Ys X Nordics - Seafaring through missed potential
The Ys series is one I discovered fairly recently and has since then become one of my favourites. The adventures of Adol the Red are games that just clicked with me since the first time for their fun action gameplay and their rocking soundtracks, and it’s a series that I’m considering doing some kind of retrospective for this blog just to share all of my history with their mainline titles.
Today we are gonna take a look at their latest addition, which just came out in October 2024 for all consoles, which I need to preface, even though it has a 10 in the title, it’s not connected to any other games in the series in terms of plot, each story is its own self contained adventure. So, let’s not waste any more time, let’s dive into
Ys X - Nordics
About the Story
The story opens in the waters of the Obelia gulf where our main character Adol is taking a ride to the region of Celceta, while suddenly their ride gets taken by custody by the Balta Seaforce. A group of Normans Pirates who have settled into the gulf archipelago and taken control of all the naval traffic in the region, the ship they were travelling on didn’t pay the toll to them and thus they’re forced to land in the nearest port town of Carnac.
After finding a magical shell on the beach, which allows him to talk with a woman called Lila who’s pleading for his help, a new power emerging from it appears to tether him and Karja to the wrist and are thus unable to leave each other's side. Not long after the city gets attacked by a group of undead monsters called Griegr, lead by a group that calls themselves The Trident.
The Griegr seem to be immortal since every wound they receive almost instantly regenerates, but thanks to his newfound link to Lila’s Shell, Adol awakens to the power of Mana, a form of magic that seems to be accessible only to a few people among the normans, Karja being one of them. With his newfound power Adol teams up with Karja to try to repel the attack but it’s too late, the city is lost and almost the entire population has been taken prisoner.
After leaving Carnac, Adol and Karja take refuge on Balta Island, the headquarters of the Seaforce. Being aware of what happened to Carnac, Grimson decides to reinforce their position in order to prepare for the conflict against the Griegr, Adol and Karja being by the very few able to actually kill them thanks to the power of Mana, are then made to work together as Shield Brothers in order to explore the Obelia Gulf, find the citizens of Carnac and discover what the real intentions of Griegr and their Undead Fleet.
From that point on Adol and Karja took it upon themselves to explore every nook and cranny of the Obelia Gulf with their ship called Sandras, while slowly saving the villagers of Carnac and uncovering the truth behind the Griegr and all the mysteries of the region, which there are plenty of to uncover.
We hear mentions of the legend of the Sea King’s Throne which is said to fulfill the wishes of everyone who manage to find it, we discover some Norman runestones who speak about the past of the Obelia Gulf, of a thriving Norman Kingdom destroyed by a calamity and of the great king Rollo, which he’s talked both a benevolent king and a bloodthirst barbarian with an insatiable thirst for pillage and conquer, and often with Adol we find ourself teleported in a place called Viewpoint Island. It’s an island that seems trapped in a dream, unreachable by normal means, everytime Adol gets sent there by the power of Mana he always seems to forget about it after he returns to the real world and the only inhabitant there is an old man who seems to have lost his memories.
All these elements put together do their work in trying to carry the story throughout every chapter of the game but unfortunately the narrative of Ys X falters in a lot of aspects.
The characters are all lacking, I mentioned that Adol makes some friends in Carnac before the attack, these characters that together form the Carnac’s Youth Brigade will gradually join you as you proceed through the story, but they’ll quickly fade into the background as the story treats them more like bodies to have around because Adol and Karja need to man a ship through the waters of Obelia.
In the last few games Ys had a party system with usually six to seven characters joining together for a fight, and honestly the Youth Brigade seems like they were at some point meant to be actual party members but once the game settled to only have Adol and Karja playable they ended up losing their purpose and thus even their place in the story.
Unfortunately also the villains are lacking, the Griegr Trident of Jord, Logr and Odr.
They’re kidnapping people because they’re in a search for the perfect vessel to bring their liege back to life. They don’t really leave much of an impression, their screen time is fairly limited, their characterization is one dimensional and special mention to Logr for being a character I ended up wanting to never open his mouth. He’s treating the entire thing as he’s a narrator on a stage play and all of his dialogue feels distractingly fourth wall breaking, it took me out of the game dialogue way too much.
Karja is the character that gets all the focus in this story, being the daughter of the Seaforce Leader she's got the nickname of Pirate Princess by all the other members. She's been trained by her father since the age of 10, and thus she’s very confident in her abilities and the reason she’s attracted by Adol is because he was the only one able to actually match her in combat. Karja as a character is the typical cold and distant character with a chip on her shoulder, she’s hates being called princess as it seems like everyone in the Seaforce is either underestimating her of treating her as a clueless child, because of this reason she tends to overcompensate a lot in their quest to look like a true adult leader. She also has a very detached relationship with her father, constantly calling him by his first name and never once having a confrontation that looked like actual father and daughter.
Personally I ended up enjoying Karja as a character especially as time goes on her try hard attitude mellows out and I honestly thought there was a lot of potential in her family like relationship with Adol and their adventures together. Unfortunately this doesn’t get fully realized because the only person Karja has to bounce back on is Adol who is a silent protagonist.
Adol as a character has always been more as a proxy for the audience, an adventurer that is in love with his freedom and everytime walks into a new town something happens and he’s the one that steps up to resolve the situation. This formula has worked countless times for the series since the story is never about him but more about what is happening around him, but this is the only time where I felt this silent tradition with him should’ve been completely abandoned.
There are countless scenes in this game where Adol and Karja are meant to have an heart to heart together since they literally tethered together for this whole adventure and it feels really awkward when you have Karja going full dialogue and Adol just have a single sentence worth of sentence that you can select in a box, it’s very clunky and they should’ve just written some dialogue for the poor lad. Falcom is usually great at character moments but this time sticking with tradition has been a detriment for them.
If there’s a recurring theme in this story is certainly the one of family and especially generational conflict. Every single character in this game has a certain issue with their father or a older family member, not only you have Karja’s issue with Grimson but also every member of the youth brigade in Carnac has some issues with their parents, but unfortunately almost all of them end up falling flat because they’re treated as secondary, end up getting solved way too quickly or some of them even just don’t get a resolution, which is a double downer once you get to the ending were the message should be that the young generation should rise up, pick up the slack of their parents and being the main force of change in the world, when the only character who’s had any sort of focus on this story is just Karja.
I’m sorry if I’m sounding way too negative, but really the story has had a lot of wasted potential when it comes to characters and that’s a big issue for me in a game of this genre and this kind of length. The story itself is overall fine, there are some good side quests, it’s fun to uncover some of the lore of this region and some of the more action moments are really damn enjoyable, but I can’t help but feeling that’s lacking in a lot of areas.
About the Gameplay
So how’s the gameplay then? Fortunately it’s as good as it’s always been.
As an Action RPG combat is very fast paced and frantic, chaining long combos together, parrying and dodging when it’s appropriate, all the while exploring locales with some quick platforming in 3d spaces. Adol feels about as good to control as he always had, I’ve only had some issues with his new shorter range dodge at first, but you can get used to it quickly and his parry is also more than enough to help you in defense.
The biggest change this chapter introduced is with the party system, having only two characters. Adol being by default the quickest and damage oriented character, while Karja being more like a tank with more focus on taking down armored enemies, you switch between them with a press of a button and end up using the one who’s more fitting to the particular enemy you’re facing.
Character switching for specific enemies can feel like a bit of a crutch, but switching is also encouraged to get the most out of your skills. Skills cost MP to use and some of the most powerful can require a lot of those. MPs do slowly recharge on the active character, while conversely the passive character gets a fast recharge, and the more skills you chain together the quicker the regeneration of MPs goes, so it’s an aspect you really need to take advantage of at higher levels so that you can chain together the most devastating combos.
It’s very fun to think about skills in this way in how one particular attack of Adol can link to a new attack for Karja, it makes switching feel less of a requirement and more like an actual part of the combat that it becomes fun to master.
By using Mana Gems you can assign to both characters you can give them some particular perks and manipulate their stats so that you can much better shape their usefulness in battle. I ended up sticking to the default, making Karja the big tank with a lot of health that could shred enemy armor in an instant, while Adol had the biggest raw attack power and could dish out the most damage to enemies. But really you can have a lot of leeway especially at the highest levels to create the build that thinks fits better on your characters.
Finally there’s Duo Mode, by pressing one of the shoulder buttons, Karja and Adol join together in a defensive position making them really slow moving but able to unleash some combined attacks that are your best option for some big damage, especially when combined with the parry. Consistently parrying attacks in duo mode fills up the Revenge Gauge which is a damage multiplier for your next combined attack.
The combat in this game is just very fun. It can get monotonous at times and especially at normal difficulty where it doesn’t take long for the game to become really easy, but if you enjoy melting life bars of big monsters and watching numbers get bigger then you’ll have a ton of fun.
The only thing that I feel can either make or break your experience is the ship exploration. Being set in a gulf the region is mostly water and you’re gonna spend a lot of time sailing around. The ship, called Sandras, will also function as your main base operation, setting up various shops, reuniting all the Carnac survivors and will slowly get stronger as the game progresses. The sea combat works really well, almost all of your attacks have a slight homing property, you get tons of special types of bullets that you can equip as you see fit, you can ram other ships and you also have a magic barrier to mitigate the damage.
The biggest issue with the Sandras is its speed, particularly at the beginning it can be painfully slow. There are currents on the map that will help you gain a boost in speed but once you need to venture outside you’re gonna be feeling like you’re crawling through the sea. This of course can be mitigated by leveling up the ship but not all the upgrades are available at first and you don’t always have the correct items to craft those upgrades in that particular moment.
It was very tiresome, especially since I always tried to explore as much of the map as possible before moving to next area, fortunately there is fast travel once you uncover a new landmark but you still have a lot of seafaring to do and I can understand if the very slow pace of the ship in the beginning hours would lead to some just ditching the game entirely, especially since there’s not much to see in terms of landscapes.
I have to give them credit in one aspect, the cutscenes are a lot less stiff and much more cinematic with a lot of fast pace quick edits and camera angles all completely done in game, they help a lot especially during combat sequence in making the scene feel much more engaging and alive, this is used incredibly well during some boss fights especially. The music accompanying all of this is top tier as it’s usual for the series, Falcom always knows how to arrange a great score that will stick with you once the console is turned off.
I know I’ve been mostly negative, and overall I feel this game has been a step backwards from the previous title but do not misunderstand, this is far from being a bad game, I just think that many aspects of it didn’t pay off as much as they could’ve and there’s a lot of room for improvement in the future. The game is still very good, and I recommend you all to at least give it a try.
Nihon Falcom has announced a new version called Ys X Proud Nordics, slated for release in Japan 2025 with new story content included. Personally I hated this announcement, I’m sick of complete versions being released a year or two after beating the original. With this knowledge in mind though, weigh your options yourself and see if it's worthy for you to play this base version or just wait for the new world wide release.
For those of you who’re still hanging around and want to know some more about the plot and what mysteries transpire into the Obelia Gulf follow me to the…
SPOILER SECTION - Proceed at your own risk
You find out throughout the story that the liege the Griegr are trying to resurrect is none other than Rollo himself, the bloodthirsty barbarian turned benevolent king according to the conflicting runestones. Well turns out both accounts were right.
Rollo’s mother was unable to conceive a child, so fearing for her life as the Jarl’s wife, she prayed to the god Loto for help. Loto being a deity of chaos, fulfilled her wish but by doing so implanted a source of chaos into Rollo which would subconsciously drive him berserk and bloodthirsty. This combined with an impressive physical strength turned him into one of the strongest normans alive and one of the most feared.
Once Rollo’s expedition guided him to Sea King’s Throne where he would end up meeting with Lila: she helped him see his true nature and finally realize that he has been manipulated all his life by this primal energy inside him. It was at that point that Rollo, horrified by himself, used the Sea King’s Throne to purge himself of that energy and become the benevolent King that ruled the Normans in the Obelia Gulf.
From that energy the Griergs came alive and from the very beginning they wanted to reunite with Rollo, bringing destruction to his kingdom. They failed in reuniting with him and Lila ended up sealing them into the Marine Triangle, a set of Islands in the Obelia gulf where the Trident remained dormant for a hundred years, all the while Rollo mysteriously vanished from the Gulf and found himself in Viewpoint Isle.
Rollo’s disappearance didn’t spell the same for his bloodline, and thus once the trident managed to break free of Lila’s seal they were quickly scouring the gulf to find a descendant which turned out to be Karja. Whenever she and Adol manage to kill one of the Trident a dark energy will merge with Karja making her more susceptible to fall into a berserk state just like Rollo.
It’s implied that Karja’s conscience will be completely overtaken by Rollo if the trident manages to completely reunite with her, which would’ve been a very interesting direction to take the story. Have Karja become subjugated, and make her focus finding Viewpoint isle so that the trident can reunite with Rollo’s true body, you could’ve had the two main characters turn into enemies for a portion of the game and Adol having to possibly struggle with the idea of maybe having to kill Karja in order to destroy Rollo’s essence with her, unfortunately this does never happen.
Ys X is built for a two character party, it’s the main point of the gameplay, so you can’t just have one of them become unavailable for a good chunk of gameplay, so when the inevitable happens and the trident gets killed, Karja’s emotions get sealed by Lila so that she doesn’t succumb to the berserk state, at the expense of her being an emotionless doll for a while, and by the end of the game even though the character says the she’s on the brink of losing control it’s never actually materialized in the way the character plays or behaves.
I rarely see a game where gameplay and narrative end up colliding with themselves so much that they work to the detriment of the full experience rather than enhancing each other but this is the main issue with the entirety of Ys X.
I also need to reserve a special mention to Grimson, his relationship with Karja always appeared very detached, and it’s all related to the death of Karja’s mother, Illuna. When they were younger they ended up finding the Marine Triangle and the temple in which the Trident was sealed, the seal was becoming weaker and Illuna offered her energy to Lila in order to strengthen the seal. That action ended up weakening her body and thus became very frail and died shortly after giving birth to Karja.
Grimson always resented that action so instead of raising Karja in order to protect her from the danger of the trident, he wanted her to become strong enough to actually become the vessel and then kill her to get revenge for the death of his wife… by killing his only daughter. I have no idea if Falcom thought that this would feel in any way relatable but I know that I enjoyed kicking his ass a lot once he became a boss fight and especially treasure the clips of Karja punching him repeatedly in the face. He really takes the spot for one of the worst dads in gaming.
I said before, I don’t hate this game, but I really think that Falcom fumbled a lot with this entry. Falcom’s major strength especially in the Trails series is in their writing, characterization and world building, and this game seemed like it was focused on how to make this game different from the previous entries rather than actually build a compelling story around it.
The Ys series has never been as deep or involved as Trails was, but at the same time, that was because the games were short 10 hours action rides with very simple narrative and a tough challenge, if they want to turn Ys in to a game with the same level of scope and length as Trails, then they need to step up the narrative too.
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