Ys VIII, my intro to the series, was a genuine surprise for me, just a super kinetic RPG with an engaging enough story and world, and an extra-as-hell score that legit pumped me up through its however many hours. IX started off promisingly by suggesting I would get something similar except now I would basically be a superhero so traversal would be absolutely wild out of the gate.

It went wrong in a lot of ways, but I think the one that bothers me the most is that you're given absurd traversal and, naturally, it could easily break the game so Balduq and its surrounding terrain are designed to impede you having fun with those abilities. I understand the need for players to feel challenged in some capacity, but "find the one spot in this gigantic map that lets you climb up" is legitimately some of the most obnoxious design I've encountered, and if it wasn't already bad enough that this wasn't a tropical island like VIII and felt comparatively lifeless, I was now having to go around endless landmasses with overhangs preventing me from running up them like I wanted to. Why does it matter that it would take me less time to get to chests and explore the land? The game's already 30 hours, it's fine. There are already gates blocking progression, you didn't need more of them. You could make it 20-25. Or don't let me be Daredevil + Spider-Man maybe. I dunno, I'm not your designer dad.

And I don't want to harp on them too long because honestly they exhausted me, but the tower defense action sequences from VIII being brought over as mandatory quests and also made to feel like an eternity is just..... well it's very cool, huh.

The plot is also a bad time compared to VIII; I might actually prefer some of the characters here, but the pacing killed a lot of the narrative for me and then when the game decided to slam capital-P Plot in the player's face in its final stretch I just kind of had to laugh at how ludicrous it had all become. The character design is largely charming at least.

I would get glimmers of the joy I had with VIII when there was a particularly well designed platforming sequence and I was allowed to just feel the flow of combat and movement, and I could listen to whatever absurd double bass track was blasting, but those moments were too few and far between [and mostly relegated to the final dungeon, unfortunately]. I thought I had found my popcorn RPG series after VIII and now I'm not so sure.

Reviewed on Mar 08, 2021


1 Comment


3 years ago

Perfect, although I think you mean "I'm not your designer papa."