Nihon Falcom's Ys series of JRPGs has a long and storied history. Though it had it's start in Japan on the NEC PC-8801, most people remember it's real breakout version released for the NEC PC Engine CD/TurboGrafx 16 CD. My first experience with with the Turbo DUO pack-in version of Ys Books I and II (where I was absolutely floored by Ryo Yonemitsu's arrangements on the soundtrack, that amazing boss track in particular!), and I have been a hardcore fan of the series ever since, and i've played them all from Ys Origins all the way through Ys VIII. With the previous release, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana NIS America took over the localization of the series, and it had quite a rough start with a half-assed translation as well as countless gameplay-breaking bugs. Thankfully that got all ironed out over the course of several substantial patches, and since then Ys VIII has become quite a masterpiece.
Thankfully with the release of Ys IX: Monstrum Nox things
have gone quite smoothly, with NISA clearly learning from it's past
efforts. The game runs flawlessly on the PS5, and looks quite stunning on my 4K television, and I haven't seen any sort of slowdown or frame drops. Clearly a lot of love has been put into
the localization and porting this time around, as I've not run into any
bugs, translation errors or the like in my time playing. The game assets look absolutely stunning on the PS5, with a general clarity that the PS4 version lacked. Load times are massively improved as well thanks to the PS5's speedy storage. There's no
discernible input lag either, and the controls are tight and intuitive as ever. I do wish however that it had made more use of the DualSense controller's more advanced features such as the adaptive triggers and haptics. It's a shame that so many third party games are getting ported with nary a thought to the system's more advanced features.
The gameplay is your usual Ys action-RPG fare, but this time with an added twist in the form of large scale tower defense battles. Now I've never been one to enjoy tower defense games, however Ys IX manages to present them in a way that makes them intuitive and fun in fashion that I've never seen in the genre. Though I may prefer the typical hack and slash action that the series is known for, the Tower Defense sections do provide a welcome distraction. As for the story, it is as always engaging and entertaining, living up to the pedigree that previous entries have set as the standard. All in all, Ys IX is a perfect example of what a JRPG can be, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it for all series veterans and newcomers to the series and genre alike.
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