As a practical Lacrimosa of Dana successor, well, it's great, not as great but I was expecting worse, tbh. For starters, the setting, Balduq, just looks barren, flat and totally uninspired. Not like Ys VIII can brag about breathtaking scenaries but, you know, the greenery always looks nice no matter what.

So that was an underwhelming start but something I realized quickly is that this game liked to overstate the village raids' feature welcome way too much. Back in LoD, they were fine as a quick change of pace and something almost entirely optional, but here they repeatedly happen, and I wouldn't necessarily say it's a good thing even though the combat is great as usual. Fighting works great in conjunction with exploration, but when you exclusively fight for a solid 2-3 minutes or more, not so much. It's a drag.

This game also has more proper dungeons than LoD, and their design is not so appealing, I'll be honest.

Besides the aforementioned things, it's got the same qualities of VIII, so it's yet another great time. And to top it off, the great plot twist doesn't come from the game's main storyline, it comes from something more or less related, and for that reason I'm excited for what the devs do next.

But yeah, raids have to go.