For as much as I love Falcom's games, I've never really been able to delve into any of their post-Nayuta works out of a combination of their runtime, filesize, and performance on Switch. And sadly, that applies to the modern Ys games most of all despite how much I've heard people rave about them. So when I heard that Ys X: Nordics was getting a demo, I immediately jumped on it while I still could, knowing my attention was going to be occupied by Mario Party and Sonic in a bit. And as a vertical slice of what modern Ys has to offer, I couldn't be more satisfied.
I'm happy to say that Ys X: Nordics continues the tradition of Ys stories where Adol stumbles upon a town and gets wrapped up in some sort of adventure there. In this case, Adol ends up stuck in the Obelia Bay when a pirate group named the Balta Seaforce stops his ship from arriving in Celceta (the face I made when I realized this was a prequel to IV). He then stumbles upon a magical seashell that grants him the power of use Mana and handcuffs him to the princess of the Balta Seaforce named Karja, and when their town gets attacked by a group of evil beings that can only be killed by mana, the two set off on a seafaring adventure to stop them and save the town. It's a lot of set-up as you can tell, and Ys X takes quite a bit longer to get going than I'm used to from the series. You can definitely sense the Trails inspirations in the story, from how the game takes the time to introduce all the side characters before the aforementioned invasion, to all the little bits of seed-planting for payoffs I just know are going to happen later down the line. I can't say it doesn't work though. For as much as I wished I could just immediately jump into the action, taking the time to flesh out the characters and the general world of Obelia did a lot of make me invested in the overall mystery and plot. And most of all, Karja is an absolute blast and a great foil for Adol. Her snark throughout the demo was a joy especially with Cherami Leigh's great performance, and it's always fun to see an icey character slowly soften up, reminds me quite a bit of Celes, not gonna lie.
Like its two predecessors, Ys X: Nordics goes for a full 3D perspective to its gameplay. I can't exactly say how it compares to those two games, but I can say that despite how different it is from the bump engine and Napishtim games, it still has that classic blisteringly fast Ys combat feel to it. You can run super fast around the game's world, especially once you get your hands on some of the upgrades like the Mana String that only increase your mobility further, and combat feels quick and responsive, especially with the very welcome addition of a lock-on and dodge. The real hook is the fact that you're now playing as two characters simultaneously, Adol and Karja. You can swap between the two whenever and they both have their own strengths, Karja is great at breaking through defenses and Adol is good at quickly finishing off foes, but you can have them team up in Duo Mode which allows them to guard any attack and deal even more damage. It's a fun concept, but I'm not exactly sure how balanced it is? Maybe this changes as the game gets more difficult, but I felt like Duo Mode is so powerful that I didn't see much reason in not using it most of the time. I also felt like the sheer amount of button inputs this game had left me struggling to really grasp the combat for a bit, but once I took the time to mess around with the button mapping, I did start to get the hang of it. I guess I'm sort of used to Ys having combat that's easy to instantly pick up, but that's just my own bias.
As I said, Ys X: Nordics does take a bit to get going. The first chapter has a lot of cutscenes and dialogue, but it does give you enough opportunities to mess around with the combat. There's a solid early area and dungeon, a few bosses to take out, and an incredibly memorable chase sequence that caps off with Adol pulling a Sonic and surfing down a hill on a plank of wood (my god, he's so cool). The chapter even ends with a brief taste of ship navigation and combat, and it's... fine. The ship moves way too slowly this early on in the game, but I found the combat to be quite fun thanks to some generous auto-aim for the cannons. By the time I saw "Chapter 1 End" on my screen, I had played for almost two hours and was left pretty satisfied with what I got to experience... but then the demo kept going. I was a bit confused at first, aren't demos for big games like these usually like 1-2 hours? But after looking it up, I was stunned to learn that the Ys X demo ends partway through Chapter 3. I was looking at a 5-10 hour demo, roughly the length of one of the bump engine games!
The next two chapters slowly developed both the game mechanics and the story. It's revealed that all the townspeople have been turned into Griegr themselves, and by saving them, they'll join your crew on the ship. And most of the major antagonists show up, though I'm not huge on them yet. They seem to care more about playing with Adol and Karja rather than taking them out right then and there. Getting two extra chapters in the demo really lets me spend a bit more time with the ship gameplay, and yeah, it's still fine. While I hear you can upgrade the ship's speed by a lot as the game goes on, it's still quite sluggish at this point, which is a shame. The demo actually lives you a pretty massive chunk of the ocean to explore at your leisure, but why would I do that when getting around takes so damn long. On the other hand, these two chapters did help me click with the combat a lot more, especially with the introduction of speed attacks you can only dodge out of Duo Mode and elemental attacks to help separate Adol and Karja. The demo ends pretty strong with the game's best island so far, Termina Island. This is a pretty beefy chunk of pure uninterrupted gameplay with multiple caves, banger music, lots of combat, and the introduction of a mana surfboard that only serves to make moving around even more enjoyable. The demo abruptly ending right before a boss does feel a bit underwhelming considering all the other, better places the demo could've stopped, but I should be grateful I got to play this much to begin with.
One thing that really intrigued me about Ys X: Nordics is all the talk about Falcom using a new engine built with the Switch's hardware. We've gotten to the point where I find it hard to get too excited about third party releases nowadays because there's always a chance it'll run like garbage, so I have a lot of respect for Falcom for taking the time to optimize their games properly, and it really paid off too, Ys X Nordics looks and runs damn solid on the Switch. It's not Xenoblade levels of impressive, but it manages to keep up the pace of combat, render large areas, and keep a fairly clean image without feeling compromised or dipping all that noticeably. As for the music, it's generally good. Look, for as much as I rave about Falcom and their music, I'm very well aware of the controversies around how they treat their sound team, like their refusal to credit their workers, how most of their best composers seem to have left by now, and how a good chunk of their recent soundtracks have been given to the incredibly inconsistent contracted composer, Mitsuo Singa. And yeah, Nordics's soundtrack isn't quite as strong as many others in the series, most of the Singa tracks are in fact quite lackluster by the standards of Falcom, but it's got a lot of strong points. Hayato Sonoda's orchestral pieces are as consistently comforting as ever, Yukihiro Jindo gets in a few bangers of his own, and new composer Shuntaro Eguchi has been really impressing me with most of his tracks, he just gets that distinct Falcom sound and most of his tracks ended up being the highlights out of the ones I've heard in the demo. His event battle theme, Overblaze, in particular is a real standout. The fact that I can even compare it to the frenetic guitar-playing from The Azure Arbitrator says a lot about how good it is.
Overall, yeah, I had a really great time with Ys X: Nordics's demo. Despite how much the series has evolved over the years, it still manages to have everything I love about the series, just slightly more fleshed-out. The movement is an absolute joy to mess around with, the combat is fast and fun, the story has been pretty well plotted-out so far, and the blue sky sense of adventure it has is enrapturing. I do have a bunch of smaller issues, mostly down to the game's slow start, but the long length of the demo meant I still felt pretty satisfied with what I had to play. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get the full game given how much else is coming out, so I'm glad I got to give the new Ys game at least a little bit of attention.
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