In early 2019, my wife picked up a game in a series I had never heard of, on the PlayStation 4 made by Nihon Falcom. I knew Falcom as the developer of the Trails series, but at this point, I had not yet been completely sucked into the series. I thought the game looked interesting, but the music really stuck out to me, and a couple of months after she finished it, I started Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, and it was my first step back into Falcom’s catalogue. Although it doesn’t compete with the Trails series in my heart, the Ys games I have played have all been enjoyable, and much more focused on action and exploration than story and world-building. Each game is presented as a retelling of one of the travelogues written by protagonist Adol Christin who spent his life adventuring around the world. At the end of October 2024, the latest game in the series, Ys X: Nordics, was released, promising a sea-faring epic, that took place early on in the timeline of the Ys saga and a shake-up to the gameplay formula of the last few games in the series.
Just over a month after its release, I have finished it, earned its shiny Platinum, and added it to the list of Falcom Platinums in my collection. So, let’s see what it takes to earn the Platinum in Ys X: Nordics.
Ys X is an action RPG that is, chronologically, the third game in the series. You play as a young Adol Christin, the red-headed protagonist of the series, not long after the end of his first big adventure. While travelling at sea, his ship is attacked by a raiding party known as the Normans, and he finds himself in the town of Carnac. Not long after his arrival, the town is attacked by strange undying creatures known as Grieger. Luckily for Adol, he is gifted a strange power known as Mana, that lets him kill the creatures, but he soon finds himself magically shackled to a woman known as Karja, another mana user, but more importantly one of the Norman’s who raided his ship. After escaping the village on a ramshackle ship, the pair then begin their quest of stopping these undying enemies and trying to free themselves from the shackles binding them together.
I will admit, that I was not exactly dragged into the story at first, especially when comparing it to the previous games that had much stronger starts, but it didn’t take long for it to grow on me. Unlike the other Ys games I had played, you don’t have a party that you can switch between, only Adol and Karja. Adol is a, mostly silent, protagonist, with a few voiced lines, but there has been a lot of work to give him a personality despite this that shines through in the game. His unquenchable desire to see new things and help people who need it makes him surprisingly likeable for someone who doesn’t talk much. It’s also impressive how his character intersects with Karja’s, helping her character arc along, which is much more the focus of the story. Their bond forms the heart of the tale though and is a much-needed emotional anchor for the rest.
Despite only having two playable characters, there are many other side characters that you can find and rescue as you travel around the Obelia Gulf. Many of these are from the town of Carnac, kidnapped by the Grieger and turned into monstrous puppets, that Adol and Karja can purify. Once they have been rescued, many of them will join you on your ship, and it becomes a mobile base full of characters to talk to and offer you sidequests to do. Unfortunately, a lot of the side characters, lack the depth that the main pair have and I found that with a few exceptions, I didn’t really like any of the side characters, or care for their small side stories individually. However, one thing I did appreciate was how the younger group did feel like a group of friends, that stuck together even when there were disagreements with the older members of the crew.
The story itself was better than the sum of its parts, although I found the villains a bit 1 dimensional and dull, and some of the plot revelations a bit forced, it all came together into a cohesive tale that I found enjoyable and had some interesting things to say about the spirit of adventure and the dangers of becoming stagnant and stuck in one place.
The gameplay of Ys X has 2 major pillars to its structure. The first of these is the bulk of the game, running around and exploring the various islands and areas of the Obelia Gulf, and the second is the naval part of the game, an addition completely new to this entry in the series.
One of the things I have enjoyed about the Ys games I have played is that they always remind me a bit of the Zelda series, where you unlock new abilities that let you further your exploration of the world around you. In Ys X these are called Mana Actions, and range from a grappling hook to a magic surfboard to help you get around. Uses for these actions are pretty constant and I did like how the game used them as gates for one of the game’s main hub areas, but I do wish there had been more reasons to backtrack and use new abilities to find things in old areas. There is one ability that does this, called Mana Sense, which lets you find buried treasure and dig it up. In the first few chapters of the game, there are tons of treasures you can go back for once you have unlocked the ability, especially if you are trying to get the Platinum trophy. I just wish there had been more examples of this, more reasons to go back and explore earlier islands again, hints of places you can’t get to until later, and it felt like a waste.
These Mana actions, also have some uses in combat too which I liked, the grappling hook can pull you towards enemies, and the surfboard can knock them over or kill them outright if you are a high enough level above them, but they never felt integral to the combat experience so you didn’t get punished for not using them if you didn’t want to. It might have been more interesting if combat did need these tools more, as at least on Normal difficulty, it was pretty easy and fairly basic.
Both Adol and Karja have slightly different focuses in Combat, but this unfortunately doesn’t change the way they play too much. Adol is more damage-focused, and Karja is more focused on breaking enemy shields, and you can switch between them with a press of a button. They can each learn different skills to use that cost SP, and when you are controlling one, the other will be off in the distance helping out by attacking other enemies periodically. You can also team up by pressing the guard button, and attack together. These attacks are slightly slower, but more powerful and give you access to powerful duo attacks that use both characters SP to pull off.
Your defensive options are dodging and guarding, and guarding automatically puts you in the Duo-Mode. Certain blue glowing attacks can be dodged through by just holding the dodge button and moving, but this can only be done in solo mode, and some red glowing attacks cant be dodged through, and if you time your guard well enough can open the enemy up for a large counter-attack. You can, for most attacks though just hold the guard button down and block them, and blocking attacks successfully, adds to your revenge gauge, giving you a multiplier that will boost your next skill attack damage. In theory this is great, and combat looks flashy, frenetic and fun, but I felt like in practice, the correct answer was always to be in duo mode, and this made combat feel, formulaic and lacking substance.
Maybe I was playing the game wrong, maybe I missed something in the explanations of the
two modes that made using solo mode more appealing, but even the hardest boss fight or the last boss on my NG+ nightmare difficulty run, was solved by holding guard, occasionally letting go to dodge or try and time a perfect guard, fill up my revenge bar, and then do a powerful duo attack, either trying to break through armour or health depending on what phase of the fight I was on. Some of the boss fights were visually exciting and I did enjoy fighting them so it’s not bad at all, it just felt like there wasn’t much depth to the combat systems. Regular enemies suffered even worse because half the time you don’t even need to block, just spamming your duo skills made short work of them. Maybe it was just me, and maybe on normal difficulty, it doesn’t push you to use all the tools at your disposal.
I do like the levelling system used in Ys X though as it does offer some variety in how you play each character. As you explore the world you will find Mana Seeds, which are colourful orbs that you can slot into a character’s release lines. Every 10 levels you will unlock a new depth of these lines and have access to a small group of these lines. Each orb affects the stats of the character they are equipped to. Red ones increase damage, blue increase defence and so on. However, if you equip more than one of the same colour, you will unlock line bonuses, and these can be pretty cool, letting you do more damage or adding a status effect to an enemy you hit with your grappling hook. I’m sure with a lot of study and optimising you could probably make some absolute powerhouses of Adol and Karja but you do get pretty strong even with just trying to stick to one colour for each segment.
Ship combat felt more fleshed out but that had its share of issues as well, and didn’t even have the benefit of at least looking stylish. The Ship you start with, called the Sandras has two types of artillery, a long-range cannon that does a small amount of damage but will slow enemy ships down, and a large broadside firing cannon that deals a lot more damage but you need to be close to the ships to hit. As you progress through the game and upgrade the Sandras, you will unlock more artillery options, like a homing shot, or one that freezes enemy ships and these do make combat in the ship a lot more engaging, especially when unlocking the ability to ram ships for massive damage. However, the biggest issue with the ship’s combat is its speed.
This speed of your ship is an issue constantly in Ys X, it is so slow. You quickly unlock the ability to do short boosts of speed using the Mana Sail action, or by sailing through wind currents marked by green lines on the sea but even then, travel is glacial. It wasn’t until the end of the game when the ship was almost fully upgraded and I had multiple Mana Sail bars, that I stopped being irritated by how bad sailing felt. There are areas you need to go to for many of the sidequests that are nowhere near the wind currents, and if haven’t upgraded your ship to have many boosts, it takes ages to actually get to where you want to go and this often felt like it was killing the pacing of the game.
This frustration is only amplified by the fact that there are so many things to do in the Obelia Gulf, hidden islands to explore, many unrelated to the story. There are rescue missions where you must complete a ship combat section with various optional objectives to do, to build morale before launching a small combat gauntlet for Adol and Karja to tear through, with bonuses being given depending on the morale level you earned in the first step.
There are merchant ships to find, powerful pirate ships to combat, and sea life to discover, and all of this would have been much more enjoyable if getting to the things wasn’t so painful.
Falcom games have never been known for their impressive graphics but Ys X is actually pretty good-looking compared to some of their other titles. There are some issues still with shadows on character faces in particular sometimes looking odd or out of place but the bright colourful world and interesting character designs make a lot of them memorable. This does not carry over to the design of the world itself though, with many of the islands, particularly optional ones, looking indistinct visually, often blending into each other. Similarly, many of the regular enemies suffer from repetitive designs with many of them just being the same enemy with more armour on. This is such a shame when compared to the areas that do work, as some of the bosses have amazing designs, and some of the later dungeons are impressive and varied designs that thematically feel unique while still fitting in the theme of the Obelia Gulf’s northern European-inspired aesthetic.
When in combat, the game shows off its style though with flashy animations and effects popping off as you use your skills. On a lot of enemies, when you perform a perfect guard on a red glowing attack, will lead into a small counterattack scene with a nice animation that plays, while doing a ton of damage. In some of the boss fights these can get quite extravagant and are always cool to see. Despite so much going on in combat a lot of the time, I don’t think I saw a single frame drop which I appreciated.
The Platinum Trophy in Ys X is called “Master of Nordics” and although it does ask a lot of you, it is not difficult to achieve, despite having some missable achievements. It is a completionist list though as you will need to achieve 100% exploration of the game. This means finding every Chest, every buried treasure, every crystal cluster and fast travel point. If you do this on every island and every dungeon, you will earn “No Hewnstone Unturned”.
You will also need to do every sidequest, for “Go-to Guy and Gal”. Some of these sidequests are missable if you don’t make sure to talk to your crew or read Hugills letters and if you finish a chapter without completing the sidequest, they will fail, so the first thing you should do when you start a new chapter or enter a new region of the sea is talk to your crew and check the map for new points of interest. Some of these will be locked behind freeing all of the islands that need to be recaptured, and there is also a trophy for completing all of these called “Reduce, Reuse, “Recapture”
Doing all of the sidequests and exploring all of the islands will also get you most of the way to filling out the combat book for “Combat Connosiuer” which is for fighting every time of monster. There is an optional, hidden super boss in the last chapter of the game, but even that shows up as a blue point of interest so you will be able to find them all without too much difficulty.
The only missable trophy to watch out for is “Seashell Networker”. This trophy is for filling out the people notebook in your journal. Most of these get filled out just by talking to people or doing their sidequests, but there are a couple of missable entries. The first of these is in chapter 5, before you speak to an old man about dealing with a whale problem, you should talk to the character Momina. The second is in chapter 7, where you need to speak to Lux straight away before you speak to Grenn about launching an attack on a fortress.
The rest of the trophies will come naturally with exploring and using items. There are a couple of miscellaneous ones to watch for though. Make sure you spend at least 5 hours controlling both Adol and Karja for their respective trophies, and when you unlock the Mana Barrier ability, try and keep it active as much as you can while you sail around, as you need to use for 30 minutes total for the trophy “Grin and Barrier it”.
You will need to play through the game on Nightmare difficulty for the only difficulty-related trophy in the game. In this mode, you lose your potion bottles when you use them so they become a highly valuable resource, rather than being able to refill them in your ship. You can do this on NG+ which lets you keep your level and collected items, but makes you start from scratch with equipment and upgrades to the Sandras. I think you could do this on your first playthrough if you wanted to and like the challenge, but it is not necessary and only took me an additional 10 or so hours to do a second run of the game skipping all the cutscenes and side content. This will get you the “Night-Mariner” trophy.
For the first few hours of Ys X playtime, I have to admit I was pretty disappointed in it, and the biggest reason for this is everything felt so slow. The Ship, and the narrative plodding along and feeling rudderless. As I stuck with it though, the story began to drag me in, and I found myself enjoying it a lot more. While Nordics never reaches the highs of Lacrimosa of Dana or Monstrum Nox for me, it is still a good game, it just takes some time to get there. I am sure the next Ys game will keep the combat style of this one but I hope they iterate on it, maybe making it more engaging to use the solo mode or have the two characters feel more distinct. I am hopeful though as this game does have some of the best character work in the series that I have seen, and I feel like a lot of that is due to the heightened focus on having a smaller party offers. I will say I do appreciate them trying some new things with Nordics, even if they didn’t all make the grade but maybe Falcom, stay away from the ship combat next time, please.
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