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Release Notes for Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

 Ys IX Patch 1.1.2

Introducing Local Co-op as well as 16:10 Aspect Ratio Support, and a Slew of Minor Fixes

It has been a while, but today we are very happy to announce a major update to Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. The most important new feature this update introduces is local co-op. Two players can join together to not only fight monsters and explore dungeons (as in Ys VIII), but also explore the city of Balduq. Beyond co-op, this update also brings support for aspect ratios narrower than 16:9 and a number of more minor bug fixes which we have accumulated since the release. These will be detailed at the end of this announcement.

Local Co-op

The local co-op feature allows two players to play Ys IX together, at every point in the story where more than one character is available.

Note that there is an in-game co-op setting which you need to enable in order for co-op to be available. Once this setting is enabled, the co-op player can drop in and out of the game using the "Start" (or equivalent) button on any non-primary controller, while the "Select" button on the secondary controller toggles the player ID indicators ("P1" and "P2") on and off.

Unlike Ys VIII, where co-op was mostly limited to combat, the second player is largely equivalent to the primary player in terms of capabilities in Ys IX, including movement and combat abilities, using Monstrum Gifts, discovering and triggering landmarks, enemies and events, opening chests, picking up collectibles, and initiating dialogue. Only interacting with menus and the map is restricted to player one. Another significant improvement over the co-op feature in Ys VIII is that character switching is implemented individually for each player: that is, if there are 3 characters in the current party, players one and two can both independently switch to the currently-unused character without affecting each other.

Of course, given the experimental nature of this feature, there are some constraints and restrictions to keep in mind:

16:10 Aspect Ratio Support

Previous versions of Ys IX used letterboxing for any resolution aspect ratio narrower than 16:9. In this version, all 3D scenes render at full resolution for aspect ratios such as 16:10 (even down to 4:3). 2D elements such as the menu or map screens will still be letterboxed as, just like for ultrawide, the effort to redesign all of these to be aspect-ratio-independent is prohibitive.

Full Changelog
New Features
Fixes and Improvements

I am personally very much a fan of local co-op in games, and feel like too few RPGs in particular offer the option to play their main campaign in co-op. I hope this update brightens the day of my fellow co-op aficionados out there, as well as anyone playing on a 16:10 monitor.

Peter "Durante" Thoman, PH3

Patch 1.0.6 Release Notes (July 26th 2021)

Hi everyone,

we have fixed various minor issues with Ys 9 and implemented some new features:

Input / Controls
Monitor / Display
Draw Distance / LoD
Miscellaneous

Note: Due to the additional graphics improvements now associated with the draw distance setting, higher levels will have a somewhat higher performance impact than on the previous version. Also, the "Lunatic" setting is strictly intended for very high-end systems and future proofing.

Update July 12th 2021

Hi everyone,

there were several reported issues which could be fixed quickly, so we pushed out a minor patch: