Summary
While some might find the early stages of the game a bit slow, I’d recommend sticking with it or focusing only on essential interactions to progress the quests—it makes the pace feel more manageable. Although I haven’t played many of the previous Ys titles, this one has definitely inspired me to revisit earlier games and further explore the adventures of Adol Christin!
Developer – Nihon Falcom
Publisher – NIS America Inc.
Platforms – PS4/5, Switch, PC (Reviewed)
Review copy given by Publisher
Ys X: Nordics is the latest entry of the long-running series by Nihon Falcom. Since the late 80’s Falcom has provided us with the epic adventures of Adol Christin, the red-haired swordsman. Adol The Red is a spirited young man who loves to explore and in this particular entry he has reached the Obelia Gulf. The Obelia Gulf is a sprawling body of water that is littered with islands and peoples from different lands. As you sail around this new area, Adol and his faithful companion Dogi set out to save the people of this area from the dreadful Griegr. The Griegr are very powerful and only Adol and a new character to the series, Karja, can destroy these enemies. There are a lot of cool gameplay elements in Ys X: Nordics, but there are some downsides as well. Overall, is it worth playing? Absolutely! Let me tell you why.
I’m going to start with my personal negative first to get that out of the way. The introduction to the game is REALLY long and for the most part a lot of conversation with minimal gameplay. Nordics starts at sea, with Adol and Dogi setting sail for a new adventure, however this time the adventure finds them. A band of pirates attacks your ship and kills the captain for breaking the sea law and you are taken to a nearby town of Carnac. Here you will meet a lot of new people that will be very instrumental to your success of making a name for yourself and also be a key point of the story progression.
Adol and Dogi want to do their part for the town and begin to take up jobs to gain money to continue their adventure. Adol happens to come across a mysterious shell that holds the ability to allow communication between a woman in a far off island who asks for Adol’s assistance. Upon hearing her words he is granted new strength in the form of Mana. Mana allows Adol’s abilities to reach new heights but also comes with a catch that you discover not too shortly after. Suddenly, Adol is attacked by a wolf-like creature called a Greigr, and using Mana he is able to destroy the once immune enemy. After all of this, he goes back to the inn to rest.
The next morning, Adol receives a note at the inn asking to meet at the beach. Heading there he meets one of the pirates that took over the ship. She challenges Adol to a duel to settle a dispute they had during the hijacking and with Adol’s new Mana strength, the pirate realizes that they both share the same powers. This pirate actually is the princess Karja and after a short duel, something unique happens and shackles made of Mana join Adol and Karja together at the wrist locking them in close proximity to each other for the foreseeable future. This is the basis of the Nordics combat system, solo and duo attacks. More Greigr spawn and attack the village and they use their new found duo Mana powers and successfully defend the town from this attack. After about 2 hours of dialogue which encompasses talking to the villagers, heading to meet Karja’s father who is the leader of the pirates, being given a task to become Shield Brethren, and finally unlocking the ship you are finally able to really start the game.
If you can make it through the first 3.5 hours of the game, you can make it through anything else the game has to offer in terms of story. From that point on, the game is mostly easy to digest in terms of gameplay to story balance. Features start to unlock at a much faster pace, the combat comes into its own, the exploration really takes the forefront, and overall it becomes a much better game. This isn’t to say the story is bad or boring, it definitely isn’t but I just wasn’t a fan of the sheer amount of narrative stacked at the introduction of the game. This won’t be a problem for everyone, but just wanted to make it known.
Now for my personal favorite aspects of the game, everything else. The combat is fast paced and as I mentioned has two basic forms, solo and duo attacks. Solo attacks which allow you to swap between Adol and Karja on the fly are for the general exploration of the islands. Your character moves much faster and can sprint, do singular attacks, destroy environmental pieces to collect items, and dodge special blue attacks. Duo attacks are done by pressing the right trigger and your Mana Shackles tighten and both Adol and Karja perform joint attacks on the enemies and allow them to block special attacks from stronger red attacks. Each form definitely has its uses, however I found myself fighting in Duo attack mode more regularly.
Outside of normal attacks, you also have more powerful Solo Mana Attacks and Duo Mana Attacks. These use SP to perform powerful abilities that can help you burst down the health of enemies. SP regenerates as you perform normal attacks so swapping between normal and Mana attacks is necessary to conquer your foes. I really enjoy this system and I think it keeps the game feeling fresh and quick which provides you with a sense of action that counters the slog of the more heavy dialogue scenes.
On top of this, there are a few ways to upgrade Adol and Karja to keep them in tip top shape for the adventure. First, there are Mana skill trees, which as you level up you unlock more nodes on the skill tree. Each node can then be filled again with a gem that increases the overall power of the character. There are several types of gems and stacking gems of the same color will grant even more bonuses. You can craft these as well as find them in your adventure so swapping them out is a great way to boost your character. These nodes will also sometimes unlock different Mana attacks, so make sure you are keeping up with your tree.
Another way to upgrade your character is with equipment and forging. As you continue to progress in the game, you can find and buy weapons and armor pieces that will definitely help you. On top of that you can use materials to upgrade these items to boost you even further. There are a plethora of different accessories that provide all sorts of benefits to Adol and Karja and I really enjoyed opening up chests hoping to find a new piece of gear.
In Nordics, you also have control of your ship, as you sail the seas you will come across other pirates that are hunting you down and you can fight on the high seas much like Assassin’s Creed Black Flag or Sid Meier’s Pirates! Finding materials and plans will unlock new weapons and stats of your ship. Along with the story, the ship at the beginning is VERY slow. Eventually you will unlock wind lines that will help you with boosting your speed as you travel but they only do so much. You definitely want to invest in speed boosts as you go to make traveling much quicker. The bright side is once you find a location, you can use your map to fast travel to that location cutting the travel time substantially. The naval fights aren’t really that difficult, but I did have fun building the ship and exploring to find new islands.
The islands themselves are fun but somewhat linear. There is plenty of treasure and enemies to find, and sometimes you will come across enemies that are much higher level than yourself that will require you to return at a later time to conquer. I always really enjoy these sorts of games, giving you the freedom to explore even when it might be too dangerous for you to finish. One highlight of the exploration of these islands and dungeons is the Mana abilities you unlock to explore. You can unlock basically a webslinger like Spiderman that lets you grapple and swing to enemies and points of the environment to get across gaps. You can also unlock basically a surfboard that will allow you to quickly get over water. There is a lot of speed and fun to the islands which is great. Obviously, the music is great and has a lot of great tracks to add energy to the already great gameplay.
Overall, I had a great time playing Ys X: Nordics and plan to invest many more hours into it. I hope long-time fans of the series will enjoy it as much as I did. While some might find the early stages of the game a bit slow, I’d recommend sticking with it or focusing only on essential interactions to progress the quests—it makes the pace feel more manageable. Although I haven’t played many of the previous Ys titles, this one has definitely inspired me to revisit earlier games and further explore the adventures of Adol Christin!
