Ys: The Call of Solum
Believe it or not, but there's an online Ys as well, but it bears very little resemblance to the actual games despite the name.
You can't hop online and just start slashing away at everyone you see with impunity. Instead, it's Ys done as an MMORPG which means it's a grinding you will go. At least that's how it looks from the videos that I've watched and it's the impression that I'm getting from what I've been able to find.
It takes place several centuries after the events of Ys VI, so anyone familiar to fans won't be around, although its character creation toolset seems to be capable of creating someone that looks like Adol if you can't be without your favorite protagonist. In this adventure, the Romun Empire is making strides to conquer the world...again...providing ample opportunity for tripping up their plans while uncovering the mysteries of the land.
Quick! To the next raiding area!
Three races are offered up: Eresians, Afrocans, and the Kimoans. Eresians are your typical human-types, red hair included, and seem to strike a decent balance between physical combat and the magical arts. Afrocans resemble bigger versions of Eresians and come off as the heavy hitters of the world, more at home with battle axes than in peacemaking. And the diminutive Kimoans are the most agile (and elvish-like) of the three races and are best suited to classes that rely on their unique abilities, such as crafting and archery.
Aside from gender, you can alter a few cosmetic characteristics to customize your look online.
The remaining info on what actually happened to its release was pretty convoluted. What I do know is that it's still out in South Korea (where it came out in 2007) and Japan and is free to play, courtesy of South Korean developer, CJ Internet, which created the game for Falcom. It uses microtransactions to generate revenue and it's apparently doing okay in South Korea. It's also supposed to be out in Europe, but I could find even less hard information on how that went.
It's an MMO, so you knew there had to be lots of fighting ("grinding").
There may be a few good reasons for that. One being that IPs from Asia and North America were apparently being blocked by the servers in Europe when held its open beta there mid-2009, meaning that no one from outside that region could get in unless they did a little creative routing to get around it. The other is that it didn't last very long over there when the beta started before shutting down on November 30th in the same year.
And not only did the game go away, but Key To Play (the portal responsible for bringing Ys Online and Priston Tale II to Europe) had also vanished at around the same time. It was especially worse for fans of Falcom's Sound Team JDK since the European site offered a selection of track from the game as a free download before going down.
With that, it's probably a safe bet that any hope for the game to come over to North America is dead unless you can read the Korean or Japanese. But at least you can still buy power leveling services for it along with gold if you ever get into the game.
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