TL;DR: A lot of good ideas poorly executed and more than a few missed opportunities, but a very fun game regardless and worth the 40-50 hours it takes to beat.

My thoughts - on the story, mainly - need more time to be sorted out, but immediately coming off this game I felt like it was full of good ideas but executed rather poorly and the characters are one dimensional but are at least enjoyable (beating out many Cold Steel characters with that latter point). The ending left me with a very positive impression which is why it's difficult for me to fairly criticize the plot right now.

The gameplay is up to the Ys standard of being delightfully addictive, making me want to get in as many battles as I could because, again, the combat is fun. However, Ys IX Monstrum Nox is a very, very easy game. I was playing on hard thinking I would give my first playthrough a moderate challenge, but I got through the game with probably no deaths aside from a level 90 monster in a dungeon when I was level 45 and a superboss towards the end of the game - both of which I fought, and the latter was the only one that I found decently challenging, to illustrate just how easy this game is. However, in some ways that can be a blessing just because there are moments where events are so chaotic it can be a struggle to keep track of everything that's happening around you (really just the latter Grimwald Nox phases, this is also coming from someone with ADHD and gets overwhelmed easily anyway).

It was cool to have a large seamless area to explore, but Balduq was also very fractured into different segments that only expanded with story progress, which I felt took away from the game. Ys VIII did it more subtly, by throwing natural obstacles in your path like trees or boulders, but those also gave an incentive to explore the area more to find more castaways to add to the village and move forward. This game just says "fuck it, we'll just have force fields everywhere and not tell anyone where they are until they're two feet away." I know this isn't a deserted island setting anymore, but was that really the best they could come up with?

Monstrum abilities were cool, but I also felt like they could have done more with them. It would have been nice if it felt like Balduq, the plains outside the city and the dungeons were built around them instead of what felt like the other way around - it felt like the perfect opportunity to make this game a natural playground and a demonstration of what better movement in action RPGs can really be, so it ended up feeling like a missed opportunity for me and felt pretty janky in the end.

The general feel is good, though. The game is very pleasant to look at and there's a lot of good music in the soundtrack.

I had a great time with this game, but man I just wish Falcom would work on honing their game design sense a little more.

First played this game a few years ago but recently bought NEO so I wanted to replay it before then and man, this game just rules. All the characters are very well written and likable (Neku's my favorite, but I can't help but love Joshua because he's just a little shit), and the art style is very unique and stands out from most other games. Another main attraction is the music, which is like a cross between Jet Set Radio and Persona 3's soundtracks, but is unique enough that it stands out on its own as one of my favorite game soundtracks ever.

The gameplay is where (Final Remix, specifically) struggles, being a seemingly half hearted Switch port of the mobile version. It becomes far more enjoyable playing solo co-op (2 controllers, one player) and controlling both characters at once, leading to some very satisfying combos, but re-calibrating the pointers constantly and having pin gestures constantly misread is really not suitable for an action RPG. Battle arenas often stretch past one screen of camera space too, and sometimes enemies will be in corners covered by UI making attacking them weird and awkward.

Although personally I'd recommend the DS version (note: I haven't played it, I've just heard it controls the best), this is an okay alternative if you want to experience the game, which I do recommend. It's fantastic.

Decently polished game with good animation and okay music, but underneath that is one of the most boring action RPGs I've played.

Movement feels very sluggish, enemies home in on you constantly with some attacks that seem impossible to dodge. Attempting to parry feels awful because of the sluggish movement; Sora takes forever to swing his sword and it makes timing unnecessarily difficult. It's not a hard game, but little things like the dated save system (checkpoints aren't overwritten by your last save so saving before a boss fight and then pressing continue if you die will take you back to before that save?? Which gets rid of any equipment changes you may have made in between??) as well as having to do a 5 minute, very boring rail shooter minigame to travel ANYWHERE on the world map (you have to do this TWO TO THREE TIMES if you want to get to a world on the other side of the map), as well as just a very bland and uninteresting story completely lost me. The whole package is just very boring, especially if you aren't into Disney at all, which makes up the majority of the crossover part of this game, while only a handful of Final Fantasy characters show up here and there.

Just feeling kind of done.

Very good Metroidvania with a lot of super creative and interesting power ups. The pixel art was really good too, especially for the Rusalki (although the main character sprite is nothing special). Unfortunately it's brought down by having to collect power nodes which increase your damage output; this is fine on paper, but if you don't really try to find them bosses (and even regular enemies!) felt much harder than they needed to be, especially with so many of them spamming hard to dodge attacks. It's a Metroid game to play if you've run out of actual Metroid games.

God this game is so good but Sony's PS1 emulation is so shit that the game kept crashing when I started disc 2. I'll probably never be able to finish this game if it doesn't get ported to modern systems (god I hope it does), but it has one of the most fun and interesting battle systems of any RPG ever made and I hope it that style gets revisited someday. The story was really good too despite a pretty bad (but standard for 90s) localization. I just want this game on modern systems with some QoL improvements and it might be one of the best games ever made.

Definitely one of the best character action games ever made. A perfect evolution of what DMC4 had set up gameplay wise, it doesn't take much at all to feel cool but learning the game is extremely rewarding. This is regarding DMC in general, but I think one of its strengths is how in control you feel – there's never overly long animations for finishers, everything feels precise and buttery smooth. I had a blast going through this series, and I'd like to go back to DMC1 and 3 and see if what I've learned makes those games more enjoyable. I bet it will.