Falcom revealed new info, gameplay and a new web commercial forYs IX: Monstrum Noxthrough the game’s official site and on this week’s Dengeki PS Live. We learned more about the story lore behind the Monstrum characters and the Grimwald Night battles, which are similar to the defense battles ofYs VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana.
The gameplay event scene shown on Dengeki PS Liveshowed more of the scene we saw at the end of theprevious trailer.Aprilis is shown introducing the Red King/Adol to the other Monstrum characters. Basically, Aprilis explains to Adol how the Monstrum are cursed, forced to fight in this alternate dimension, which is shrouded in night, with a red moon shining in the sky.
In this dimension, the Monstrum need to “cleanse evil spirits”, monsters called “Larva”. This above is one of the many types of Larva monsters. If the Monstrum don’t defeat them, they can’t go back to their normal lives and selves in the normal world. Moreover, the other world and the normal world will end up merging, making the Larva spill out. Because of their curse, the Monstrum can’t escape this fate, and they don’t have a choice in all this. Hence why some of the Monstrum, Hawk especially, are particularly hostile toward Aprilis, calling her a “bitch I’ll definitely kill one day”. Falcom has been hinting multiple times Aprilis will be a very special character, most notably because her name doesn’t end in “a”, unlike girls who had a romantic-like relationship with Adol in past games.
As shown inprevious gameplay videos, some places in the city of Balduq have crystals of accumulated dark energy. Touching those crystals makes the scenery change to monotone, time will stop, and the characters transform into their Monstrum form. Defeating the Larva monsters appearing then will fill up the Nox Gauge. These are “Larva Battles” which were previously mentioned.
Falcom also revealed how as you clear Grimwald Night battles, barriers around the game’s world and the city of Balduq will break, allowing you to access new areas. This will unlock new quests and new things to do. This means new Larva Battles and Grimwald Night marked quests to do, filling up the Nox Gauge again, and ending up triggering another Grimwald Night battle.
On the Dengeki PS Live stream, however, they stressed how this isn’t necessarily how you progress through the main story. Most of the areas unlocked this way are optional sub-dungeons where you’ll find bonus items.
They also mentioned how the Grimwald Night battles have the highest amount of characters fighting simultaneously in theYsseries yet. Multiple different characters besides the Monstrum will end up participating in these battles. We can see Dogi in the UI in the new commercial for example.
Near the end of theYs IXsegment on the Dengeki PS Live stream, they also showed the package for the game’s Limited Edition and how illustrations of the characters appear on its cover depending on the temperature. Falcom often does peculiar packages like that forYsgames' limited editions.
Lastly, Falcom recently revealedYs IX’s title screen on twitter. It shows an artwork with Aprilis, one of the first artwork revealed for the game.
The beginning of the corner also included an introduction of the new sub-characters. We’ve already translated their profiles in a previous article. The Dengeki journalists mentioned more sub-characters will be revealed by Falcom at the end of the month. They also hinted thatYs IXwill be playable at Tokyo Game Show 2019 in September, right before the game launches.
Ys IX: Monstrum Noxlaunches on September 26 in Japan, on PS4.The game isn’t scheduled to come westfor now as Falcom is focusing on releasing it in Japan first. You can read more inour interview with Toshihiro Kondo.
We’ll update this article when Falcom officially publishesYs IX’sthird commercial in higher quality. For now, it’s visible on the Dengeki PS Live stream at the timestamp I’ve linked below.
Update: Falcom published the thirdYs IX: Monstrum Noxweb commercial on its official YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/embed/KiRwsbE8kGM
