That's exciting to hear! And dang, if it's more hype than Azure, then it must be quite good. It must feel good to finally be finishing up the Cold Steel saga! Then there's Reverie as the actual conclusion of the series up to that point... it just never ends lmao. But I've heard quite good things about Reverie and Daybreak, so I'm looking forward to them myself, though at this rate, it may be a little while before I get to them haha.

I'm glad that you think the music is good! It did get tiring to see redditors complain about stuff and try to sound intelligent without really saying anything. I don't recall being super impressed with Cold Steel III's soundtrack, but to be fair, I did only play the prologue and a tiny bit of Chapter 1, and my favorite tunes were usually pretty late into the game, not that that was the only place the good music was of course.

Oh wow! Man, how the turn tables lol, now you're the one that's ahead of me! I suppose that's what happens when Fortnite and Rock Band suck up all my gaming time (something I never would've considered possible a year ago, at least for the former of the two).
On that note, I hope you enjoy it! Strap in, I think it's even longer than Cold Steel III!!

I really liked Ys IX as well, so I'm glad to hear you like it too! I think I like it more than VIII tbh, but that doesn't mean I don't like VIII. One thing I didn't particularly care for were the character designs, like, I liked some of them, such as Aprilis's, and Krysha's, but I wish they would bring back Classic Adol(TM). It seems like they aren't going to beyond a DLC costume or preorder bonus here and there, so I guess I should just let go of that.

Oh God, the Falcom fanbase. I browsed r/falcom for a little while, but the amount of negativity and just misery that oozed from that sub was too much to bear. I really liked Ys IX's music too, personally. I can't imagine having that much hate for something as banal as a videogame music composer! Like, how awful are their lives that they just spew vitriol all day and get hundreds of meaningless up arrows? I concur with your conclusion. They're the worst.