Okay, I'm guessing back in the day this was the first Ys with a party system and full 3D rendering, it has the DNA of games to come, and as suchity has its rough edges, it wouldn't be so intrusive if this was like a 2002 game, but this was from 2009 and the graphics are oof, textures are really low so it looks like a N64 game, the audio quality feels lower than it should. The party AI is very basic, there's no party "stance" but you can turn off skills so your AI partners don't spam skills you don't want them to (they use any learned skill not just the equipped ones), skills are incredibly tedious to level up. Therefore, it's better to comit to just four so they get to the endgame almost at max level, unfortunately some of the skills will be only available really late in the game which is frustrating., There's also a little bit of grind to do (jrpgs, amirite) and it's pretty heavy handed in the last dungeons because you are gonna need hundreds of soulstones that only drop in there.
At least the story is pretty straightforward (except for the big bad guy reveal, but that was on me, I should have seen it coming) and the ending is exactly what I expected and the music is pretty good.
And hey, this is the very first time Adolf don't start falling overborad or sinking a ship, so he's making progress, I thought for a moment Dogi was gonna be the ladies man this time around, but I was disappointed.
Overall, pretty good, better than Ys 6, and with a better ending than Ys 8 (yes, I am still salty about it).