Ys IX: Monstrum Nox Demo Impressions

A demo for YS IX was released on the Playstation 4 PSN shop today. I downloaded it, played it, and now here are my first impressions of the demo.

The YS IX demo is now available on the Playstation 4 PSN shop. Here are my first thoughts on the demo.

YS IX is a really good looking game so far. I like the graphics, especially the anime look of the characters. YS IX reminds me a lot of how Fire Emblem Three Houses looks!

Gameplay wise, YS IX is a dungeon crawling rpg with fast combat. Think Final Fantasy 15 meets Diablo. YS IX even has the same teleportation during combat feature that FF15 had. There are some unique aspects to the gameplay though.

For instance, in the first part of the demo that I tried, I found that your characters can run up walls! Its a pretty cool ability and allows you to get to higher areas. In the second part of the demo, I learned the gliding ability which allows you to get to far off places. These two abilities combined with the fast combat make YS IX’s dungeons fun to explore in the demo.

Unfortunately, the demo is very short. It has two separate areas that you can explore…for ten minutes each. You can do a lot in that time but the demo will absolutely leave you wanting more.

While the combat is fun and the exploration is neat, not everything about the demo is great. The in-game camera is a mess. It jumps all over the place and is very hard to control especially during combat. The camera makes it easy to get turned around too, despite the in-game map. And the lock-on is hard to figure out, it can get locked on to distant targets and make the camera act a little wild.

Despite the camera issues and the short amount of play time, I had a lot of fun with the YS IX demo. The combat is fun, exploration is neat, and I love running up walls and gliding. The game has an excellent rpg menu too!

Overall I enjoyed the demo and I want to play more of this game!

YS IX: Monstrum Nox will be out on February 2nd, 2020. The demo is available now for PSN.

Have you checked out the demo? What do you think of YS IX?