Ys X: Nordics Review (PS5) – Smooth Sailing
Ys X Nordics is like the answer to a question I never thought I’d ask – what would Assassin’s Creed Black Flag be like as a JRPG? Seriously. A JRPG with an archipelago of Islands to visit, pirates replaced with anime vikings, and a whole sub-game of nautical ship-combat just like Ubisoft’s arguably best Creed title.
Nordics is a strange beast in this day and age. Falcom RPGs exist in this space where graphics are just not that important and somehow the general audience for their games doesn’t really give a fig that their games look at least two generations out of date, and on top of that are poorly animated and stilted (apart from the odd cutscene). It’s clear that the smaller budget and far less emphasis on graphics allows for a dramatically reduced development time. In the same time frame as some studios produce one AAA title, Falcom has a conveyer belt churning out Ys and Trails titles often with one or more per year.
It’s a business model that seems to thrive on a smaller niche audience looking for a particular thing. Sales and budget have to be small if your audience is also. But if you are the audience who wants this kind of JRPG, Falcom and Ys X Nordics are aiming their starboard cannons right at you. Ys X Nordics simplifies a fair bit from its predecessor while rejuvenating the series a little and there is literally no need to have ever played a previous Ys title in order to get on board.
Full disclosure, I’m coming at Ys X Nordics with a solid foundation of three mainline Ys titles completed (Celceta, VIII, and IX), and a further five Trails games. I will try to bring newcomers along for the ride, but this is a review more skewed to the veteran.
Personally I think its a shame that Ys X is actually set right back almost at the beginning of the series in chronological order, because it means that we do away with the ‘seasoned’ 24 year old Adol from Ys IX Monstrum Nox. In Nordics, Adol is a seventeen-year-old with mostly air between his ears and no life experience whatsoever. Call me old-fashioned, but I just find it hard to get behind teenage main characters these days.
Thankfully it’s yet another fun adventure full of action, twists, turns, and great characters. Try not to let the generation-or-so-old graphics dissuade you from taking the plunge. Adol and his sometime partner-in-adventuring Dogi are passengers sailing for Celceta (more on that entry here) but they never make it. Their ship is boarded by Normans (yes, basically JRPG Vikings) who execute the captain of Adol’s ship for evading the toll for sailing their waters.
When you and the other passengers are freed and stranded at the nearest port town of Carnac, it’s clear there’s more to the Normans. They protect the town for that toll, they plunder and board vessels, but they keep the waters otherwise safe, and the Romun Empire out (villains of other Ys games). Too much good and too much bad to be anything but a nice murky grey.
The plot finds Adol stumbling across a magic shell that gives him the power of Mana (basically the game’s skills) and then getting magically handcuffed to the fast-talking Princess of the Normans, Karja. Cue a battle system based on dual moves and sort of using both characters at once. Cue Karja learning about how the other half live outside Norman plundering.
The origins of their magic, their bond, and their character development would probably be enough for most JRPGs, but Ys X Nordics adds in a threat to the whole Archipelago, Normans and islanders alike. Seems that the Undead (but like the speaking, plotting nefarious kind of Undead), here called the Griegr, are intent on ransacking and burning Carnac to the ground, and then proving they also have a fleet and world-domination in their sights. Cue Adol and Karja commandeering an old but seaworthy vessel of their own and setting sail. Cue meeting up and joining the Normans.
And that’s just the first chapter of ten. There are more twists and turns to find, many more adventures to have, and mysteries to discover. As with Ys IX before it, Ys X keeps its cards to its chest for at least half the game and keeps the real shocking revelations until the final chapters. It’s a really fun payoff, full of drama, but the first 4-5 chapters can be a bit of a slog. From a purely story perspective, it’s a fun, fast, and nicely structured story, with a ton of endearing characters. Adol wears on me a little, but Karja was the sassy JRPG princess I love to find in this genre. Good voice acting from most of the cast, and a great story from beginning to end, meant I spent most of my time with Ys X Nordics invested and looking forward to the next events.
While a review isn’t the place for tips on the game itself, it was quite clear that the majority of the gameplay didn’t really start until after Chapter 3 had ended. Think of Chapters 1-3 as an extended prologue, meeting the good guys, and bad guys and getting all the tutorials out of the way. Then suddenly as Chapter 4 begins you get free rein to explore and sail the seas at your leisure.
This time around Ys X Nordics relinquishes most of the interesting traversal powers of the large party you had in Ys IX Monstrum Nox (bar a hoverboard). Instead, we now have naval combat, baby. I’ll come back to that in a moment. Otherwise, for the uninitiated, Ys is a series of action RPGs with fast melee combat, your basic town and dungeon maps to explore, and a big story to uncover. Beyond walking about and getting from A to B via a lot of combat, Ys X Nordics is light on side-questing, mostly just taking you along the main quest with a few side areas to explore and light on intricate exploration where its predecessor leaned into that.
Combat is a fun frenetic melee, but it can become repetitive by the end of the game’s 30-or-so hours. You have fast basic attacks and mana skills you can deploy any time they’re powered up. With Karja at your side, you also have dual mode, which puts Karja next to you, focussing on the same enemy and requires pressing R2. This also has the added benefit of being your major block mechanic. You can also do a selection of other mana skills in dual mode. Ys isn’t really about gaining combos. It’s more about managing the different skills for the situation and reacting to the really long telegraphed light shows that tell you to use dodge or block.
I found the combat to be on par with the Ys games I’d played in the past, but lacking some of the variety that came from having a party with different types of weapons like you did in Celceta or Monstrum Nox. There’s little in the way of ranged attacks for example, with Adol and Karja favouring swords and hand axes. It’s certainly as fast as the rest in the recent series history, but it’s rare that it’s that taxing.
This time around however there’s also naval combat. Your ship, the Sandras, can sail around with a fair degree of freedom and engage in nautical battles when you hit an enemy vessel marker. The battles ensue on what feels like the same watery plain – as in you don’t warp to another area. The Sandras has a variety of weapons you can buy, and much of the game revolves around slowly fixing it up, upgrading it, and kitting it out to survive each progressively more difficult area to navigate.
A basic cannon does little damage but slows the enemy craft, and then a sideways salvo can take the enemy down in one well-placed blast. It’s an incredibly simplified version of Black Flag or Skull and Bones’ systems, but it manages to remain fun, even if it can feel rather sluggish at times. I just wanted my ship to move faster constantly.
Finally, on combat, we have the Recaptures, Ys X Nordics answer to the Grimwald Nox horde mode or Lacrimosa’s raids. Where I had found that mechanic growing a little stale and very overused in Ys IX, here its refreshed by the inclusion of naval combat. There are many islands along your adventure that need to be liberated from the Griegr enemy, and so you start a naval battle, take out the ships, knock out the barrier-generating pillars and then jump on board the biggest ship or land on the island. Then it switches to ground-based melee combat for a more familiar three-wave horde mode. These challenges were more optional in Ys X Nordics, with only a handful along the main questline – if you enjoy it more you can engage with it more extensively in side content.
Where battles and combat have seen a refresh, it feels like graphics have taken a step backwards. NPCs have never been the series’ best feature and Ys X Nordics has many that look like wooden carvings they’re so lifelike. Thankfully at least a few of your endearing shipmates and characters important to the story have had a little more attention given to them. In contrast though, there are various cutscenes throughout the story where stylish combat animations, nice lighting, and some good direction are employed and I came to wish more of the game had that polish. I also much preferred the designs and fidelity of the models in Ys IX.
Much of the game is voice-acted with only a few side quests and NPCs missing out. It’s the same group of recognisable anime voice talent you’ve come to expect from Falcom and a variety of other JRPGs, but they all give relatively good performances, and none of the characters is abhorrent or annoying.
Ys is a series of very safe JRPGs, and Ys X Nordics only pushes the boat out so far as to add naval combat. Almost nothing else is changed from previous entries, and a lot of its predecessor’s complexity has been thrown overboard. That said, it’s a charming and competent JRPG, that manages to not be annoying, and kept me invested for some 25-30 hours. That’s an achievement in itself.
Ys X Nordics focuses on narrative and the essence of being a fun adventure, without much of the fluff that can weigh down more accomplished titles. It’s an open world, but it rarely demanded I wasted time doing fetch quests, and its melee and nautical combat are weighty enough for this kind of mid-length campaign. Ys X Nordics takes the series back to its beginnings, and while I can lament the things we lost along the way, it was still a worthwhile adventure.
Ys X Nordics releases 25th October on PlayStation 5 (review platform), PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam.
Developer: Nihon Falcom
Publisher: Nihon Falcom
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
If you enjoyed this article or any more of our content, please consider our Patreon.
Make sure to follow Finger Guns on our social channels –Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Spotify or Apple Podcasts – to keep up to date on our news, reviews and features.
