Ys IX: Monstrum Nox - Easy Allies Review 

I was hoping for a review after hearing you talk about the game in Frame Trap. The game’s still quite fresh and it was a informative review. Thanks!

Love that you did! I was playfully shouting at the podcast when it was left off the spring game releases list on a show from january as I remembered YS VIII was reviewed on the channel. I was hoping it wouldn't be missed and glad you liked it.

Thanks for the review, Blood. I'm 90% through the game and completely agree with how you called it 'RPG comfort food'. This is a solid 7.5 that fans of Ys or action rpgs should enjoy.

That’s fine Blood, I’d rather you play it at your own pace and not force yourself to rush. I buy most of my games a few months after release anyways so I still appreciate the review even if it’s later.

Reviews from any of the allies is ALWAYS worth it Blood. You guys are the voice we trust! L&R

Even though he eats local Gods in every adventure. there is always some rando Knight/Capitan or mercenary that's like "Hello I will be your rival for this game" than proceeds to kick Adols ass for half of the game

and for whatever reason, Adol loses all the godlike otherworldly overpowered weapons and gears he obtained from the last game, without a single explanation

@@Carlos-id4in He has a gambling problem between games.

It's really all of the shipwrecks he gets into between titles :P

Note taken: foreigners with red hair are the chosen ones

Beeeennnn.....

Hahaha I was about to immediately type “another Ben Moore joint”

My favorite in the series so far is actually Oath in Felghana, so yea, this series really is something special.

Just discovered Ys VIII and it made me fall in love with the series. So oldschool but yet so fun!

If you really want to dig deep and actually liked I and II then Dawn of Ys for PC Engine was an awesome entry as well. The music in all these games are excellent.

Origin is 6 bucks on PSN right now.

I got into the Ys games back around 1990 with the TurboGraphics-CD version of Ys Book I & II. One of the first games I played that had an actual band playing instead of the old bit tracks.

Yeah, I think its a 9 or 9.5 for me because it has more coherence and impact than other games or games series in the jrpg world. I think it has such awesome exploration mechanics that make it so much fun to move around in the world. Story and writing is excellent. Music is incredible. My personal criticism is the pacing that allows for great character development makes the first 5 chapters feel a bit formulaic and slow on main plot (yet still really good and they don't drag on!). Hope people love it!

I assume the price factored into the score, as Blood said despite the quality it's clearly a game on a tight budget, at full price it gets to be compared to the likes of Persona 5, DQXI and FFVII Remake.

As a long time Falcom fan, I definitely think context helps. I know they're a comparatively lower budget, smaller developer, so even on their newest games, I don't ever expect them to look like bigger games like FFVII Remake. For me, each iteration in the Trails series is maximum hype, and I know the graphical fidelity is going to be roughly the same as the past 2, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I think Falcom knows where their limited budget should go, and that's in story, gameplay, and characters.

@@lukemoonwalker8444 weirdly I am probably less likely to pay full price for a AAA title. They seem to get super cheap a few years after release. That and I would rather give my support to smaller studios anyway. But then again I don't buy much at full price anyway. Falcom titles are about it.

@@andrewfennewald9465 True, This is the first game I payed full price and bought when launched and bought Ys IX Digital Deluxe Edition . Every game I bought after complete edition was releases after years released with heavy discount.

Easy Allies is made up of all former GT staff, and still has a lot of the same charm.

I don't think the cost benefit is there to spend more money on graphics. Like they still aren't going to draw in people who only play AAA level graphics games and its expensive to do. And you hit diminishing returns on Anime style graphics in 3D pretty quickly anyway. Now if they could pull a persona 5 and make the game look great by having awesome 2D art all over the place that would be cool.

@@andrewfennewald9465 I mean, I would be fine if there were more NPCs on the streets or there would be more interaction with the world. With a lot of JRPGs it's the same thing; the spaces, especially in city hubs and such, are so big and vast but there's hardly any life to it. I'd rather the devs push for a cel-shaded graphics, cutting down texturing budget and increasing the overall life of the game. Even big budget JRPGs lack in that regard, look at something like Pokemon and how it hasn't evolved much. After a while it feels less like devs not having enough money and more like being stingy and stagnant as far as the design and world-building is concerned.

I'd still go with Ys8 over this one. because of the much more varied island setting and the amazingly intriguing story. you can't go wrong with any Ys game if you like pew pew fast paced super fun gameplay though ^.^

This one is better in all most any way. Better Story, characters faster command and while the City can be kinda bland it's still better than a lonely deserted tropical Island.

PS4 have Ys Origin, Ys Celceta, Ys 8, and 9. So I reccomend grab all of them.

There’s like 3 waifu and 1 doll in this game xD

All previous "waifus" have representation in Ys IX.

@@danielfielke3895 And forget all of them on X, search a new one once again.

as this takes place after 7 adol has good reasons to forget that waifu.

Yeah you're good It's even more frustrating if you keep up with games. Because they love to jump to make games in random places in the timeline. For example here's the current chronological order 1&2, 4, 3, 6, 8 7 and 9

@@Ristyo1992 okay thanks. I'll start with 9 and then try others

Yes, every story is self contained, though there might be references to other titles depending on where in the timeline they take place. A big part of this is in fact cause Adol is long dead (not a spoiler) and the games are supposedly a retelling based of his journals told by an unknown third party. This is why the chronology is all over the place.

@@Ristyo1992 8 is before 6 then 7 and 9

I haven't played VIII, so I can't compare the games directly. Comparing the scales is a little weirder than it might seem because Stars take up a bigger "chunk" of the scale. 3.5 stars would be close to a 7. 4 stars would be close to an 8, but there isn't anything that's equivalent to a 7.5. So I suppose you could say they're likely about the same quality, and it's likely that some people will prefer this game while others prefer VIII. -Bloodworth

For me personally, I think 9 is just a little weaker than 8. From a structural standpoint, they're very similar and combat in 9 is great. But there's 2 notable downgrades for me. First, exploring Balduq isn't nearly as interesting as the Isle of Seiren. As Blood noted, the setting causes a lot of the dungeons to be samey and the overworld isn't much better. Secondly, and most personally for me, there's no character on the level of Dana. Now, the characters in 9 are all fine and quite likable. White Cat is great and certainly on the level of Laxia from 8 or Karna from Celceta. Even my least favorite ally in 9 (Renegade) is better than 8's Hummel. But there's just nobody even close to Dana, who is one of my favorite female leads in any rpg. The closest contender in 9, at least from a story structure, isn't a playable character, so you just don't have the time with them like you do Dana. Overall, I would also put 9 as a solid 7.5 while 8 would be more in the 8.5 range.

@@tomacas Dude... Aprilis? Like WTF

@@Ristyo1992 She's a great character, but I didn't feel any connection to her the way I did Dana. You spend so much time as Dana and Aprillis never gets that same screen time to develop.

@@tomacas Me as well. At first than the twist happen and they pulled of the tragic hero so well in this one. Dana, I just never cared about. She pretty much the stereotypical kind hearted maiden trope.

couldn’t agree more

Because most of the good ones are made by smaller teams that don't have bloated budgets that invite developmental clusterfucks like Final Fantasy as a series. Falcom for example were still using Sony's free PhyreEngine made for use for Vita and PS3 for Ys9. The new Tales game is using Unreal Engine 4 now, even after having created their own proprietary engine for the series. Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake also both abandoned Square Enix's own clusterfucks of an engine that only invited development troubles in the past in favour of just licensing Unreal Engine. So yeah, you can call the majority cheap and lazy on the graphical front but at least they hit deadlines. EDIT: It's not PhyreEngine. Rather, it's their own in-house engine called Yamaneko, and it's old as shit.

Lots of great point here - there's a reason why Falcom has stuck around since their inception in 1981, and still remains an independent company after all of these years.

Because all graphic improvements after that are more or less irrelevant for anime style games. At least imo.

@@andrewfennewald9465 I would disagree. Anime style games could look like an actual Anime and not like a relict of times longe gone. The explanation with the free engine from the PS3 and very very low budget make sense. But is sad nevertheless.

@@marrsil Persona 5 approach is a good one for Anime style games. The 3D part of that game doesn't really look any better than this one but all the 2D stuff looks so good it makes the whole game look better. For me personally though graphics are one of the least important parts of a game as long as they are above some minimum standard. I have been told Tales of Berseria had bad graphics but i dunno I though they looked pretty good. I do like good character models (or in the case of older games nice portraits) but I i guess I don't I care as much about the backgrounds.

Yeah but the boring tropical island in 8 didnt

Isn't it self contradictory to say "This rating is weak for this series that isn't above average."? 7.5 is average, so if this is the best of a below average series that seems about right to me. 7.5 is a good rating, it's not really harsh at all.

@@TinyPrinceGames I'm saying it's more than above average, the rating would suggest otherwise, but I guess you needed that spelled out for you.

@@repentantsky8285 You literally said "it's the best in the series and it's not an above average series." Which to me would mean that the best is probably average in an already niche genre.

@@user-os7ec4dm8x Yep.

@@TinyPrinceGames Just because you didn't understand what I was saying, doesn't mean you're right. Sorry.

All of them are

Ys VIII was incredibly fun.

? We avoided all the major spoilers and didn't even hint at a whole branch of the plot. -Bloodworth

@@EasyAllies the part where he meets the girl and get turned into a monster, thats not considered a spoiler? my bad if not

That's the game's basic premise and happens in the first 15 minutes. This is a direct line from one of the game's marketing releases: "Adol Christin is cursed by a mysterious woman and becomes a Monstrum, a powerful being who can exorcise monsters." -Bloodworth

@@EasyAllies lol well then. never mind Blood!

budget. But this game does look better than a PS2 game (I say that having played some recently). Its more mid to low end PS3 in a appearance which is enough for many of us.

lol yeah, ikr. I really cannot believe that a lot of people are saying it's better than ys 8 when even the environments in Balduq look worse than even the worse looking areas in Ys 8.

i feel ys taking place in a single city was not a good idea.

So much wrong is one paragraph. The Ys series has been increasing in quality and this game is amazing. Falcom is a small studio and doesn’t have a budget to look AAA. Every Ys game is good and if you want every game to look like a Sony game then you have way too high expectations.

@@TheLoneGamrlate comment but ys 8 has better environments, more quality and colourful graphics than what we got in ys 9. I think the setting is what ruins it completely. The game takes place mostly inside prisons and dungeons so thats why the surroundings are very bland, dull filled witj boring greyish areas.

@@lapsedilationdrive3943 there are times i forget 8 is a vita game.

ys has always been low buget. the issue is the game takes place in a single city instead of a region so the area variety is lacking.

Probably haven't even played it

@@Ristyo1992 don’t need to

@@afx3142 So you're irrelevant. Im done here

@@Ristyo1992 that doesn’t even make sense

That's the worst idea ever. Adol is an icon for the Ys fanbase. There's littlerly fans that complain that there are even party members in the new games. Even personally I don't mind the party sistem but I do play exclusively as Adol about 90% of the time.

@@Ristyo1992 I'm glad you like Adol, sounds like this game is for you then! Just voicing my opinion, I can't stand his presence.

Just wrote a pinned comment about this. Take a look. -Bloodworth

@@EasyAllies ok

You're going to miss out on a lot of great games with that attitude. -Bloodworth

But buy all Nihon Falcom games!

@@Patte-chan exactly. After starting going through trails and ys, it became really hard for me to enjoy any other rpg, if they don't have the Falcom touch.

This is a terrible take.

@@EasyAllies too many "great" games yet played, not gonna buy a 7!