Slightly over ten years ago I’ve played Ys Origin – my first experience with Ys franchise or Nihon Falcom games in general. And it completely changed my understanding of what an action RPG can be. Every single entry I’ve played since, as they were gradually released on PC, was a pleasant experience. Even if not every single one of them were as fantastic as Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA, which remains in my eyes the pinnacle of the franchise as of now. So when Ys X was first shown to be a new “phase” in the franchise, where gameplay will be changed and new mechanics and ideas will be introduced, I was beyond excited to see what Nihon Falcom will do next. …Ys X: Nordics turned out to be the most disappointing Ys game in the series I’ve played so far.
The general idea behind Ys has always been a very simple, very mechanically accessible, but incredibly fun and exciting fast paced action RPG adventuring. Set in an alternative version of our Earth on the cusp of the Age of Discovery, it follows the adventures of Adol Christin – a redheaded self-proclaimed “adventurer”, who decides to explore Europe and constantly gets into crazy situations that involve magic and mythical beings that contrast the somewhat normal lives of that era people (just with a more fantasy flavour). Because of this very simple concept, the player is meant to fill the shoes of Adol as he is thrown head first into a new adventure and all of the series plots tend to be relatively simple and easy to follow. Which doesn’t necessarily make them primitive – while often involving lots of tropes, characters and storylines can still be very memorable and interesting, it just varies from game to game how interesting it gets.
And mechanically, the simplicity has always been explored in various ways. I’ve said “phase” before, and what I mean by that is the fact that Ys games tend to have some sort of formula for how it plays for a few entries, until it’s switched to something else. And this has happened many times already, even with the entries that are available on PC and other modern platforms, ignoring most of the titles released during the 1990s (and Ys V, which is the only older game in the series without a modern remake or a remaster). However, all of these formulas are very pick up and play in how easy they are to understand. Previous one, for example, relied on extremely fast hack and slash combat with perfect dodges and perfect blocks and an ability to switch between multiple members of the team on the fly, as each of them focused on a specific damage type that was more or less efficient for the enemies you were fighting. Kind of a very simple rock paper scissors formula. It was fast, exciting, simple and allowed players to fully control the flow of combat.
Which is what the new formula does not. While some of the basic ideas and controls from the previous “phase” were transferred as is, the new central idea in Ys X is the team of two, who can attack as one and perform special attacks. Type of damage isn’t gone entirely, but is simplified to the damage done to “armour” (that some tougher enemies and bosses have) and damage done to health. Perfect block remains but it’s main use is now to allow for counter attacks and restoring special attacks power faster. While perfect dodges only work on special colour coded “fast attacks”, and their benefit is now the same as for perfect blocks (though there is a very short slow motion effect when you hit it). Also cancelling combos with a block or a dodge now only works at very specific moments of the combination, usually closer to the beginning or the end of it, unlike older games.
Sounds like something that should make the game simpler and more fun, but in practice this means that Ys X is now extremely specific about how you play with enemies controlling the flow of the combat more often than the players. You see – with the old system, you could chip damage a tough enemy, quickly dodge out of the attack to trigger a slow motion, perfect block to increase damage output, and control the pace of most of the fight. With the new system, your most consistent winning move is do nothing until enemy attacks you, perfect block it, counter attack, repeat the process until enemy dies. Which is the only way you will be surviving most of the first 10 or so hours of the game, with any enemy group. Until you become more versatile with your skills and the pool of health, that you can just ignore damage with normal enemies and do whatever, but still perform this boring “wait – counter – wait – counter” dance with every tougher enemy or boss until the game finally ends.
But another big selling point of Ys X is supposed to be the fact that Adol finally gets to control a ship and explore the different islands on the sea, instead of being landlocked for the majority of his adventure. It’s a great idea and it could work, especially since Ys IX has shown that the team at Nihon Falcom could make moving around huge open world locations very fun with creative movement abilities. Unfortunately, the results are extremely boring. Exploring on ship is incredibly boring, not less because until the last 10 or so hours of the game ship will be painfully slow no matter how much you update it. Most of the islands, including the ones involved in the main plot, have no visual variety to them whatsoever. Combat is taking a page out of the mechanics first popularised with Assassin’s Creed III and IV, but strips them of all nuance, which leads to all naval battles being way too easy to be interesting and at worst just very tedious to go through. While all other movement mechanics in the game are just bad – why even introduce a magic surfboard if running is faster and more convenient in 85% of all situations? Why have a grappling hook mechanic which is worse in every single way to the one that already existed in Ys IX?..
This game make so many choices that I cannot even begin to understand. Sure, this is a first attempt at a new formula, Ys haven’t really properly nailed those on the first try before. But even Ark of Napishtim or Ys Seven, for how flawed they were mechanically, were enjoyable games. Ones that you could see being improved in the future (as they were in future installments), but they were a solid enough base and a fun enough game. This isn’t the case with Ys X. It’s acceptable for the first 25 hours and becomes almost somewhat enjoyable in the last 10 hours… by general hack and slash action RPG standards. Which Ys series have always exceeded. But when put into context – even if I forget the best Ys entries exist and think only of the ones that are just solid, I’d rather recommend replaying those than playing Ys X. It’s simply not worth your time, when so much fun adventuring can be had with literally any other Ys game.