Ys X: Nordics 40+ Hour Impression

Hello everyone. I've spent a good amount of time with this game and as a new gamer to the franchise I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences with this game.

So I really enjoy this game. It's not perfect, but it's fun. It's kind of like comfort food. It's like a slice of pepperoni pizza.

The Pros:

The biggest strengths to this game are the combo system and the spectacle of combat, combined with how simple it is to grasp.

Karja is by far the best character in this game.

The setting and the overall world building is really nice. It's really well thought out in terms of the supporting cast of characters and the world they inhabit.

Quality of life features and game mechanics in this game is great. It feels like a modern JRPG.

The Okay:

The story is... alright. It feels like I'm in middle school watching a 90's anime on Toonami. The cast of characters is serviceable, but they're pretty cliche. None of them are too interesting except for Karja.

The actual story telling and dialogue with the characters is also somewhat mediocre. There is a big, BIG cast of characters that the game is trying to get you to care about which is cool, but they all fill into the category of 'generic nice'. Even the meaner characters are too cliche to be that interesting.

The pacing is good, and there are some really nice moments in the chapters that are the highlight in the story.

But, even with all that said the arching story and story telling is AMBITIOUS. The supporting cast will constantly have updated dialogue with each other and there is a great deal of content to read and digest with all of them. I wouldn't say that any of it is particularly noteworthy except for maybe a few exceptions. Even towns that you visited much earlier will have their characters' dialogue updated with new takes.

The best stories so far are the inn keepers family, the grieger who fell in love with the blind lady, and the ghost island.

The mana seed system is good. I don't have complaints, and I feel like the system becomes much more important on higher difficulties, or at least that's what my impression would be with how extensive the passive benefits and combinations are. I can't say too much about it without trying difficult enemies.

The less than okay:

I wish that there was more of an incentive to use and care about all of the consumable items I have. I've never used a potion, never used any of the ship items, and the whole group meal thing seemed cool but it gets annoying real quick to the point I stopped doing it when I raided a dungeon.

I understand that maybe this becomes more of a priority with higher difficulties. I play on normal, and I get the impression that the game was intended to be as accessible as possible for everyone. It succeeds in that way.

Not only that, but just like the dialogue between characters, the items are very, very ambitious. All of them have item descriptions, they make sense, they are paced very well, etc. The menu itself is snappy, efficient, in theme, and a joy to go through. The quality of life features are very good, even the little things like the menu icons on items is really nice and something I expect from a 2024 RPG (*COUGH* DQ3 REMAKE *COUGH*).

But it just doesn't feel quite good enough when I upgrade my weapon fully at the forge, because the combat is so stompy. There have been some tougher fights, but none quite enough to make me have that 'oh god' moment.

Overall this game is a power fantasy, a very good power fantasy. I can triple ice shotgun a giant and instant freeze him, swap out characters and Link Down Smash him with a fire sword then Marth Up-B with a flaming uppercut in half a second, swap out again and do a shield bash combo and the giant blows up and dies. And it feels really, really damn good to do that.

That's definitely the core gameplay loop of this game, that and the exploration. To me the exploration feels second feel. I would much rather have say an endless dungeon where enemies keep respawning and you try to get to a higher floor, something like that to emphasize the combat. I don't care about finding a rare fish to feed an endlessly hungry penguin. The raid dungeons I get are supposed to fill that need, but they're not enough for me at this point.

These are just some pre-emptive thoughts! Overall I still really enjoy this game!