While America is celebrating its birthday, otaku in Los Angeles are celebrating the first day of Anime Expo, the largest annual anime convention in the United States. It’s not all about anime though, as video games also have a large presence in the convention, and fans of Nihon Falcom might especially have enjoyed the event with Falcom President Toshihoro Kondo as one of the convention’s guests of honor. We were on location and definitely enjoyed the panel.
Publisher NIS America’s first panel of the event was the Ys X: Nordics gameplay panel. Kondo-san was featured in it to talk about some of the detailings about the upcoming game, including a little bit about the game’s narrative, features, and he even took on a boss in the game in front of panel audience audience before unveiling a new trailer for the game that included the game’s release date (seen above).
Though it’s obviously the tenth mainline game in the series, Ys X: Nordics takes place after Ys I & II when he’s on his way to Celceta. Adol is only 17 in this one, so he’s hardly the seasoned adventurer fans may have grown to live in Lacrimosa of Dana or Monstrum Nox.
Amazingly enough, though he’s enroute somewhere else entirely, he doesn’t end up shipwrecked again like he usually does. This time he gets into a run-in with pirates and comes across Karja Ballta, the daughter of Grimson of the famed Ballta Seaforce. She’s otherwise known as the Pirate Princess, and we later find that she has a certain special connection to Adol, both in gameplay and narrative.
With Adol and Karja pretty much attached by the hip in this game, Ys X ditches the party system from Ys VIII and IX in favor of a system that lets you switch back and forth between both characters. Traversal also looks more lively as they both also possess a grappling hook ability to get to far spaces. The various dungeons and mountains to explore on land each looked interesting with booby traps and obstacles to be aware of when running around. We even saw the duo dealing with light environmental puzzle solving in the form of Karja making ice pillars to climb and Adol burning down branches and vines.
Off the land, a lot of the gameplay takes place, interestingly enough, on Adol’s ship as the sea is now the game’s base of operations. We even saw ship fights–nothing as gritty and Skull & Bones, but they’re definitely new to the series.
Shortly after that, Kondo-san played an early boss fight in front of the audience in the game’s Time Attack mode. It was pretty cool to see some of the differences with how combat is especially when compared to the last few games in the series. We saw Kondo as Adol and Karja pretty much egging on the boss on, and seemingly switching between the two to sort of act as a form of dodging some of the boss’ attacks head-on. It took him around five minutes to finish the boss off.
The panel concluded with a couple of questions picked from NIS America’s social media. The first question was about Kondo-san’s favorite feature in Ys X, to which he responded talking about the added depth that comes with not utilizing a party system in the game.
When asked about the most challenging part when developing a prequel, Kondo-san mentioned thinking about how Adol would be as a much younger person especially when compared to the Adol in Ys IX. He then mentioned that he hopes the audience who plays Ys X will come to enjoy this younger Adol, and he also mentioned he liked thinking about how Adol deals with traveling with a new woman in the game who wasn’t Feena from the first two games.
Kondo-san closed things off with the release date trailer of Ys X: Nordics. The game will be out on the Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC on October 25, 2024.
The Ys X panel was just one of a plethora of cool gaming-related things we did while at Anime Expo, so keep it on SmashPad for more!
While America is celebrating its birthday, otaku in Los Angeles are celebrating the first day of Anime Expo, the largest annual anime convention in the United States. It’s not all about anime though, as video games also have a large…
While America is celebrating its birthday, otaku in Los Angeles are celebrating the first day of Anime Expo, the largest annual anime convention in the United States. It’s not all about anime though, as video games also have a large presence in the convention, and fans of Nihon Falcom might especially have enjoyed the event with Falcom President Toshihoro Kondo as one of the convention’s guests of honor. We were on location and definitely enjoyed the panel.
Publisher NIS America’s first panel of the event was the Ys X: Nordics gameplay panel. Kondo-san was featured in it to talk about some of the detailings about the upcoming game, including a little bit about the game’s narrative, features, and he even took on a boss in the game in front of panel audience audience before unveiling a new trailer for the game that included the game’s release date (seen above).
Though it’s obviously the tenth mainline game in the series, Ys X: Nordics takes place after Ys I & II when he’s on his way to Celceta. Adol is only 17 in this one, so he’s hardly the seasoned adventurer fans may have grown to live in Lacrimosa of Dana or Monstrum Nox.
Amazingly enough, though he’s enroute somewhere else entirely, he doesn’t end up shipwrecked again like he usually does. This time he gets into a run-in with pirates and comes across Karja Ballta, the daughter of Grimson of the famed Ballta Seaforce. She’s otherwise known as the Pirate Princess, and we later find that she has a certain special connection to Adol, both in gameplay and narrative.
With Adol and Karja pretty much attached by the hip in this game, Ys X ditches the party system from Ys VIII and IX in favor of a system that lets you switch back and forth between both characters. Traversal also looks more lively as they both also possess a grappling hook ability to get to far spaces. The various dungeons and mountains to explore on land each looked interesting with booby traps and obstacles to be aware of when running around. We even saw the duo dealing with light environmental puzzle solving in the form of Karja making ice pillars to climb and Adol burning down branches and vines.
Off the land, a lot of the gameplay takes place, interestingly enough, on Adol’s ship as the sea is now the game’s base of operations. We even saw ship fights–nothing as gritty and Skull & Bones, but they’re definitely new to the series.
Shortly after that, Kondo-san played an early boss fight in front of the audience in the game’s Time Attack mode. It was pretty cool to see some of the differences with how combat is especially when compared to the last few games in the series. We saw Kondo as Adol and Karja pretty much egging on the boss on, and seemingly switching between the two to sort of act as a form of dodging some of the boss’ attacks head-on. It took him around five minutes to finish the boss off.
The panel concluded with a couple of questions picked from NIS America’s social media. The first question was about Kondo-san’s favorite feature in Ys X, to which he responded talking about the added depth that comes with not utilizing a party system in the game.
When asked about the most challenging part when developing a prequel, Kondo-san mentioned thinking about how Adol would be as a much younger person especially when compared to the Adol in Ys IX. He then mentioned that he hopes the audience who plays Ys X will come to enjoy this younger Adol, and he also mentioned he liked thinking about how Adol deals with traveling with a new woman in the game who wasn’t Feena from the first two games.
Kondo-san closed things off with the release date trailer of Ys X: Nordics. The game will be out on the Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC on October 25, 2024.
The Ys X panel was just one of a plethora of cool gaming-related things we did while at Anime Expo, so keep it on SmashPad for more!
by Danreb Victorio
