Western audiences may be less aware, but Nihon Falcom is quietly one of the biggest and hardest-working RPG genre smiths games have ever seen. Their most popular series include the beloved Legend of Heroes and Trails, two pairs of long-running turn-based adventures that provide epic political fantasy stories with what feels like hundreds of characters and intricate lore. Having now tackled a fair few of those titles myself, including the most recent Trails through Daybreak, one big gap in my knowledge was Falcom’s other staple in the real-time action Ys series. Miraculously, less prior title knowledge is known for this franchise. So, I took the plunge with the hotly released Ys X: Nordics.

While I got a decent and serviceable adventure with plenty to see and do, I didn’t get much else. That world full of beauty and wonder that’s found in other Falcom titles? Not here all that much. I guess new isn’t always better.

Ys X: Nordics follows a red-headed protagonist named Adol. Your call to action begins in a Nordic Viking setting when your worlds collide with Karja, a Viking Princess. A mysterious magic known as Mana binds the two of you together with a spiritual cuff that you can’t shake. Carnac, a seaside village and its people you’ve only recently become acquainted with get attacked and its locals go missing. A seashell features the voice of a woman who talks to Adol and he also mysteriously can’t stop being transported to a magical island. A dark and evil force known as the Griegr has taken over the lands. These threads and many more are what pull the pair along, and the answers await in the high seas.

What awaits in the high seas, including the many side-escapades and naval battles one can find themselves thrust into, is the real strength in Ys X: Nordics. Your ship that you’re equipped with for your journey starts quite basic but thanks to the gradual recovery of lost Carnac villagers you’ll begin to build up your portable base. Before long a shipmaster will come along and let you deck the vessel with not only better defence plating and speed stats but better cannons and weaponry to bring the fight. I’m not going to lie to you and pretend the encounters and how you can deck out your ship are as deep as games where that’s its sole focus, but there’s enough of an upgrade ramp that it is exciting each time something is unlocked. When you unlock gear such as mana-infused shield guards and ice cannons, you feel better prepared to take on the various pirates coming your way.

If you’re someone like me who loves seeing every little bit of an RPG feed into one another to better your adventure then this right here is a prime fit. Aboard your vessel, you can fish from the deck, grow ingredients, craft potions, improve armour and even cook meals for your crew. All these benefit you in some way and it’s a rewarding and nice feeling to have your home away from home be this ship. You see it build and grow in real-time, a function I always enjoy in games.

Side quests and the main plot will pull you to shore on different islands where you venture out as just the pair of Adol and Karja. Some islands are hubs whereas a majority are unique mini-dungeons with secrets to find and many a Griegr to throw hands with. I found these to be laid out quite well, offering enough variations in aesthetics and design to not feel repetitive or leave you feeling lost. These dungeons, big or small only get better with time too as they become more ambitious as you unlock more traversal mechanics. You see, that aforementioned mystical island that I said Adol keeps waking up on? That’s where he learns many a mana-infused ability. Before long you can use a hoverboard of sorts to glide across bodies of water and grind on ethereal rails of light found in the sky. You can grapple to places, slow down time and send out a pulse to find hidden objects and items. These incremental additions do well to help the pace with the late ambitious dungeons.

On that combat note, it’s another of Ys X: Nordics’ strengths. Players can swap between Adol or Karja at any time and the other will do their thing and hold up well. While playing one of the two on their own the combat feels fast and fluid as you mix dodges and dashes with slashes and quite floaty jumps that work well in moving about a combat arena. Holding the right bumper while you attack with one of the face buttons you get a character’s unique attack abilities that can help close gaps and or keep foes in the air. With all these moving parts and how fluid they feel, its end result feels like the incredibly satisfying and fast-paced combat you’d find in the Kingdom Hearts franchise.

Another crucial element of combat that feels oh-so-good is the fact that you can get both Adol and Karja to attack with powerful mana-infused attacks simultaneously. Holding down the right trigger on a controller sees the pair’s mana string materialise and the pair entering a defence stance, handy for some of the enemy’s (particularly boss’) more devastating blows. If you time this trigger press just right with when a foe’s attack is about to hit you you get a satisfying stagger on enemies but also a boost to your ‘revenge’ meter which is a multiplier for damage dolled out by your attacks. Charge this as much as your current levelling allows you to and suddenly you can unleash some savage attacks now instead as a pair by combining the right trigger and one of the face buttons.

In intense boss fights (with the very final one being a prime example) you’re playing a satisfying and fast-paced venture of a combat rhythm game via prompt and well-timed blocks and parries and then your blows to dole back.  All while this is going on, various magical particle effects are ripping across the screen and satisfying audio cues are prevalent. I wouldn’t dare call it as deep as the DDR (Dance-Dance Revolution) combat feeling of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. That’d be ludicrous. Though the avid combat fan in me loves it all the same.

Levelling and ability unlocks play out quite similarly to Falcom’s Trails series in that you’re inserting different elemental gems into slots for the character, thus dictating stats such as HP, defence and attack power. However instead of having to fret over different combinations of gems to dictate a special or rarer ability being unlocked, you just simply need to progress further down the skill tree and decide if this attack type is one you wish to equip. This was an incredibly welcome clean approach for my first Ys game, meaning I didn’t have to think too much about how I was levelling up stats unless I wanted to. The combat super nerds of Trails may find this a bit too handhold-y and basic an approach but as someone still trying to wrap their head around how to best equip quartz in any given game to this day, I’m thankful.

I thoroughly enjoyed poring through every inch of the various islands and getting into tough and gritty battles both on and offshore. A quality means of getting doses of both in quick succession is by engaging in the raid-like ‘Recapture’ missions that see you lowering an island’s shore of mana shielding and Griegr defences from your ship before then rushing in on foot in bite-sized combat arenas. These are always fun and are a much-preferred side offering than any fetch quest Nordics threw at me. Being relatively easy too helps keep the RPG serotonin part of my brain pumping as I’m often raining in gold and materials following a simple win.

I’ve spent the majority of this review gushing about everything to see and do in Ys X: Nordics and yet I feel compelled to let it be known that I’m not as warm on the game as I should be given all this.  That is simply because everything else doesn’t hold a candle to the rest of its offerings. I found myself being quite bored by the game’s story. As just about any fantasy adventure goes, it’s filled to the brim with proper nouns and lore that they’re trying to get you to care about; something that Falcom wasn’t successful in doing here, but has across many other games. At least part of this is due to the incredibly uncreative terminology used within. Surely we’ve better, less treaded terms to describe a magical force in games at this point besides the word ‘mana.’

What also doesn’t help in vesting players in its story is the fact some sequences that are sans voice-acting go on a little too long. Its supporting cast is incredibly cookie-cutter in design, tropes and voice acting. Karja holds her own here as the most vocal role while Adol is largely silent and like a plank of wood for a majority of the game’s runtime. Picture the most either drab or over-acted English voice dubs for a JRPG you’ve ever heard. They’re both here in abundance. The only real shining light is the always-excellent SungWon Cho playing Karja’s father Grimson. His long pedigree of voice acting in ventures such as Delicious in Dungeon, Advance Wars and God of War: Ragnarok has helped him come into his own in this gruff father role.

Worst of all, English-deaf or hard-of-hearing players who are already struggling to be vested in the plot of Ys X: Nordics should be warned. Some scenes seemingly haven’t had their subtitles translated to English just yet, instead appearing in Japanese. This occurred during some incredibly crucial moments. Mileage may vary.

I’m far from a graphic snob but so many moments in Ys X: Nordics also feel incredibly muted and less exciting than they should be, appearing quite low-budget. Janky fast-paced cutscenes see characters moving and shaking through environments awkwardly. The seas are vast and blue but harshened by generic-looking polygonal mountains and islands dotted everywhere you go. It’s a lot of unexciting green islands or rocky shores and not much else. I’m not asking for high fidelity but a better style; no one colour pops out more than another in environments leaving everything look and feel stock standard and not all that pleasing on the eyes. Often I’d think about another 2024 sea-faring adventure in Cat Quest III and how its luscious views help drive the player to explore that little bit more. I can’t help but feel that if the game was more of a visual feast for the eyes I’d be less bothered and barred down by its other faults.