Kind of a letdown after the highest possible highs of “Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA,” but maybe that’s to be expected. The writing is as clever and thrilling as ever, but the boring locale and interminable, mandatory tower defense segments really suck all the fun out of an otherwise engaging game. Combat and level design is as fun as ever, but the poor optimization had my recently-rethermal’d PS4 Pro screeching like a jet engine during conversation sequences, and quiet as a lamb during the intense combat.

It’s clear Falcom is moving on from this engine and this game generally feels like a bit of a trifle; brief, less-inspired and coming off as something of a celebration of Ys games past. It’s hard to hold too many of these shortcomings against it when Falcom’s worst is better than just about any Action-RPG out there....but I did turn the difficulty to Easy just to get through to the end around 60% through.

When playing Ys VIII, I turned the difficulty up.