It's pretty great. I didn't like it as much as Ys 8/9, but it's a welcome new entry to the Ys series with a fairly distinct battle system compared to the party games. Having Karja and Adol be the only playables works pretty well for streamlining the combat, and the combo attacks/shielding adds a lot of depth to battles. They also do a decent job at discouraging skill spamming—if you use the same skill twice in a row, you'll break your combo and you can say bye bye to decreased SP costs. Boss fights are mostly pretty well designed and push the system to its limits, until you've mastered accurate guarding.
Island exploration is alright, most islands are pretty small and linear, but they use this to provide decent platforming challenges and traversal skills. If you're looking for exploration of Ys 8 or the verticality of Ys 9, you'll probably be disappointed, but the areas otherwise serve for good combat arenas. Biome variety is lacking for most of the game—I hope you like grassy plains—but does sort of get better later on. Somewhat.
Sea exploration itself is miserable at first, you move far too slowly and it feels like a chore trying to find islands. This gets better as you gain upgrades to make your ship move/turn/boost faster, but I wouldn't blame people dropping the game out of frustration before getting to that point. The ship combat itself is... a big miss, frankly, and never gets much better. It's super clunky and tedious, and the most fun you'll be getting is spamming a billion special cannon balls and watching everything go boom.
Visually I think this looks mostly fine. Doesn't look as good as Kuro for sure, and the lack of biome variety doesn't do it any favours, but it's serviceable and the characters look good. I would say it suffers from a distinct lack of 3D art style, but that applies to every modern Falcom game tbh.
Cast was fun, I probably liked them a bit more than 8's (aside from Dana who you can't really beat) but not as much as 9's. Karja is really awesome and a great partner for Adol this game, which they thankfully leave entirely platonic—love their bro bond. Side cast are fine, they have the arcs you'd expect if you've played 8/9, though I did find one character's a little rushed and weirdly handled. Plot characters that are too spoilery to talk about are all really good. Villains are alright, they feel like typical battle shonen villains and most do the job.
The story itself was pretty good—didn't like it as much as 8/9's, but I'd say it's one of the better Ys stories for sure. There is a lot of dialogue, more than I expected, which I don't mind but I could see more traditional Ys fans not being crazy on like Ys 9. I thought the finale and ending were really really good, and a highlight of the game.
There's a fun little secret right at the end that certainly makes me interested in the future of this series! I do hope the next entry takes place after 9 in the timeline, as while this game was more important to the series than I expected, I personally prefer older Adol and would like to see what's going on in Romn. Though an Ys V remake would work too.
Soundtrack is... eh. There are some highlights, such as the final boss and credits themes (second for both), a couple of island and town themes, but otherwise it's pretty forgettable. Par for the course with modern Falcom I suppose, but I honestly found it worse than the soundtracks of both Kuro games.
I think this review came off a bit more negative than I intended, but basically the core of this game is land gameplay and battles, which they really nail. There's also plenty of side content and NPC dialogue that you'd expect from a Falcom game, and it's all fairly high quality (some of those side quests go kinda crazy). It's no masterpiece, but it's one of Falcom's better games imo, and I think there's a lot to look forward to when it's localised. Turns out spending more than a year working on a game is pretty beneficial!
Island exploration is alright, most islands are pretty small and linear, but they use this to provide decent platforming challenges and traversal skills. If you're looking for exploration of Ys 8 or the verticality of Ys 9, you'll probably be disappointed, but the areas otherwise serve for good combat arenas. Biome variety is lacking for most of the game—I hope you like grassy plains—but does sort of get better later on. Somewhat.
Sea exploration itself is miserable at first, you move far too slowly and it feels like a chore trying to find islands. This gets better as you gain upgrades to make your ship move/turn/boost faster, but I wouldn't blame people dropping the game out of frustration before getting to that point. The ship combat itself is... a big miss, frankly, and never gets much better. It's super clunky and tedious, and the most fun you'll be getting is spamming a billion special cannon balls and watching everything go boom.
Visually I think this looks mostly fine. Doesn't look as good as Kuro for sure, and the lack of biome variety doesn't do it any favours, but it's serviceable and the characters look good. I would say it suffers from a distinct lack of 3D art style, but that applies to every modern Falcom game tbh.
Cast was fun, I probably liked them a bit more than 8's (aside from Dana who you can't really beat) but not as much as 9's. Karja is really awesome and a great partner for Adol this game, which they thankfully leave entirely platonic—love their bro bond. Side cast are fine, they have the arcs you'd expect if you've played 8/9, though I did find one character's a little rushed and weirdly handled. Plot characters that are too spoilery to talk about are all really good. Villains are alright, they feel like typical battle shonen villains and most do the job.
The story itself was pretty good—didn't like it as much as 8/9's, but I'd say it's one of the better Ys stories for sure. There is a lot of dialogue, more than I expected, which I don't mind but I could see more traditional Ys fans not being crazy on like Ys 9. I thought the finale and ending were really really good, and a highlight of the game.
There's a fun little secret right at the end that certainly makes me interested in the future of this series! I do hope the next entry takes place after 9 in the timeline, as while this game was more important to the series than I expected, I personally prefer older Adol and would like to see what's going on in Romn. Though an Ys V remake would work too.
Soundtrack is... eh. There are some highlights, such as the final boss and credits themes (second for both), a couple of island and town themes, but otherwise it's pretty forgettable. Par for the course with modern Falcom I suppose, but I honestly found it worse than the soundtracks of both Kuro games.
I think this review came off a bit more negative than I intended, but basically the core of this game is land gameplay and battles, which they really nail. There's also plenty of side content and NPC dialogue that you'd expect from a Falcom game, and it's all fairly high quality (some of those side quests go kinda crazy). It's no masterpiece, but it's one of Falcom's better games imo, and I think there's a lot to look forward to when it's localised. Turns out spending more than a year working on a game is pretty beneficial!