Adol’s been pretty lucky lately. The more recent Ys games haven’t had Adol caught in a shipwreck, including this one!
Nihon Falcom has really been cranking out titles in the west as of late. Dating back to last July, the developer has come up with fully localized versions of The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie, The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak, the Switch version of Tokyo Xanadu eX+, and now the latest entry in their flagship Ys series with Ys X: Nordics. It goes without saying the company has a lot to be proud of. Despite this, Ys X: Nordics feels like a misstep, and makes you wonder if they should start slowing down again.
While it’s the latest game in the series, as far as the Ys timeline goes, Ys X marks the hero Adol Christin’s second adventure canonically. Upon sailing to Celceta (where Ys IV takes place), a 17-year-old Adol ends up in the Obelia Gulf, an archipelago under the both controversial and watchful eye of the Norman Balta Seaforce. For better or for worse, the Normans pretty much control all trade coming in and out of the Obelia Gulf, and to further complicate matters, while they don’t exactly have an ideal approval rating among the locals, they also represent a small group of people able to fight the Griegr, a set of monsters with their own agenda who cannot be killed through normal means.
Sailing is not fun in this game, and neither is the ship combat.
So what’s the deal with Adol? In the short amount of time you spend in Obelia’s main town, Carnac, Adol finds himself with the ability to defeat Griegr, and he learns it’s because he has the ability to use Mana. Eventually, he comes across Karja Balta, the only daughter of Grimson, the head of the Norman Balta Seaforce, who is also a Mana user. Strangely enough, he ends up being chained physically chained to her by Mana locked to their wrists–forcing them to work together to figure out why this even happened.
That’s the gimmick of this game. Both Adol and Karja are the main protagonists. You can switch between either character at will, and that’s all you have access to. Weird as it is, the dynamic is a fun one, and if there’s anything to love about the game, it’s the relationship that builds between the two as the game progresses. When attending the Ys X panel at Anime Expo, Falcom President and producer Toshihiro Kondo made it a point to continuously remind all the attendees that this is a much younger version of Adol than we’re used to, so it was pretty cool seeing the more youthful exuberance that Adol had. It was also surprising to see how much Adol talked in the game, but despite that–it still wasn’t enough, and that’s sort of a writing block that’s lessened Adol’s character depth in recent releases.
At their core, the Ys games are generally solid action RPGs, and Ys X: Nordics is no different, save for some changes that I take issue with especially when comparing them to what I felt were more robust systems in Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana and Ys IX: Monstrom Nox.
Given that you’re limited to two characters now, changes had to be made with how combat is structured. With the press of a button you can easily switch between Adol and Karja–and you should because as you use one character, the other character replenishes their HP bit by bit. On top of that, you now can dodge or parry using the left shoulder button, and for some reason or another, I am absolutely terrible at it. Despite playing the game on Normal mode, I died at least once to every boss and it got to a point where whenever the game asked me if I wanted to “weaken the enemies and retry”, I chose to do it. It was utterly infuriating.
NPCs looking disappointed because they forgot to patch outdated non-English subtitles.
To make matters worse, because they expect you to be so good with the game’s parry system, healing items are all the more scarce. Neither Adol nor Karja have actual healing abilities, and it all really just made me miss the control schemes from both Ys VIII and IX, because even after the hours I spent with Ys X, I could never get a handle of how to use it the right way.
I just got by in the game by holding the R2 button to do team attacks, spells, and combos because they dealt the most damage. The worst part about the new system is that with bigger enemies and bosses have extra armor that you have to pierce through in order to put in real damage, but it honestly just felt like a cheap visual way to extend enemy health bars.
The key to the battle system is a combination of both switching between Adol and Karja as you use up your mana, while also combining their attacks in addition to parrying at the right time to build up their damage multipliers. It’s a lot to deal with at once and while you’ll eventually build comfort with how it works, it just still never clicked for me the way it has in previous games.
The “traditional” action-based battles aren’t where the fighting stops with Ys X either. The game features ship battles, and I’m not going to sugar coat it: they’re terrible. Your ship feels incredibly clunky , and it’s an absolute drag maneuvering when you first get it because they expect you to upgrade the ship’s attributes with all the money you collect over the course of the game. It eventually gets to a point where you easily overpower every ship you come across late in the game, and it just doesn’t feel like you earn that because the ship you travel on doesn’t even look the least bit impressive.
On top of the ship battles, the game tried its hardest to have a sailing system with the polish of The Wind Waker or Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, but it just falls flat in its attempt. On top of how clunky the ship felt, the sea also represented a bad execution of the game’s open world. The ocean in the game is hardly an open world, as they’re divided into sections much like the way the towns and their paths to other parts of the map feel sectioned. You’ll find yourself crashing into invisible ocean walls more often than not, and the game also restricts sea exploration if your ship isn’t in deep water. When you’re near a beach, the ship typically “crashes”, further inhibiting movement, and it makes disembarking a chore since you have to find the right path to port. It just takes you away from the immersion and is more annoying than it is fun, which is a shame because even though the ship feels janky — this is actually a fun world to explore thanks to the Mana abilities you have.
Yes, that’s Adol Christin grinding a Mana rail.
The new stuff aside, when the game has you do things Ys fans have already grown accustomed to doing, you feel right at home. The dungeons and exploring all feel good and familiar, and they’re made even better by the aforementioned Mana abilities. There’s the Mana String that works like a grappling hook, there’s the Mana Ride that allows you to hover over ground and over water, there’s the Mana Burst which allows Adol to use fire to burn bramble or Karja to create ice platforms on shallow water to get to higher places, and there’s even Mana Sense to find hidden items or clues to hidden areas. At the end of the day, they’re just light puzzle solving, but that’s something that’s always been a staple to the Ys franchise, and that’ll always be welcome.
All things considered, Ys X: Nordics is a solid entry but aside from a solid story and a lovable new protagonist, it doesn’t do anything to move the series forward, and I can’t say that’s worth $60. Not during this month, and surely not in this current economy. That’s nothing short of a disappointment especially considering that this is the franchise’s 10th entry. That’s a milestone deserving of a great title, and this is just a fine game that feels like it could’ve been great on the PS3.
The game’s saving grace is that aside from the clunky sailing, I never felt like I was wasting time in this game’s 30-or-so-hour adventure. I may be down on a lot of the changes, but I had a lot of fun playing it, especially since Karja was such a cool character.
Nihon Falcom has really been cranking out titles in the west as of late. Dating back to last July, the developer has come up with fully localized versions of The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie, The Legend of Heroes:…
Adol’s been pretty lucky lately. The more recent Ys games haven’t had Adol caught in a shipwreck, including this one!
Nihon Falcom has really been cranking out titles in the west as of late. Dating back to last July, the developer has come up with fully localized versions of The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie, The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak, the Switch version of Tokyo Xanadu eX+, and now the latest entry in their flagship Ys series with Ys X: Nordics. It goes without saying the company has a lot to be proud of. Despite this, Ys X: Nordics feels like a misstep, and makes you wonder if they should start slowing down again.
While it’s the latest game in the series, as far as the Ys timeline goes, Ys X marks the hero Adol Christin’s second adventure canonically. Upon sailing to Celceta (where Ys IV takes place), a 17-year-old Adol ends up in the Obelia Gulf, an archipelago under the both controversial and watchful eye of the Norman Balta Seaforce. For better or for worse, the Normans pretty much control all trade coming in and out of the Obelia Gulf, and to further complicate matters, while they don’t exactly have an ideal approval rating among the locals, they also represent a small group of people able to fight the Griegr, a set of monsters with their own agenda who cannot be killed through normal means.
Sailing is not fun in this game, and neither is the ship combat.
So what’s the deal with Adol? In the short amount of time you spend in Obelia’s main town, Carnac, Adol finds himself with the ability to defeat Griegr, and he learns it’s because he has the ability to use Mana. Eventually, he comes across Karja Balta, the only daughter of Grimson, the head of the Norman Balta Seaforce, who is also a Mana user. Strangely enough, he ends up being chained physically chained to her by Mana locked to their wrists–forcing them to work together to figure out why this even happened.
That’s the gimmick of this game. Both Adol and Karja are the main protagonists. You can switch between either character at will, and that’s all you have access to. Weird as it is, the dynamic is a fun one, and if there’s anything to love about the game, it’s the relationship that builds between the two as the game progresses. When attending the Ys X panel at Anime Expo, Falcom President and producer Toshihiro Kondo made it a point to continuously remind all the attendees that this is a much younger version of Adol than we’re used to, so it was pretty cool seeing the more youthful exuberance that Adol had. It was also surprising to see how much Adol talked in the game, but despite that–it still wasn’t enough, and that’s sort of a writing block that’s lessened Adol’s character depth in recent releases.
At their core, the Ys games are generally solid action RPGs, and Ys X: Nordics is no different, save for some changes that I take issue with especially when comparing them to what I felt were more robust systems in Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana and Ys IX: Monstrom Nox.
Given that you’re limited to two characters now, changes had to be made with how combat is structured. With the press of a button you can easily switch between Adol and Karja–and you should because as you use one character, the other character replenishes their HP bit by bit. On top of that, you now can dodge or parry using the left shoulder button, and for some reason or another, I am absolutely terrible at it. Despite playing the game on Normal mode, I died at least once to every boss and it got to a point where whenever the game asked me if I wanted to “weaken the enemies and retry”, I chose to do it. It was utterly infuriating.
NPCs looking disappointed because they forgot to patch outdated non-English subtitles.
To make matters worse, because they expect you to be so good with the game’s parry system, healing items are all the more scarce. Neither Adol nor Karja have actual healing abilities, and it all really just made me miss the control schemes from both Ys VIII and IX, because even after the hours I spent with Ys X, I could never get a handle of how to use it the right way.
I just got by in the game by holding the R2 button to do team attacks, spells, and combos because they dealt the most damage. The worst part about the new system is that with bigger enemies and bosses have extra armor that you have to pierce through in order to put in real damage, but it honestly just felt like a cheap visual way to extend enemy health bars.
The key to the battle system is a combination of both switching between Adol and Karja as you use up your mana, while also combining their attacks in addition to parrying at the right time to build up their damage multipliers. It’s a lot to deal with at once and while you’ll eventually build comfort with how it works, it just still never clicked for me the way it has in previous games.
The “traditional” action-based battles aren’t where the fighting stops with Ys X either. The game features ship battles, and I’m not going to sugar coat it: they’re terrible. Your ship feels incredibly clunky , and it’s an absolute drag maneuvering when you first get it because they expect you to upgrade the ship’s attributes with all the money you collect over the course of the game. It eventually gets to a point where you easily overpower every ship you come across late in the game, and it just doesn’t feel like you earn that because the ship you travel on doesn’t even look the least bit impressive.
On top of the ship battles, the game tried its hardest to have a sailing system with the polish of The Wind Waker or Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, but it just falls flat in its attempt. On top of how clunky the ship felt, the sea also represented a bad execution of the game’s open world. The ocean in the game is hardly an open world, as they’re divided into sections much like the way the towns and their paths to other parts of the map feel sectioned. You’ll find yourself crashing into invisible ocean walls more often than not, and the game also restricts sea exploration if your ship isn’t in deep water. When you’re near a beach, the ship typically “crashes”, further inhibiting movement, and it makes disembarking a chore since you have to find the right path to port. It just takes you away from the immersion and is more annoying than it is fun, which is a shame because even though the ship feels janky — this is actually a fun world to explore thanks to the Mana abilities you have.
Yes, that’s Adol Christin grinding a Mana rail.
The new stuff aside, when the game has you do things Ys fans have already grown accustomed to doing, you feel right at home. The dungeons and exploring all feel good and familiar, and they’re made even better by the aforementioned Mana abilities. There’s the Mana String that works like a grappling hook, there’s the Mana Ride that allows you to hover over ground and over water, there’s the Mana Burst which allows Adol to use fire to burn bramble or Karja to create ice platforms on shallow water to get to higher places, and there’s even Mana Sense to find hidden items or clues to hidden areas. At the end of the day, they’re just light puzzle solving, but that’s something that’s always been a staple to the Ys franchise, and that’ll always be welcome.
All things considered, Ys X: Nordics is a solid entry but aside from a solid story and a lovable new protagonist, it doesn’t do anything to move the series forward, and I can’t say that’s worth $60. Not during this month, and surely not in this current economy. That’s nothing short of a disappointment especially considering that this is the franchise’s 10th entry. That’s a milestone deserving of a great title, and this is just a fine game that feels like it could’ve been great on the PS3.
The game’s saving grace is that aside from the clunky sailing, I never felt like I was wasting time in this game’s 30-or-so-hour adventure. I may be down on a lot of the changes, but I had a lot of fun playing it, especially since Karja was such a cool character.
by Danreb Victorio
