I’m a big fan of the Ys series, and personally, I’d say Falcom have been putting out some of their best work yet with Ys X: Proud Nordics being no exception.
Story
Cannocially, Ys X is set just after Ys II, making it a prequel to Memories of Celceta
Even though we start off our adventure on a passenger ship heading through a northern stretch of sea known as the Obelia Gulf, thankfully, we don’t end up shipwrecked for once. The Obelia Gulf has a collection of what seems like endless islands and settlements to explore, and all is going well until Adol and his companion Dogi are forced to return to the nearest port thanks to the intervention of a group of pirates called the Normans.
The whole region comes under attack from enemies known as the Griegr, impervious to standard attacks; they can only be defeated by the use of mana, which is supposed to be exclusively an ability used by the Normans, but as you can probably guess, Adol soon unlocks the ability, albeit with a small stipulation, Adol and the warrior princess Karja of the Normans are bound together by mana energy, essentially acting as handcuffs and forcing the two to work together to break the shackles.
As the name suggests, the Norman people are based on Viking pirates, and a lot of the story is learning about rites, rituals and traditional ways of life from Karja and how she grows as a character travelling with Adol, all the while battling the Griegr and attempting to free themselves from their shackles.
Gameplay
For the uninitiated, Ys games are all about exploring areas and delving into dungeons. Ys X expands the scope of this by giving you access to your own ship, allowing Adol & Karja to explore numerous islands and even fend off enemy ships with cannonfire.
The general gameplay loop involves travelling to a settlement on one of the many islands to unlock mysteries and lending a hand in dispatching any Griegr that are threatening the local communities.
The battle system this time around is a little overwhelming at first. While you don’t have a full party this time around, you can switch between Adol and Karja on the fly. There’s also the duo, where you can both team up and attack the enemy together, a fighting style that comes with its own moveset and skill tree.
In the early hours of the game, I found myself often switching between characters instead of attacking or holding down the wrong shoulder buttons, but you’ll soon get into the swing of things, and the combat feels very nice, especially with the framerate boost.
The blocking mechanic here is fantastic and very satisfying to pull off, allowing Adol and Karja to perform a very flashy counterattack, although I’ll be the first to admit, I found this a lot easier to pull off on the Switch 2’s Pro controller.
Skill trees unlock the more you level up and progress through the game, and are known as release lines. These allow you to unlock special abilities while giving you the option to increase your stats as you choose. For example, you can choose to equip Adol with a ton of attack nodes in his skill tree known as seals, which will buff his strength stat and attack. Alternatively, you could equip a bunch of Shield seals, which would increase his defence. After equipping a certain number of the same nodes on a character, you can unlock special abilities.
Performance and Presentation
Technically speaking, the game looks amazing in both handheld and docked play. The gameplay is smooth and responsive, with the Switch 2’s hardware handling the adventure with ease. The previous version of Ys X ran at 30fps on the original Switch, with Proud Nordic’s bumping that up to a massive 120 fps. The gameplay is super smooth, even when there are a lot of enemies or particle effects on screen, making Proud Nordics one of the most technically impressive Switch 2 games I have played to date.
The only minor gripe I have with the presentation and performance is that there can be a little bit of off-asset pop-in when loading into a new area, but it has no impact of the gameplay whatsoever.
There’s no upgrade path from the original Switch Ys X to the Switch 2’s Proud Noric release, so you unfortunately won’t be able to carry over any save data from the previous release. Included are all the costume DLC packs from the base game, and there is some additional content interweaved into the main story including a few new characters, but to get to the truly interesting content and super bosses, you’ll essentially have to play through most of the game again, which could be a bit of a deal breaker, especially if you only just recently finished Ys X.
One of the new areas added to Proud Nordics is the Colisuem, which I found myself spending way too much time at and is a lot of fun, gets quite challenging and allows you to unlock a lot of materials and items as rewards.
Conclusion
Ys X: Proud Norics is a great game and feels fantastic to play. It’s really rewarding seeing the relationship develop between Adol and Karja, with Karja becoming increasingly likeable as the game progresses and Adol’s happy-go-lucky and selfless personality rubs off on her. The new content and framerate options make this the definitive way to play Ys X, although you might want to wait for a sale, especially if you already own the base game.
8.5
Nintendo Switch 2 review code kindly provided by NIS America