Ys X: Nordics marks the tenth mainline game in the beloved action-RPG franchise, extraordinarily now in its 37th year. Originally released in Japan in September 2023, Ys X now at last has a worldwide English-language release. And yet, despite all this, you’ve never played a Ys game! Let us convince you this is the perfect place to start.
Before I say anything to you about Ys X: Nordics, I need to level with you for a second: I’m a huge fan of Nihon Falcom’s Ys series. This long-running action-RPG series has captivated me since I first played Ys I&II on the TurboGrafx-CD, and my casual blogging about the series eventually turned into my professional writing career. Every writer has inherent biases to consider when recommending a video game on the internet, and it’s only fair that you know that my biases are especially strong in this case.
With that said, after pouring roughly 50 hours into the official English version of Ys X: Nordics, I’m here to tell you that I really loved playing this game. This is easily the biggest evolution the series has seen in its core gameplay since Ys Seven, and I eagerly sought out every side quest and optional boss I could find just to make the experience last. Despite the absolute deluge of quality RPGs released this year, Ys X is one of my favorite games of 2024.
If you’ve never dipped your toes into Ys before, know that Ys X is a mostly self-contained story early in the overall series canon. You can jump right into this game without feeling like you’re missing the plot from the other games. With that said, is Ys X really the best way to get into the series, or should you opt for one of the earlier entries instead? To answer that, I’ll break down my biggest pros and cons about Ys X below, and I’ll give my firm opinion on who I think would most enjoy playing Ys X first at the end.
2 / 6
Even if you’ve played previous games in the series that didn’t grab you, there’s good reason to suggest Ys X might be the one to win you over.
I’ll cut to the chase: Ys X: Nordics has the best combat system of any Ys game to date. Other recent Ys games played as fast-paced hack-and-slash action-RPGs, with an emphasis on perfectly timed dodging and switching between party members to exploit enemy weaknesses. In Ys X, the party system has been minimized, and there are no more enemy weaknesses. Protagonists Adol and Karja now fight in tandem as you rapidly switch between the two to barrage enemies with quick strikes and build huge combos. Similarly, the dodge mechanics have mostly coalesced into Adol and Karja’s block function, with perfectly timed parries resulting in the series’ trademark “Flash Guard.”
These changes transform the combat of Ys X so much that my muscle memory from past Ys games completely failed me at first. However, once I got the hang of it, I couldn’t believe the colorful flurries of quick sword strikes I was pulling off on screen. Since Adol and Karja have separate SP meters which their special attacks consume, combat felt like a dance where I constantly looked for the right moments to tag the two in and out of battle to maintain a functionally endless stream of special attacks. Meanwhile, by activating the “Duo Mode,” Adol and Karja fight as a singular unit to deliver weighty attacks that I used to generously dispatch huge groups of foes and lay the smack down on bosses whenever they left themselves open.
Duo Mode pairs perfectly with Ys X’s block, as perfectly timed parries cause Adol and Karja to lock steel with their foes until they push them back and inflict damage-boosted counter attacks. Make no mistake, this is still a very fast action game, just like previous series entries—it’s just that Ys X isn’t afraid to slow the action down at times, to let you build up to those moments of sheer speed the previous games were known for. Falcom basically created a battle system that embodies the feeling of a well designed Sonic The Hedgehog level.
I could go on, but at this point, you can just look at combo videos uploaded from the Japanese release of Ys X and see how cool it looks in motion yourself. It’s just good, man.
Ys games generally aren’t known for gripping storylines. However, this series excels at creating warm atmospheres where virtually every NPC has a name and their own personal stories that advance in the background of the main plot. Ys X especially excels on this front, featuring an emotive crew that supports Adol and Karja as they sail the seas in their boat. However, in a surprising twist for the series, it’s the protagonists that steal the show this time around.
Ys X is a coming of age tale, in which teenagers Adol and Karja are literally bound together by a thread of fate (it’s literally wrapped around their wrists like cuffs) as they join forces to figure out why they’re so attached, and rescue the residents of the town Carnac. While Adol is typically a silent protagonist, he’s surprisingly expressive in Ys X. He’s a flighty goofball with a mischievous streak, but his boundless thirst for adventure and his penchant to run headfirst into danger makes him easy to root for when the chips are down. Meanwhile, while Karja comes off as a stereotypical tsundere at first, her calculated demeanor endeared me to her as she grew into the leader that the people of Carnac needed. Make no mistake, though; Karja’s just as much the badass fighter that Adol is, and it’s a joy to see how well together they work as a team
Even as soon as the game’s second chapter, Adol and Karja establish a genuine, earnest bond with each other as they share stories of their lives and support each other through their hardships. Whenever they defeat a major boss together, they celebrate with a fistbump or a highfive in exactly the same way you might rejoice after beating a tough challenge with a friend in a video game. They have disagreements and get into nasty arguments, but if anything, these moments further drive home just how authentic their bond together feels. Ys X feels surprisingly personal, and it’s one of the best ways to get to know series protagonist Adol. It’s a low-stakes story by RPG standards, but the overarching themes of realizing your potential and finding meaning in life resonated with me thanks to how well the characters were written.
3 / 6
Ys X naturally isn’t perfect, and these were my biggest nitpicks throughout my playthrough.
In the past, Ys games were generally no-nonsense action-RPGs. After only a handful of minutes to set up the story, the older entries generally threw you headfirst into adventure and carried that energy until you reached the end credits. By comparison, Ys X spends much more time establishing its cast and setting the stage for its story. To its credit, it sprinkles in combat throughout its introduction, and does at least make its tutorials go by pretty fast. Still, the game doesn’t quite hit its stride until Chapter 4, even though I still had fun up until that point.
As much as I loved the combat system of Ys X, I did wish it had more unique challenges to test my mettle. The pool of common enemies is surprisingly limited, with the same foes popping up in almost every single dungeon in the game. One miniboss appears a double digit number of times before the game ends. You could argue this is a good thing for action game newbies, since you’ll have several opportunities to learn how to perfectly parry each enemy’s attacks. Still, I did feel corners were cut in the enemy design.
The game does give its enemies some new attacks as you progress, so it’s not all the same from start to finish. I also never felt a feeling of repetition sink in thanks to just how quickly Adol and Karja unlock new special attacks to level up. Still, once I saw some of the crazy bosses that pop up in the final act, I wished I’d seen those kinds of challenges throughout the entire game.
Ys games generally operate on modest budgets, so cutting-edge graphics were never on the table for Ys X. Still, as I sailed from island to island, I found locations started to blend together, since they mostly looked the same. I can’t say for sure if Ys X recycles textures from Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, but I did consistently feel I wasn’t looking at anything new.
To be fair to Ys X, the characters themselves are wonderfully expressive. There are some really fun cutscenes that endeared me even more to the main cast of characters, so the graphical budget was invested wisely overall. Again, this just felt like an area where corners were cut. Given the state of the game industry right now, I personally can’t hold this too hard against Falcom.
I want to be very clear here: Ys X has very good music. This is the first Ys game to feature Shuntaro Koguchi, and his contributions capture the catchy hooks and energy that have made past entries in the series so memorable. There are several tracks in the game that I have repeated nonstop since I finished the game, which includes an absolute banger of a final boss track.
Still, the soundtrack of Ys X doesn’t quite evoke that sense of awe that past games in the series consistently captured. That “Ys moment” where the adventure kicks off while some of the best video game music you’ve ever heard in your life plays never really came to me, even though I still enjoyed the tunes. Bafflingly, some of the strongest songs in the soundtrack are criminally underutilized. One song that could have easily evoked that “Ys moment” was relegated to the end credits! Again, this is a very good soundtrack by RPG standards, just a weaker one by Ys standards.
4 / 6
This is neither good nor bad in my book, but this piece wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t talk about arguably the most divisive part of Ys X. For the first time in the series, Ys X features a classic RPG-style world map that Adol’s group traverses via a boat. These segments are a game within a game, as you can get into battles with enemy ships and upgrade your vessel with materials you find on your journey. This is conceptually similar to the airship traversal from the Dreamcast classic RPG Skies of Arcadia, which means I can finally check “talk about Skies of Arcadia this year” off my to-do list.
I enjoyed this seafaring side of the game, but it doesn’t make the best first impression. Boat combat is wildly different from the game’s core battle system, and at the start of the game, your vessel is very slow. Pro tip: Wait to focus on traveling to marked locations on your map until you’re about halfway through Chapter Four. This is when you can start purchasing speed upgrades that make the boat way easier to handle, and you’ll actually start to spot points of interest in the distance that are worth traveling to. There’s no need to frustrate yourself trying to fill in your map and beat ship battles in the early game.
Funny enough, there is a toggle in the options menu to instantly max out your boat’s stats. So if you really hate the boat sections, you can at least circumvent it quite a bit.
5 / 6
Again, I want to stress that I really liked Ys X: Nordics. I’d rank it as a top five Ys game. As far as whether you should start with Ys X, I’d specifically recommend it for two groups of people.
1: If you’re an action game enthusiast, Ys X should be your starting point. The combat mechanics are so enthralling and expressive once you get a handle on the controls, and even on the Nightmare difficulty I never felt like Ys X demanded grinding to win. If you enjoyed the gameplay of Final Fantasy XVI, you should enjoy Ys X.
2: If you already know you want to play the rest of the Ys games, Ys X is an excellent starting point. It’s one of the earliest games in the overall series timeline, and the ending literally segues right into 2012’s Ys: Memories of Celceta. From there, you can follow the Chronology of Ys as laid out by Digital Emelas, and you can take a detour to play Ys I&II and Ys Origin whenever you feel ready for them.
For everyone else, Ys X: Nordics is a good starting point for the series, but the “best” starting point is debatable. While Ys X moves the series forward in important ways, it stumbles a bit in areas that fans especially value in these games. The music and consistent high energy has always been the soul of Ys, so a lesser showing on these fronts does make Ys X land slightly weaker than other past games have. If you’d like to learn about other starting points I’d personally recommend, you can check my Ys starter guide here.
Regardless, I do recommend you play Ys X: Nordics in one way or another, especially if you’ve bothered to read this far. A demo for the game is out now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch, which does allow you to transfer your save file to the full game. By the time you approach the end of the demo content, you should hopefully see what makes Ys X so special. Or maybe you won’t—I don’t know what life is like for someone who never owned a TurboGrafx growing up.
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6 / 6