Ys X: Nordics Review

For over 30 years, Ys’ series protagonist Adol Christin has reliably taken audiences on perilous adventures through unexplored lands. While previous entries have seen the red-haired lad set out across regions such as Ispani and Afroca, Ys X: Nordics is a soft series reset with players sailing around an archipelago in the northern seas near Danmerk. 

Fortunately, despite the reset, Adol doesn’t suffer from any kind of indulgent or characterful origin set-up to inhibit our protagonist from jumping into the action. Rather, we are very quickly introduced to an island settlement that is tiring of the protection racket imposed upon them by the sea-roaming Normans (Viking sailors). After spending an inordinate amount of time stuck in conversations with the settlement’s denizens in a glacially slow opening for a Ys entry, the stakes finally begin to emerge after a half dozen hours. An immortal, monstrous seafaring faction called Grigr invades the settlement, captures its inhabitants, and turns them into puppet monsters that serve the Grigr. 

With very little fanfare, Adol is magically and coincidentally bound by a Mana link to a young Viking princess from the Norman clan ruling these seas. There’s the initial tension of the headstrong princess being tethered to the cheerfully dense Adol, which delightfully becomes a strong-spirited tale of two heroes that regard each other as a loving, twin-like extension of their respective selves. This same Mana magic that binds the Adol and Karja also enables them to deal mortal wounds to the otherwise invincible Grigr.  When all this is beginning to heat up, Adol then suffers the Sea Serpent’s Curse at the hands of one of the main Grigr villains, Odr. Now he’s only got three months to live.

The Sandras is also a mobile fortress for your expanding community of islanders

A happy marriage of priorities, Adol sees an opportunity to tour the archipelago for a cure while Karja is duty-bound to overcome the Grigr and free their transformed captives. Before the two can launch forth on their ship, the Sandras, and find the scattered victims transformed by the Grigr, players will spend almost ten hours getting acquainted with all of the to-be-doomed denizens. I get that this is to build rapport and motivation to save these folks later on but the payoff is at odds with what this game does best. Railroading the player into sending Adol from one character to another for long dialogue scenes with meaningless choices, so that when we save said citizens later from their Grigr form, we can recruit them to our ship and start building a relationship proper. Indeed, they may offer a side quest or exploration lead, an arbitrary ship stat upgrade, and maybe even some vendor goods.

Adol, Karja, and the Sandras will be satisfiably empowered by recruiting these characters and some of their stories are surprisingly effective for a Ys title. Before starting to get the wind in its sails over a dozen hours in, Ys X: Nordics puts its worst foot forward by starting the game forced to interact with heaps of initially irrelevant characters. From the developers of the great character narrative-centric The Legend of Heroes series, the exposition felt unusually frontloaded and at odds too with Ys’ traditional commitment to launching the player swiftly into a rewarding, combat-focused exploration gameplay loop.

I’ve risked opening this review a bit negative, but only because my experience with the past couple of Ys entries was strong. Rather than commit to iterative improvement as the series strives to look, sound, and feel more contemporary, Ys X backtracks some of the cooler series elements. For example, Ys IX’s traversal allows players to fly, glide, and practically skate up any surface, almost completely removing the narrow scope of movement that had Adol exploring zones made up of snaking, thin passages in an unexplored locale. Explorable zones were marked to the player, with some consistency around where invisible walls would likely impede players. Nordics’ instead goes right back to 2016’s great Ys VIII by having Adol ground-bound and island charting. There’s no wall-running or free-form acrobatics here, just heaps of tiny islands with cool secrets, craftable items, treasures, and often a compelling side story. 

The Great Ocean Road

Replacing Ys IX’s dynamic movement are Mana abilities, like a grappling hook and a hoverboard, both of which are functionally on-rails or context-sensitive. If I try to jump up a steep piece of terrain or over a crate in my way, Adol will simply brush up against it. This was such a gut punch to me after Ys IX let Adol loose, made worse by extensive invisible walls popping up throughout the game in clearly explorable areas until I’ve talked to some NPC or stood in a specified location for the game to hit its next plot beat. This peripheral linearity extends to the Sandras, also. The game hedges in every explorable ocean zone piecemeal until the story decides to take the brakes off temporarily. If you’re impatient and swayed by that obvious point of interest in view just a mile off your currently marked path, the game will flash a great red cancel sign on the screen to indicate that you’ve been too adventurous. 

When the Sandras isn’t railroaded, its compass is flooded with objective markers. Liberated Grigr victims will often function as quest givers and many of these NPCs are bound to islands that are easy to miss if you give up and follow the game’s demarcated golden path. Despite roaming the seas, shallow reefs stretch throughout Obelia Gulf and functionally turn the blue expanse into wide, branching corridors dictated by lines that represent wind paths. Simply steer the Sandras into said path and ride it to your destination. Neighbouring these ocean roads will be glowing circular outlines representing naval encounters. Pass through one and a battle zone is drawn in your location, suddenly populated by enemy ships. Faceroll your controller to fire off all your different cannons in a joyfully arcadey manner, wrapping the battle after a brief minute or so. It doesn’t have the nuance or simulated aspects of virtually any naval action game of the past decade, but it is quick and punchy and doesn’t overstay its welcome. 

Ground combat here is almost the same as in the previous entries, but binding Katja to Adol refreshes the familiar action. Players will assign four active combat abilities to each hero and will switch characters and chain abilities together by simply hitting square. It is fundamentally the same combat we’ve seen previously, which was always great. It remains fast and flashy, rewarding mastery without being soul-crushing. A power fantasy of explosive effects and whirlwind maneuvers to Dark Souls’ slower, tactical skirmishes. Controlling two characters at a time was tough at first, but the controls are adeptly tuned for it. To Ys X’s credit, I never saw all of the abilities and combos by the time the credits rolled. There is a decent skill ceiling here and heaps of potential for juggling opponents between the pair. Unfortunately, there are no haptics or controller feedback on the PS5 which is a huge missed opportunity to add an exciting sense of weight to the combat.

The new monster designs are imposing and are probably the best looking models in the game

While 40 hours of occasionally curbed adventuring and handholding seems like it would taint this long RPG, it otherwise remains fresh throughout. The Grigr hosted some fun boss fights that tested my skill over my stats. New abilities, equipment, and scope for stat tweaking were all positive and in tune with the tight difficulty bell curve. Even looking as retro as it does, with sparse textures and popped-in foliage you can sometimes count, the game never slipped from its smooth 60 frames. Heck, amid combat’s bright effects and Adol/Karja cross-ability battle scenes, the game looks kind of pretty good! Journeying, not so much.

Final Thoughts

Overcoming the choppy waters that are Ys X’s opening few chapters, Adol’s maritime adventure proves to be classic Ys to a fault. The scope of this series reboot expands to feature an archipelago with the promise of adventure upon its multitudes of mysterious islands. As Ys’ reboot positions itself for the current generation and prospective new audiences, the robust yet simple-controlling combat remains king seconded by the exploration. However, Adol’s penchant for journeying is hamstrung throughout by railroading and an abundance of invisible walls, as well as the departure of his fun free-running movement from Ys IX. The new boat just couldn’t replace gravity defiance for me. Ys X also remains visually dated, a part of its nostalgic charm, although its character models have never looked better. I would still point newcomers to the best of the previous entries first, though.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

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