After coming out on PlayStation 4, for Ys IX: Monster Nox the time has come to “play with the grown-ups”, with the new one PlayStation 5 edition that we offer you in review. As you can imagine, it is practically the same game whose characteristics we have already had the opportunity to test, but with some important cleaning to frame it. Let me be clear, we are not faced with a qualitative upheaval, but indeed some things seem not to have been touched at all, but let’s proceed in order.
The city of monsters
By briefly introducing the story, we find ourselves experiencing the events of the protagonist of the series Adol Christin “The Red”, a few years after the events we experienced in the previous chapters. Adol and the inseparable Dogi arrive in the prison city of Balduq, so called precisely because it is characterized by the presence of an immense prison inside. Not even the time to set foot, that our protagonist will come arrested by the guards, and through the dialogues it won’t take long to understand that the warrant against him was issued because he was suspected of being connected (or rather, having caused) the inexplicable incidents he witnessed, such as those concerning the shipwreck we seen in Ys VII: Lacrimosa of Danaor the Atlas Ocean crash we saw in Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim on PSP and PS2.
However, things are soon set to change, because with a quick escape and a little help, Adol finds himself wandering the prison and its dangerous dungeons, where the enigmatic Aprilis (with a bullet!) will give Adol a curse very particular, which will relegate him to the city, but which will give him gods amazing powers.
From this moment on, we will slowly discover the reasons for this action: between the world we know, and what is below it, there is a sort of intermediate veil, a dimension called Grimwald Nox. In this, horrible and very powerful creatures periodically appear, who want to attack to pass over and create a cataclysm. Aprilis then put up a team of mighty warriors, to whom, like Adol, he has given these great powers to fight monsters and, at the same time, discover the secret of the city and the prison, and then put an end to everything. These warriors with great powers, and now also Adol, are called Monstereach with his own unique peculiaritiesto be used as well out of combat.
The powers of the “Crimson King”
Gameplay-wise we are faced with an action seemingly simple, but which gradually manages to prove itself interesting and rich, although it is immediately clear that we are not dealing with a masterpiece, with the technical aspect that has remained a little too close to the previous titles. However the extreme fluidity of the combat systemthe variety in Adol’s choice of companions in combat (up to 3) and the great possibilities given by its new powers, manage to tease quite a lot (remember the return of the perfect parry and dodge dynamics, but also the coup de grace with the skills that returns SP). The most important thing however, in our opinion, is the possibility of completely remap the keys of the controllerthus choosing which keys to perform each single action with, adapting the game to your style without any effort.
There exploratory part in this title it is left a little more asideand although the city is very large (which we remember sees us as “prisoners”, and we will live a large part of the adventure inside it), they were cut some elements that we’ve seen in previous titles, though carefully.
What has been touched the most in this new version for PlayStation 5 is therefore clearly the graphic aspect, which sees the cleaner modelswith more vivid colors, and with a even greater image fluency. The leap in quality is not extreme, but still clear, especially if we face the fact that it is neither a remastered nor a remake, but a simple “power up”. Furthermore, it was the uploadsnow definitely faster, and which contribute to making the experience even “faster”, which is extremely needed given the large amount of dialogue present, as per practice in the series. Too bad to note that the DualSense has not been taken into consideration in the slightest.
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