Ys X makes its jump into Western shores, bringing tremendous RPG action and storytelling with it
I go way back with the Ys games. They may have fallen into the background behind the likes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy but the series never went away. In fact there’s been a bit of a resurgence, as Nihon Falcom has started remastering and remaking some of the series earliest games for modern platforms.
So don’t call it a comeback.
Ys X: Nordics originally came out last year in Japan and has now made its way a year later to Western gamers. The dev team behind the Ys series is part of the same studio that makes the Trails games. This roughly 50-or-so deep Nihon Falcon studio manage to make a game every year, often bouncing back and forth between Ys and Trails. The Ys games are notoriously known for having massively long scripts with huge stories, so translating them obviously takes a while and may be a reason that we don’t get the latest installments until they’ve been out in Japan for several months or years already.
With a speed of development so quick and so leveraged on budget and release factors, it has some drawbacks that AA-level projects might. The aesthetic and presentation of the games take an aside, sure, but that’s not really the focus. The gameplay and mechanics and plot are the keys here; with Ys especially that involves evolving and changing their gameplay style so that every game feels fresh and full of new ideas. In Ys X that takes the form of something akin to a bullet time gameplay style, with the battles revolving around one person. It takes the gameplay of Ys VIII and Ys IX, which were party-based, and sort of scraps it to focus on just two characters. The two characters are linked as they fight battles, restricted by mana. This causes us to actively switch between the two for different effects and abilities. For instance one character is feisty and fast while the other is slow and can stagger, so knowing when to jump back and forth becomes an important balancing act. Both characters can come together as a sort of shield, too, which becomes necessary when the speed of the battles get frantic and fast. Set on a 3D plane these battles require us to really know how to control, how to parry, how to follow the rules of the game that its given us in order to make it through. We may learn how to make ice and water at one point, but will need to realize that maybe we don’t want to use that ability set against a boss who uses electricity powers.
The game builds on these types of gameplay “walls” so that we learn something, find a use for it, but then hit another puzzle-like hurdle where we learn the next step to clear it.
Nordics takes place after Ys II, with series protagonist Adol directly referencing his age and experience. For decades in the series Adol has somehow mysteriously known how to sail and command a ship, something that has been glossed over in the game plots, but in Nordics the plot addresses it. This is how Adol meets a specific girl and learns to take to the seas. Because the series is steeped in lore like this it may be a little difficult for newcomers to grasp the magnitude of some of the plot points, with some cutscene choices leaving even us perplexed. But that shouldn’t hamper the enjoyment of the gameplay systems, which are solid and speedy and full of action.
Ys X: Nordics is an enjoyable, active RPG with complex systems that continue to build and pay off through every progression forward.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It originally appeared on the October 20, 2024 episode of The SideQuest. Images and video courtesy the publisher.
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