(Spoilers)
As with a lot of Falcom games, by the ending I'm really touched by saying goodbye to the characters and seeing glimpses of what they go on to do with their lives. I liked Jules/Renegade's resolve a lot, his maturity in handling the inappropriate/immature feelings of Krysha/Yufa about his disability. And it was touching to find he had read a lot of stories about Adol. Adol and Dogi walking off at the end, alone again, does make you think about the kind of emotional interiority of Adol and whether he's okay with always just walking away from all these relationships. I know it's probably too much to ask for a Falcom game to go into that, but that would actually be interesting narrative territory...
Other than that, the "Monstrums are Homunculi!" reveal - while not surprising, I thought it was nice how each character was ultimately okay with that fact and could move on with their life. Maybe it would have been nice if some characters were less okay with finding out?
It was neat to see Balduq from different angles as I explored parts of the overworld. The sections where you only play as level 10 Adol I actually almost found genuinely interesting from a game design standpoint: it felt like a callback to classic Ys, and the way that Balduq felt so different in that small moment of walking around as regular Adol was really neat, as you can't just wall run and glide everywhere (which is fun, to be sure, but it does flatten the narrative weight of a space)
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Overall... it's funny that the characters of this game are trapped in cycles of fate. It really makes me think of Falcom and how formulaic their games are, yet how they still manage to shine in small ways... if they could just drop their weird training wheels of the games feeling like checklists, having to hit a certain # of tropey characters, never REALLY trying to do level or core game design well (the last dungeon in Ys 9 feels ripped out of a Trails game!) - maybe if they even tried to not do one of those things - they could make a really great game.
I felt overall Ys 9 was 2-3x too long. Too many characters, and the script could have gotten away with something far shorter yet with the same impact. Or better yet, cut the crap out and go into some of the weirder potential threads with the story.
As for the exploration/combat - not great, but very relaxing. If they applied a few more limitations to movement, maybe Falcom could make a cool platformer some day. The combat system in Ys 9 is high-tempo and hard-to-read enemies make for a confusing experience on harder difficulties. It kind of feels more like I was waiting for enemy attacks, parry/roll, then go button mash a bit, etc. Occasionally there were some bosses I liked - the centipede returning from Origin was cool.
As with a lot of Falcom games, by the ending I'm really touched by saying goodbye to the characters and seeing glimpses of what they go on to do with their lives. I liked Jules/Renegade's resolve a lot, his maturity in handling the inappropriate/immature feelings of Krysha/Yufa about his disability. And it was touching to find he had read a lot of stories about Adol. Adol and Dogi walking off at the end, alone again, does make you think about the kind of emotional interiority of Adol and whether he's okay with always just walking away from all these relationships. I know it's probably too much to ask for a Falcom game to go into that, but that would actually be interesting narrative territory...
Other than that, the "Monstrums are Homunculi!" reveal - while not surprising, I thought it was nice how each character was ultimately okay with that fact and could move on with their life. Maybe it would have been nice if some characters were less okay with finding out?
It was neat to see Balduq from different angles as I explored parts of the overworld. The sections where you only play as level 10 Adol I actually almost found genuinely interesting from a game design standpoint: it felt like a callback to classic Ys, and the way that Balduq felt so different in that small moment of walking around as regular Adol was really neat, as you can't just wall run and glide everywhere (which is fun, to be sure, but it does flatten the narrative weight of a space)
--
Overall... it's funny that the characters of this game are trapped in cycles of fate. It really makes me think of Falcom and how formulaic their games are, yet how they still manage to shine in small ways... if they could just drop their weird training wheels of the games feeling like checklists, having to hit a certain # of tropey characters, never REALLY trying to do level or core game design well (the last dungeon in Ys 9 feels ripped out of a Trails game!) - maybe if they even tried to not do one of those things - they could make a really great game.
I felt overall Ys 9 was 2-3x too long. Too many characters, and the script could have gotten away with something far shorter yet with the same impact. Or better yet, cut the crap out and go into some of the weirder potential threads with the story.
As for the exploration/combat - not great, but very relaxing. If they applied a few more limitations to movement, maybe Falcom could make a cool platformer some day. The combat system in Ys 9 is high-tempo and hard-to-read enemies make for a confusing experience on harder difficulties. It kind of feels more like I was waiting for enemy attacks, parry/roll, then go button mash a bit, etc. Occasionally there were some bosses I liked - the centipede returning from Origin was cool.