerably more damage than usual. Ys IX also brings back the flash guard and flash move systems, as you’ll dodge or attack at key moments during an incoming attack where you’ll slow down time and be granted special buffs such as increasing your offensive power and speed during a short timed window.
While the Trails of Cold Steel games often played to their own strengths with their visuals, Ys IX attempts to reach a tad beyond what the graphics engine is currently capable of. While we are still a ways off at seeing the upcoming new engine from Nihon Falcom, the PhyreEngine, which was built for the PS3, is really starting to show its age, even with special enhancements to take advantage of newer hardware. Ys IX is not a bad looking game when you compare it to what the series has come from, but certainly struggles with applying any real detail to its world or especially its NPC’s. While the PS4 version of Lacrimosa of Dana was a great deal better looking in keys areas from its Vita origins, the world and its characters didn’t change too much, and we only see marginal changes here in those same areas. Now, JRPG’s like these are often lower-budget affairs than what we see from the likes of what SquareEnix is doing, but the need for a new engine to power these games is crucial to innovating more and making them look more appealing to those who have yet to see just engaging these games can be, graphics or otherwise.
Ys IX runs at a very stable 60fps on PS5, whereas the PS4 family of consoles hits closer to 30 when the action gets more intense or the speed at which you traverse through the city. The PS5 version before launch had a nasty series of crashes, and I personally experienced almost 20 in total, with two crashes turning off my system entirely. While I waited for an incoming patch, I then swapped to the PS4 Pro version, and apart from slightly longer loading times, the game ran without a hitch. That said, there was a great deal of pop-in that was pretty dang noticeable, especially in rendering farther away trees and foliage. I also notice a lot of shadows not popping up until I get closer to them. Once the PS5 version was patched, I played the last 12+ hours or so without experiencing a single crash and the pop-in was largely minimal, even if it would ‘pop up’ from time to time.
Much like what we were given with the Trails of Cold Steel games, a good chunk of the audio is fully voiced, with noticeably absent voices from time to time. Even Adol himself gets in a few lines, but I’ll leave you to how and why that happens to experience it for yourself. It’s a shame that every line isn’t voiced, or at least through the main cast, but the voices that are here fit the characters they belong to remarkably well, and does make the experience that much better. My only issue with character voices is the repeated lines of dialogue when you perform certain attacks or abilities, as the “There’s something here!” or “I think I see something!” every single time you are near a resource object that you can slash into for items, which is pretty much everywhere. It’s not quite as bad as what Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had at launch, but it’s almost there.
Despite my reservations on some aspects of Monstrum Nox, the story pulls the title ahead of many of the entries I’ve played thus far. While it can take a while to get going, and the world itself isn’t as impressive as it could have been, I was remarkably impressed once the credits hit, and even then; during them. Ys IX attempts to push the series into a more open-world direction, a feat that does succeed on some levels, but the current graphics engine just struggles to make that vision a true reality. That said, Ys IX is still fantastic, offering up some lightning-fast combat with a varied cast of characters that feel very different from one another. While I will say the game only has two or three really interesting boss encounters, every single challenge, battle, and encounter was made that much more impressive because of what Ys brings to the table. It may look a tad bit outdated, but Monstrum Nox is still one fantastic adventure worth taking.
Developer - Nihon Falcom, Engine Software, PH3 GmbH. Publisher - Nihon Falcom, Nippon Ichi Software, NIS America. Released - February 2nd, 2021. Available On - PS4/PS5, Windows PC, Nintendo Switch (PC and Switch TBA.) Rated - (T) Fantasy Violence, Language, Mild Blood, Suggestive Themes, Use of Tobacco. Platform Reviewed - PlayStation 5/PlayStation 4 Pro. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.