Sure it has the best and most polished gameplay (playing by release date). But holy fuck the first few chapters suck so much ass. I can't believe Dogi got replaced by old alcoholic fart that isn't fun to play as and mostly talks about pissing his pants in cutscenes. Other cast members aren't much better. Imagine being a newcomer to Ys series and the first 5 hours of cutscenes Laxia behaves like a spoiled brat and talks about how "there are a lot of different folks in this world". Other 2 characters are actually fun to use aside from the fact that Hammel leaves the party for a long time for no fucking reason. Hot take: this game only needed Adol and Dana as party members. What is the actual point of having cheer leading squad of characters with 0 substance?
Pacing of this game is absolutely fucked: 10 corridor dungeons in a row, a mandatory fucking raid (fuck this minigame), a filler arc just as story is about to get interesting, turned off fast travel makes you run for 10 minutes through old areas.
My opinion on the story started to improve near the end, but Kondo pulled the most Kiseki bullshit Deus Ex Machina for the ending. I can't believe the true ending is worse then the bad ending. (BTW multiple endings for the first time in the series. Didn't do sidequests? Fuck you, go replay 70 hours game haha.)
Anyway the verdict is the same as for ys seven:
if this game was twice shorter it would be great. I really hope that Kiseki desease stops at 9, amen 🙏🙏🙏