Ys IX and Ys X: Monstrum and Nordics
A prison break and a sea voyage: the underdog in her confident years.
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox (Japan 2019, West 2021) imprisons Adol in the city of Balduq and frees him as a Monstrum, one of six gifted fugitives whose powers, wall-running, gliding, dimension-stepping, turn the city itself into the series' most vertical map. It is Ys VIII's party engine dressed in gothic red and black.
Ys X: Nordics (Japan September 2023, worldwide October 2024) deliberately shrinks the cast to two: a young Adol, earlier in his journals than either VIII or IX, bound by fate to the Norman warrior Karja Balta, sailing and fighting ship-to-ship across Obelia Bay, the series' first naval combat. An enhanced edition, Ys X: Proud Nordics, followed on Switch 2 in Japan in July 2025.
THE MODERN MAP
Japan first, then the worldBalduq
One city, fully climbable: IX trades the island wilderness for rooftops, and its raid missions defend the Monstrums' hideout in tower-defense interludes.
The duo system
X abandons the three-person party for a linked pair, Adol and Karja sharing one combo gauge, a deliberate return to the series' solo roots inside its newest engine.
The closing gap
IX took sixteen months to come west; X took thirteen, with simultaneous multi-platform launches. The underdog's publishing story is the sound of a gap closing.