Ys X: Nordics is a new game that uses Nihon Falcom's iconic formula to follow Adol's journey while remaining different.

With a completely new combat system, the introduction of Mana, a new story and characters, and a deep focus on the theme of the sea and ship battles, Ys X: Nordics became one of Nihon Falcom's best games in recent years.

However, they still have many issues they have to deal with, such as unclear instructions on certain moves like Perfect Guard, forced POV cameras in bugged areas, and overuse of controller buttons.

This is definitely one of the best in the Ys series to date!!

Another Ys game in the books on the highest difficulty, and it's one I was a bit conflicted on. In the end however, I decided to give it a recommend, but there are plenty of flaws here.


Beginning with the positives, the OST is once again absolutely fantastic. The combat is solid, my eventual complaints about Duo Mode aside. There are sections where you are able to play as just Adol and just Karja and I had a blast with those. You had genuine vulnerability without the benefits that Duo Mode provides and it reminded me of the Ys games where you were just playing as Adol, or one of the three in Ys Origin. Mana Abilities were a cool feature that I wish were expanded upon a bit more, but at the same time I don't want to feel overwhelmed with abilities like in Ys IX. Perhaps Proud Nordics will end up finding a middle ground somehow. I think the feeling of adventure while exploring Obelia Gulf in this game is great, and it's nice to see gameplay action with a ship for once. You'd think with all the talk of Adol being involved in shipwrecks that this would've been done a lot earlier.


Onto the negatives: out of all the Ys games, this is probably the biggest slog until it starts to feel fun on the scale I expect an Ys game to be. It didn't start picking up at a consistent quality for me until about the second half of Chapter 6, and that's over halfway into the game. The chapters prior are horrendously slow and boring.

Second, the new Duo Mode mechanic. I'm personally not a fan. I didn't like Flash Move/Guard in the party-system Ys games, but the parry system feels like an in-between of Ys Seven's and the rest of those games in regards to how much it feels like you need to spam the parry button. Plus it felt a bit too gimmicky for my liking even though it did have genuine uses. Flash Move was heavily simplified in this game to only work against specific attacks and it's painfully easy to do, you just hold dash into the telegraphed blue projectiles, not a fan.

The Sandras is a nice base of operations, but actually using it, especially during the first half of the game, is painful. I don't take issue with the limited tools, but I do take issue with how slow it is. Thank goodness for fast travel.

The overall cast in this game is a mixed bag. Of course there are still standouts, new and old: Dogi is great as always, and it's awesome to have Dr. Flair along to connect back to how we were taking him to Celceta after the events of Ys II and to flesh him out some more. Karja is also pretty cool and perfectly serviceable as a second character to play as across a whole game alongside Adol. As for the bad, there's Rosalind, Mirabel, Grenn, Rafe, and to some extent Cruz... Let's just say that these five feel like they're written like characters out of the Trails games, and if you knew how I felt about the Trails series (if you don't, I think the Trails series as a whole is terrible) I don't say that as a compliment. It really felt like the writers didn't know what game they were writing for with those five. Most of the other characters just kinda felt like they were there.

And of course, there's the most recent elephant in the room: Falcom announcing Proud Nordics. I'm baffled that they're choosing to go the Atlus route with this game, as they haven't with the prior ones. It's not a good look, especially with the players in the west that got standard Nordics, and then are informed not even two months later that an enhanced version is in development. I don't like when Atlus does this, so I'm absolutely not a fan of Falcom doing it as well. And if you ask me as a massive Ys fan, I'd rather they just leave this game be and learn from the mistakes that were made to improve on in the next title. I will inevitably check out Proud Nordics if that does come to the west, and although I'm definitely not as bothered as some others are, their anger with how soon the Proud Nordics announcement came out after the release of standard Nordics is completely justified. It makes vanilla Ys X feel pointless.



In case you skipped my rambling and just want my concise recommendation: Overall, the game's first half isn't good but picks up big time in the second half. If you have the patience, go ahead, if you don't, then probably for the best if you skip this one. If you're already an Ys fan, then I'd say this one's worth a look, especially if you've played Ys II at all. Although it might be best to wait for Proud Nordics instead, but it's your call.

Was hesitant because of people being super down on the game but I dunno if they fixed it since launch or I just had lowered expectations but I found it Pretty Good.

Good:
+ The focus on two characters with a ton of options is much better than the recent 6-7 who can't do much.
+ The focus on guarding/parrying in general is a new twist for Ys which is typically very dodge-focused no matter what form it takes.
+ The "live" cutscenes are few and far between but are all really really well-done. The two-character focus lets them get way more creative with them mid-battle too.
+ Bosses are generally good, except That One.
+ The music is a step up from IX's lacklustre showing on that front though there needs to be a bit more of it.
+ Story's decent overall, again a step up from whatever IX was doing.
+ there's no story arc about how poor people should just work harder(seriously what was going on with IX)

Eh:
+- The boat stuff isn't particularly exciting but not bad either, it's just kinda There.
+- Guarding is a a nice change of pace but is generally too sturdy and lets you turtle your way though some attacks. That said you're rewarded a LOT for going for parries and very little for normal guarding so while you can hide and poke the game will become glacial(on higher difficulties) if you don't try to take risks.
+- You have some crazy super armor while doing skills. This is somewhat necessary due to the slowdown-dodge being taken away as you'd have no opening for offense otherwise, but it lets you facetank way more than you should.
+- The environments are real samey for about 2/3rds of the game until it remembers it's Ys and they start kicking ass. They're still not BAD, the same scenery just gets old after a while.

Bad:
- The story is very slow to rev up. Some people don't like this and some don't mind at all(i'm in the latter category) but they do railroad you quite a bit for a while.
- Huge lack of enemy variety. Like 70% of your enemies will be goblins or undead goblins. The influx of new toys and moves keeps this from being an issue for the most part but it does start to drag eventually, about halfway through some new enemy types will start showing up but that's all you really get until near the end.
- This is a game made on a budget and as you might have noticed from my points so far most of that budget went to the last third or so. As a result while it sticks the landing it can seem meandering for a while.

Overall I had a good time with it and I think it's not even remotely as bad as a lot of people were hollering about. In a case of hilariously terrible timing they just announced what is essentially Ys X The Golden which will probably address my issues with the game so I'd wait for that version if you're interested.

Awesome, loved every second. Combat was satisfying and I liked the ship sections more than I expected. I can recommend this to anyone who lives action RPGs, hack n'slash games, or existing fans of the Ys series who haven't got around to it yet (don't let the upcoming re-release discourage you)!

Considering how much naval content there is in this game, it sure is a good thing that Adol didn't shipwreck this time around!

good game

While it doesn't quite hit the modern Ys highs of Ys 8 or have the streamlined design of retro Ys games, Ys 10 is still a very satisfying adventure.

Top notch as we have come to expect from YS

omg yes play it!