There are so many popular game series from Japan that sometimes we are a bit lost. Besides Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, there are a lot of cool series to be found; such as Ys. Ys already has a decent series of games to name, with the latest addition since last week: Monstrum Nox. I was allowed to work on it and I was able to see if it is a worthy addition to this long-running game series.
The first game in the Ys series was released in 1987. They can rightly call themselves a long-running series if you ask me. Since the beginning of the Ys era, we also follow the same character: Adol Christen. This “crook” knows how to get himself in trouble continuously, but also to get out of it in a spectacular way. This is also the case in this new part: Monstrum Nox.
Adol and his buddy Dogi arrive in the city of Balduq, which was previously used in its entirety as a prison city. However, the arrival is a little less smooth than the duo had hoped. Apparently some fuss has been struck and the various militias are looking for the villains; the infamous Monstrum. It turns out, Adol has caused so many problems in his past that he is also wanted here. A number of soldiers with a “wanted” poster come to get a story and with some wrong answers you end up in prison. And that, my dear readers, is of course not good. The infamous prison you end up in is apparently so extensive that some of the guards themselves do not know where all the corridors lead.
Now it is true that Adol does not just surrender to his fateful arrest. With a cleverly obtained fork, he breaks out of his cell and the escape can begin! However, during his mission he meets an unknown and unexpected person; Aprillis. This dark figure shoots a red-hot bullet through his face with a special gun and suddenly Adol has a mountain of new powers, different hair and a weapon that serves him well.
Our beautiful adventure really starts here, after Adol has got his new mountain powers. Over the next few days, he finds out exactly what he has become and that he is not alone, but that he is now officially part of the Monstrum. Like them, you now also bear the curse of a Monstrum. You can’t leave town anymore.
Knock squad
Each of the Monstrum looks very different in real life than in its special form. For example, Adol gets red hair, different clothes and some changes on his face. So are the other characters. Throughout the story you will meet the different teammates and they will help you during your adventure. In the end, you put together your team and try to figure out which combination works best. Each character naturally has their own skills and special abilities. It is always a nice puzzle for me to figure out which properties you can combine well to become an indestructible force. It always goes without saying, but almost every time I end with the emphasis on either sneaking and fast kills, or on a tank team, where you can absorb infinite blows like a sponge. It’s hard to get out of your comfort zone!
Ys is a real JRPG, and such a real JRPG requires a nice palette of anime characters. You will find all the stereotypes back: a shy girl who can do much more than she thinks, the tough guy who wants to fight with everyone to show that he is strong, the quiet figure who is secretly extremely strong and of course a kind of mother figure. . Anyone who has ever watched anime will recognize this. It is a good formula in my opinion, because it has been working well for years and always creates nice dynamics in a group.
The JRPG elements
Despite the fact that the type of characters are not very innovative, the unique story ensures that this is not disturbing. I had a constant urge to continue with the story to see how it unfolds, what else is in store for us and to think about what might be the big plot twist. You as Adol are also making considerable progress, just like the team you are putting together. As with most RPGs, you collect the so-called while doing missions and defeating monsters experience points . After a while you level up and unlock new abilities and powers! Each character in this case has the option of carrying four special attacks, all well suited to the type of hunter. It is fun to experiment with these and to combine them well.
Over the course of the story, you will acquire some sort of inn, which will act as a hub for you and your Monstrum. Here you can start missions, rest with your teammates and other help, talk and prepare for your next adventure. Much of this preparation revolves around preparing food. We have seen this before in similar games, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. During your adventures you collect ingredients, or you go to the market for your vegetables as a normal citizen. Give everything to the flamboyant inn manager and he will make a nice baking, which can provide you with different effects. It is annoying, though, if you play at a more difficult grade and you also catch a bit more punches, you may push an 8-course dinner in the back of your throat while fighting. Difficult if you have just been cooking for an hour and you are through it in 2 minutes.
In addition to food, your equipment also plays an important role. The first sword you get a few hours later does as much damage as a letter opener, and your armor doesn’t work much better than a wet sandwich. Fortunately, you will have plenty of opportunities to mine minerals, where you can make solid new weapons and armor yourself (with the help of excellent blacksmiths). All from the pub! That could hardly be better.
The in-between world
Of course it is great fun, such a group with exceptional buddies, but of course that requires a bit of action, right ?! In that case, rest assured, because you will encounter more than enough action in Monstrum Nox. The Monstrum are a kind of hunters, although they do not do this in the usual way. In addition to the normal world, there is a kind of in-between world, before you would make the switch to the hereafter. This in-between world is also called the Grimwald Nox. This domain is overrun with monsters of all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they even slip through the paper-thin parting into the normal world, putting people in danger. This is where your club comes into action.
Every now and then you will be summoned by Aprillis, the leader who shoots people to recruit them to rally in the Grimwald Nox. It is then up to you to eliminate the huge hordes of monsters. The monsters come at you in a number of connecting waves. So you don’t get the time to rest for a while, but have to continue quickly after the first dozen samples. These monsters, besides eating you, have the goal of breaking the so-called Sphene. This mysterious pillar protects the separation between the normal world and Grimwald Nox, which is therefore of great importance. To be honest, these were pretty boring fights. The monsters come at you in large groups and at that moment it actually becomes a high percentage of ‘buttons ramming’. There is no point in focusing on one monster, because your teammates also start pounding on it like a bunch of barbarians. So join us! At that point, little tactics are involved. You hit it until you get to the last wave, where some kind of final boss appears, and you have saved humanity from destruction again. Nice of course, but after two or three times I didn’t get much satisfaction out of it.
Because of this I have unfortunately been killed more often than I would like. By paying less attention during the hordes of monsters, you can catch quite a bit if you don’t dodge in time. This is also where one of my bigger frustration points for the game comes from: it’s weirdly balanced. I am not averse to challenges and often having to try (boss) fights again. However, I find it immensely frustrating when I have to repeat something many times due to a bad balance. For example, I found that you can find very few items to heal yourself, so cooking is really a must in advance, which of course you get used to. But given certain items in the areas where you fight a lot, only for 100 hit points Being able to heal (life points), against the soon 3000 you have, it soon hardly has any effect. Add to that the fact that most larger enemies quickly deal 500/600 damage per hit and you are more in your menu chewing away blocks of cheese than fighting. If you set the game to a simpler setting, which is also possible, you can just as well give the controller to your sleeping cat. You will then go through it very easily. Anyway, we take a little tinkering with the settings and hold back not to swing your controller against the wall.
2021 of 2011
In terms of content, Monstrum Nox is very entertaining. The city is well designed, I think the story is very interesting and the characters are fun. I just had to take a good look, more often than I would like, to see if the game is not accidentally ten years old. And why do I have to pay attention to that, I hear you think.
I’ll explain that to you in great detail. The game is very sharp at first, with the resolution absolutely nothing wrong and I had no problems counting pixels on my large TV. But, if you look at the game’s graphics, and some really clumsy technical glitches, it wasn’t all that good. The game could just as well have ended up on the Playstation 3 in terms of graphics. Buildings, including round parts, are often angular with poor and unclear details. It is a huge city, you can see from tall buildings and you can almost call it a metropolis, but there are about 40 people walking around. I don’t know if you’re ever in a big city on an average weekday afternoon, but there are always a bit more people around there.
Also rows of crops in one of the fields all move in exactly the same way, with exactly the same twigs. A nice case of copying / pasting. Now I don’t expect every game to achieve the graphics standard of a God of War or Red Dead Redemption 2, but actually this is not entirely justifiable in 2021.
Another awkward (but also funny) point is the (poor) voice acting. There is nothing wrong with the voices during cut scenes, both the Japanese and English voices are super good. What I’m really aiming for are the empty words that Adol speaks during normal conversations. As soon as you choose a response during a conversation, it sometimes happens that he only says “Yeah”, “Hm hm” “Alright”. This can seem quite strange, given that the questions hardly ever require an answer in that way. You sometimes discuss plans for how to proceed, and then you get something like: “So Adol, how do you think we can best infiltrate the prison?” Why our protagonist just says “Hmm hm” and everyone is impressed. Then leave out those bland bits of voice acting.
Verdict
There are certainly some points for improvement and things that I absolutely do not understand that it can still come in a game in 2021. Nevertheless, every time, and still have, I have enjoyed starting up Ys: Monstrum Nox to further explore Adol’s adventures. It fits well in the home series, where all Ys games have a good difficulty level. I think that with Monstrum Nox they are certainly well on their way to making even better new games in the series. I just see this as a step in the right direction, which fans of the series will be especially happy with.
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