Adol on a Ship
As a series that has been around for decades, Ys has been no stranger to exploring new settings, gameplay mechanics and storytelling methods. From the 2D sprite entries and their “Bump System” to the 3D sprite isometric hack & slash and lastly to the 3rd person, multi-playable character entries, the series has been evolving bit by bit. Ys X is no different as it also takes risks from both a gameplay and storytelling perspective and while it took a little bit of time to really get rolling, it ended up being one of my favorites in a series I’ve been playing since the 90s.
Adol “I’ve been in more shipwrecks than anyone” Christin is on the helm of a ship. What could go wrong?
MSRP: $59.99
Price I’d pay: $59.99
Platforms: PC, PS4/5, NSW
Voice Over: JPN/ENG
Steam Deck: “Playable” status but plays well.
Length: 35~ Hours
Charting a ship to Celceta, Adol and his trusted companion Dogi are enjoying the sights until a band of Nords calling themselves the “Baltic Sea Force” attacks the ship for trespassing on their turf without paying the toll. Forced to make land without a ship and a captain to bring them to their destination, Adol and Dogi decide to explore this new island while looking for passage to Celceta. During Adol’s exploration, he discovers a suspicious seashell and has an encounter with one of the Nords named, “Karja” who he ends up becoming entangled with in the literal sense. Soon after, undying creatures called “Greigr” attack the town and Adol and his newfound allies are forced to take to the sea, embarking on an adventure to discover the mysteries of the Greigr and the Nords.
In the previous entries, the main focus of Ys has always been in the exploration and combat as the characters and story played second fiddle, mostly existing to be an excuse to explore new areas. It wasn’t until Ys 8 that I felt the story and characters were truly integral to the enjoyment of the game and while Ys 9 attempted to continue that trend, I felt it was a step down from Ys 8 in that department. Ys X, however, is an impressive step up, in both the way it handles its characters as well as its overarching story.
As there are only two playable characters this time around in the form of Adol and Karja, it was crucial that their chemistry/interactions remained interesting throughout the course of the adventure, and it most certainly was. The way Karja warmed up to Adol as she came to understand his unbounded love for adventure and doing the right thing rubbed off on her so as did her seemingly crude but direct approach to everything end up influencing Adol. What starts as forced circumstances where they need to cooperate to survive ends up being a partnership of trust, and it was a joy to see the relationship mature. This is a classic case of less is more where due to there being only two playable characters, there is plenty of time to let both characters shine.
The people of Carnac, the village that is attacked by the Greigr also plays an important part in the story despite being non-playable characters. As most are kidnapped during the opening, taking to the open seas and rescuing them often meant bringing them along as a crew member on the ship and most characters opened up new facilities online in the ship to be used going forward or supported the ship in some other way by increasing the stats of the ship itself. While I expected them to mostly stay in the background, they also had some great story moments and growth throughout the experience which made the adventure all the more memorable for it.
The biggest new addition to Ys X is ship exploration and combat.
From a gameplay standpoint, there is no doubt the most divisive new element is the focus on ship exploration and combat. As someone who generally doesn’t like navigating on water in games due to how slow and unwieldy it usually is, I absolutely dreaded it when I first helmed a ship. In between snail like speeds and the turning of a 36 wheeler truck, I thought this was going to be a miserable experience. Luckily as I progressed through the game and improved my ship bit by bit, it became much more bearable until I hit that critical mass where my ship became a death bringer, zipping around across the water and turning on a dime while shooting enough munitions to make modern airship carriers envious.
Given that there is a generous quick travel system and strong winds that move the ship along quickly in a set path between the major interest points, I actually ended up exploring every nook and cranny of the open seas which is high praise coming from me.
There’s a good amount of customizations that can be done for the ship, both visually and functionally with multiple different types of weapons that can be equipped.
In terms of grounded combat, it’s not too different from Ys 8-9 as a fast-paced hack & slash ARPG with dodges, parries and dozens of skills that can be learned and equipped. The biggest addition is the ability to use both Adol and Karja at once as they attack simultaneously. I could also guard against otherwise un-guardable moves by parrying with both characters at the same time. While initially it seemed like it was best to just have them always attack together, I quickly learned that it was much better to use them separately unless I needed to parry a powerful move or unleash one of my own dual skills that was greatly enhanced by building up a multiplier that increased as I parried more attacks. When I was in control of one character, the other’s HP and especially SP which was used for skills would quickly regenerate. So, my normal plan of attack was to go in with Karja who had the best armor breaking/stunning skills and unleash everything I’ve got, then I would switch over to Adol instantly to relentlessly punish the enemies still reeling from Karja’s skills. Once I’ve spent all of Adol’s SP, I would change back to Karja and the onslaught would continue. It was a simple but highly effective and fun strategy to employ as I was constantly learning new skills to experiment with.
Knowing when to switch to dual mode to parry/unleash power attacks and switching back and forth between the two characters took situational awareness but was fun to master.
In terms of character growth, as I used my skills, I would eventually master them, usually leading to learning more powerful versions of the skills that I just learned so I was encouraged to constantly experiment with new skills which along with the timing-based combat and switching between characters kept the combat feeling from beginning to end. I was also opening nodes for Adol and Karja which I could slot in various different types of gems to increase their passive stats and skills which added to the customization.
Early on, I would just slot in whatever gem I had available but by the end, I had most of the nodes optimized to maximize the specialization of each character.
If I had one main complaint, it would be that the game frequently interrupted the flow of exploration with cutscenes and I was often unable to just listen to the many situational banter between the crew of the ship as I would move for a minute or two, get a cutscene, move for another minute and get another cutscene and so on and so forth. While it’s nice that I could go back to listen to them in the menu, I would have much preferred there were less gameplay interrupting cutscenes and they were instead integrated to something that just happened naturally as I went about my business.
In terms of the PC port, Durante and his team have done yet another great job including various features and updates from the version released earlier in other languages. Here’s the link to the full list of changes and features if you’re interested.
Suffice to say, the game ran like a dream and the native support to UltraWide was very much appreciated.
While the game also shows only as “Playable” for steamdeck, I had no issues with playing the game on the SD outside of some infrequent stutters, but I ended up playing most of the game on my UW monitor with HDR enabled.
Karja ended up being one of my favorite characters in all of Ys by the time the credits rolled, it’s a shame that it’s very unlikely that we will see her again given the series penchant for recurring characters not really being a thing outside of Adol & Dogi.
Despite the decidedly rough first impression of sea exploration and combat, Ys X was a title I found myself enjoying more and more the further I got into it. The fun, fast paced combat, complimented by the wonderful chemistry between the two leads and an intriguing story that culminates in a final boss that is my favorite of the entire franchise thus far, Ys X: Nordics is easily one of the best entries in the long running series and an easy recommendation to anyone that enjoys ARPGs.
Fun Tidbit: I can’t end a Ys review without sharing at least one song from the excellent OST. The most difficult part was picking just one because the whole OST is filled with bangers.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
