3.5/5 ★ – TheTheoLogan's review of Ys X: Nordics.

I’m not going to lie: as the credits rolled for YS X Nordics, I couldn’t help but feel bummed out. In one sense, I’m sad the adventure had come to a close. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel Ys X was a little disappointing in some ways. Ys X finds Adol, Dogi, and Dr. Flair coming across the Balta Sea Force which becomes the spark for a new adventure. Out of the gate, I have to say that the setup for the game is really cool. Karja, Adol’s only other party member in the game, is hands down one of the best female characters I’ve had to joy of playing as and watching on screen. So much so that she might beat out Dana from Lacrimosa of Dana for me. Part of the gameplay is the new Duo system. You can fight solo or hold down the right trigger to pair up with Karja for coordinated attacks. At first, it’s a fun spin on Ys’ combat. Tie in parrying and dodging and combat can quickly become frenetic and thrilling. Unfortunately, after a few chapters, combat becomes pretty dull and tedious. Sure, some boss fights shine and are a blast to play. But for the most part, I found myself being bored with the combat. Ys X introduces a new type of combat in its open world: ship combat. And it is a lot of fun sailing the open sea, exploring the world, discovering new islands and completing side quests. While the sea feels barren at times, there’s certainly no shortage of places to explore. I do wish the open world had a more random encounter mechanic with enemy ships instead of relegating them to glowing purple beacons on the water. But this, too, becomes boring later in the game, after you’ve made a good amount of upgrades to the ship. At a certain point, other enemies just aren’t a problem and fighting becomes relatively pointless, outside of opening up areas via capturing fortresses. With this being a Falcom game, there’s two things that are a must: the side quests and talking to the NPCs. I have to say that there are some cool side quests in Ys X. A few stand outs for me involve an island with rapidly growing fruit and another involving continuing down Ashley’s quest line of researching creatures of the sea and air. They touch on some interesting themes that I won’t spoil here. But as far as NPCs go, I didn’t really find any all that interesting in Ys X. When I think of Ys 8, I have fond memories of running around camp and talking to the NPCs that I came to care about so much. That unfortunately isn’t the case here. While I think the story is fine, the music stellar (as always), I can’t help but just find Ys X to be okay. It has some very cool moments, like the chapter involving the white whale or the way the story throws a twist at you later in the game. The game just didn’t quite reach the highs I was hoping. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I just feel like the game is missing that special something. It is by no means a bad game and, for newcomers to the series, I think this is a great place to start. The Ys games, from what I have played thus far, are all solid, fun action games. Despite my issues with Ys X Nordics, I think it is yet another solid entry in the series.