Ys X: Nordics

I went into Ys X: Nordics half-expecting another competent Falcom formula run, and came out genuinely charmed by the decision to shrink everything down. After the sprawling party rosters of Ys VII through IX, Falcom made a hard call: strip it to two characters and build the entire game around their chemistry. It works. The whole thing centers on a 17-year-old Adol, placed chronologically just after Ys I and II, sailing toward Celceta and immediately finding trouble in Obelia Bay. He meets Karja Balta, a brusque Norman pirate who initially wants nothing to do with him, and together they get tangled up with the Griegers, a faction of immortal undead threatening the bay's inhabitants. The story is not reinventing any wheels, but the character writing is the best argument for the dual-protagonist format: the way Karja's guarded personality cracks open over the course of the campaign is genuinely worth watching, and Adol's almost recklessly cheerful approach to everything gives the dynamic a real push-and-pull energy. Combat is where the design philosophy pays off most clearly. The Cross Action System lets you freely swap between Adol and Karja mid-fight, control them simultaneously, or hand the inactive character over to the AI. Each has their own weapon, armor, equipment slots, and a set of four active skills mapped to the face buttons. EXP and levels are shared, which keeps things lean and avoids the grind-one-character-at-a-time slog that drags down some JRPGs. The Revenge Gauge is the clever wrinkle: it builds when you successfully guard against enemy attacks, and dumps into Duo Skills, the synchronized special moves the pair unlock together throughout the story. On higher difficulties, managing both HP bars at once creates genuine tension because losing both characters is the only real fail state. One nearly-dead fighter can be revived as long as the other is still standing, which adds a layer of tactical paranoia to boss fights that I found myself leaning into hard. The Release Line progression system, a node map that unlocks new stats and abilities as you spend Mana Spheres, looks dense at first glance but is actually more approachable than it appears. The whip-based traversal mechanic, which lets you swing across gaps or fling yourself at distant enemies for bonus impact, keeps movement outside of combat feeling dynamic. The bigger mixed bag is the naval layer. Ship exploration across Obelia Bay is the game's most divisive new element, and the early hours are rough: slow turning, sluggish acceleration, and combat that feels underwhelming before you put resources into your vessel. Stick with it. Later upgrades turn the Sandras into something considerably more threatening, and the quick-travel system keeps backtracking from becoming a chore. Still, it never quite reaches the excitement of the on-foot combat, and players who bounce off open-water traversal in other games should brace for an adjustment period. The side content and NPC writing give the world texture, but there is some filler in the island fetch quests that a sharper editing pass could have trimmed. The PC port, handled by PH3, is exactly what you want: stable performance, full controller support including DualSense, adjustable difficulty, and save-anywhere functionality. For series newcomers, Ys X actually works well as an entry point since it is a self-contained story set early in Adol's life. For veterans, it is a worthy experiment that gets more right than wrong.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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