Released back in 2023 (or 2024 for those in the west), Ys X: Nordics was the tenth numbered game in Nihon Falcom’s golden oldie Action RPG series. Having played it for myself back then, I really liked the game and it became a personal favorite despite some quirks that needed ironing out. Not long after its western release, an upgraded version was announced that promised new content and a refresh of that original campaign. With new hardware also comes a new chance to reexamine itself, but just how far does it go in doing so?
Pretty Sure We’ve Done This Before
Ys X: Proud Nordics is more of the original Ys X. If you want the full breakdown of the contents and story of that game, I recommend you check out the original review since not much has changed here. As the tenth story in adventurer Adol Christin’s travelogue, players will step into Adol’s shoes as he’s whisked across the massive Obelia Gulf. Along for the ride is main heroine Karja Balta, a pirate for the Balta Seaforce who’s magically bound to Adol through what may well be divine intervention. Her more hardboiled personality in conjunction with Adol’s freespirited and fun-loving mentality leaves the pair with many headaches over the course of their journey. As some of the select few wielders of a power called Mana, they’re also the only ones capable of completely slaying the otherwise immortal threat called Griegr, who are running amok throughout Obelia Gulf in search of a “vessel.”
After the town of Carnac is raided and Adol meets a strange old man in his dream, their adventure that combines speedy, crunchy combat with exploration across the sea and its many islands begins. During their journey, they get involved with battles both on land and at sea with their ship, the Sandras. The Sandras starts off as a total piece of junk, not being able to deal much damage or go very fast, but she can become worthy of the sea through upgrading it and finding new crew members over the course of your journey. Sea exploration is perhaps the weakest part of the game because of how long it takes to get going, but over time it becomes enjoyable as the Sandras grows ever stronger.
Land combat and exploration offers a nice refresh of the modern Ys formula. It’s slower than before, and ditches the all-or-nothing elements of Flash Guard and Flash Move found in modern Ys titles since Ys Seven, instead opting for something closer to a more traditional block, parry, and dodging system. The result of this is something I feel has more engaging enemy design and enemy behavior across the board, and it generally feels harder thanks to both this and its item system seeing a healthy revamp. Adol and Karja are additionally the only two playable characters, serving distinct combat roles where Adol deals damage and Karja crushes defenses. Both can pair up in Duo Mode, exchanging speed and mobility for much greater damage.
Even after completing it a second time, I still love Ys X an awful lot. While it’s imperfect in ways (especially in balancing), it offers a really fun story thanks to Adol and Karja’s chemistry and a good balance of lore. The refresh to modern gameplay also proved to be a blast, and the game is pretty meaty content-wise, with lots of side stories to engage in and characters to explore outside of the main plot. Compared to Ys IX, which has very fun gameplay but a story that lacked charisma or curiosity until its final stages, Ys X is a lot more consistently interesting throughout.
Run It Back
So what changes to the main story of Ys X does this new Proud iteration make? The short, unfortunate answer is that it’s less than it appears, as not much of it really winds up mattering. While it technically has new things, they bring little in the way of mechanical implications or narrative intrigue. There are next to no overhauls to the main land gameplay, and gameplay when riding out on the open seas has received precious few changes.
To start, starting with Chapter 4, you’ll have occasional run-ins with powerful variations of enemies that glow an eerie purple, and defeating them will net you a resource that will make Adol and Karja’s Skills stronger. Something similarly applies to your Antiques, where breaking specific rocks across new locations will give you items to upgrade those as well. Both of these are pretty superfluous, since Adol and Karja are already so damned powerful to start with. Even when playing Inferno Mode, I was never really left with the burning desire to upgrade either, and so I often forgot that these additions were even there altogether.
Outside of that, Chapter 3’s infamous Magna Diga (the sand worm) boss battle has also been greatly reworked, with its first phase in particular being basically unrecognizable from its original counterpart. I rather like the suite of bosses in Ys X, so I wasn’t really searching for them to receive overhauls, but it would have been nice if at least a small handful more bosses got this treatment, if only to maintain a sense of surprise for returning players. It’s also with Chapter 3 where the Mana Board is introduced. The Mana Board proved especially clutch in this playthrough thanks to the addition of the new kick function, allowing you to zip along in a burst of speed with a simple press of the shoulder button compared to the original which rapidly decelerates any time you aren’t going down a slope. While I was unconvinced of this addition at first, it proved to be incredibly helpful in steering clear of powerful boss attacks or making some space between myself and large groups of enemies.
The level curve of the game has also been adjusted to account for the brand new content, which we’ll talk about later. Enemies broadly have their levels increased compared to before, and the overall game is generally more difficult now. Island Recaptures in particular, which I often S Ranked on my first try throughout vanilla Nordics, actually took me a few tries until I had upgraded my ship enough to lay waste to most encounters. On the topic of the ship, new encounters also appear across the sea, which open up extra paths of wind to further speed up exploration. I would have preferred a more drastic overhaul to early exploration since it simply is too slow starting out, but this is a reasonable enough compromise.
All told, I think the changes to the old content of Ys X are broadly pretty weak and hardly worth a passing mention. Is the game still great? Yes, but for fans who already played the original, they may be left restless in seeing that barely anything has changed. Aside from the Magna Diga fight early in, I never really went “Wow! That’s different.” and I think that’s a real shame. Newcomers won’t have a dramatically more refined experience either. Compared to other RPG releases, even some of Falcom’s previous ones, the “overhauls” made to the base game are a sight more half-hearted.
Oland Island, On the Bow!
Starting with Chapter 5 of the main story, players can head to the far northeastern island called Oland Island to experience the new storyline featured in Proud Nordics. This is similar to Dana’s exclusive storyline in the console/PC editions of Ys VIII, acting as a parallel to the main narrative that helps give the setting’s lore some added depth. In this game’s case, it furthers the story of the Normans through the introduction of Canute and Astrid, the former being a Mana wielder and Karja’s cousin, helping to give some clarity on the more esoteric and abstract plot beats of the original game. These two neatly serve as rivals to Adol and Karja, being more powerful, more accomplished, and having a lot of influence over the course of the storyline. As characters, they’re fairly fun and both serve as surprisingly cynical spins on the lore of the Normans that players can find through exploring. Of course, they can’t affect the story too much since the base game’s story is broadly the same as before.
To give a basic overview of its implementation, players will go back to Oland Island once per chapter after obtaining one of the Antiques in the main story that will let them explore it further than before. Each visit to Oland Island has new dungeons, puzzles, bosses, and more story to enjoy. I would say it comfortably bumps up Ys X’s original playtime of roughly 40 hours to around 50, depending on how much side content players choose to engage with. The gimmicks you engage with in Oland Island are broadly unique to it as well. One dungeon may have you throw floating stones about to solve puzzles, and another might have you going through a blacked out basement where you need to use Adol’s fire to light the way.
The design of Oland Island reminded me quite a bit of the Isle of Seiren from Ys VIII. Contrasting the rest of Ys X, Oland Island is sprawling and open-ended, where you can go off in any direction and find something new. Whether you access them right away is based on whether you have the right key or ability needed to cross that area, like having Mana String to pull a giant rock out of the way, or using the upgrade to Mana Ride to ride up the tide of a river. I think this is a really compelling setup as it tickles the brain in a way that classic Ys tended to, feeling guided less by narrative and more by player curiosity. It’s perhaps a tall ask, but I can only hope that this is a preview into how the next game will be made.
Overall, I wouldn’t say Oland Island alone justifies the purchase for Ys X: Proud Nordics, especially if you’ve already played the original game, but it absolutely is still excellent. I think players who have yet to hop into this game will have a great time with it, though I think it does also shine a lot on how the rest of the game can feel artistically lacking in places. Even with that, I was happy with how neatly it slotted into the original story, which it thankfully doesn’t tamper with too heavily.
Unwinding With New Features
Oland Island also brings with it a host of new features for players to enjoy. In addition to the new story content, there are also a lot of collectibles to be found that can further strengthen Adol and Karja. Throughout your journey here, you’ll find red stone tablets that act as keys to various different points across Oland Island, which can house strong enemies and useful items. It’s a challenge to find them all since they’re deviously placed or put in precarious spots. Compared to the relatively relaxed level design of the main game, it’s a nice change of pace.
Additionally, players will also have access to a coliseum feature where they can fight hordes of enemies to their heart’s content. By defeating these enemies in a fast enough time, players can earn extra rewards similar to how they might be for Island Recaptures in the main story. These are fun enough, though even in Inferno Mode I found them to be a little too easy. It’s also tedious that each battle has to be cleared by Adol, Karja, and then Adol and Karja together to reap every reward. The fights don’t really change enough to warrant that sort of replayability.
Much better however is the addition of Mana Board races, which was a one-off minigame in the original Ys X. In this mode, you’ll zip across parts of the island to beat your opponents in record time, and thanks to its shockingly high challenge it’s actually a ton of fun. I actually felt the need to upgrade my Mana Board because it was so difficult and required a lot of precision, be it paying attention to slopes to pick up speed or making tight turns to avoid obstacles.
Definitive Journeys
Ys X: Proud Nordics brings the series fully towards current gen consoles, abandoning the likes of the PS4 and Switch 1 in favor of their more powerful successors. What this means in terms of gameplay is plainly felt with the new Oland Island content, featuring much larger areas with a far greater number of enemies roaming about compared to what the original game typically featured. Oland Island also features much better locational variety compared to the main story content, which was perhaps my biggest gripe with the vanilla version.
That said, the real upgrades can be felt in performance and resolution enhancements. I played the original version of Ys X on Switch 1, and played this version on Switch 2. In Quality Mode, the game jumps up to a very impressive 4k resolution output at a broadly smooth 60 frames. This is literally a generational jump from the Switch 1 version, which itself ran at a workable but non-ideal 30FPS at around 900p. Load times are also dramatically improved, with navigating the interior of the Sandras especially feeling far less cumbersome thanks to screen transitions being far more brief. Performance Mode ambitiously aims for 120 frames gameplay at the cost of resolution, looking soft on TVs but surprisingly great in handheld mode. For the most part, it keeps a high enough framerate in this mode, though I definitely felt dips when exploring Oland Island.
It’s unfortunately due to the new content and high resolution that this game is noticeably still a major mixed bag graphically. Bespoke areas like certain dungeons and some island interiors look great, but much of the game is spent exploring an ugly-looking sea and charting across visually inoffensive but ultimately impressionless islands. Back on Switch 1, I could perhaps forgive the sea exploration for looking so poor when it had to account for a broad range of platforms with vastly different levels of hardware power. As I said earlier, however, that’s no longer the case with Proud Nordics, yet I’m still dealing with visuals that are broadly underwhelming. It speaks to the changes made to this game not being nearly as sweeping as they ought to have been.
It’s disappointing since elsewhere Nordics really shines in other departments. Character models look great and animations in particular are a humongous upgrade over past Ys games. They’re fast, but weighty in a way that sufficiently grounds the characters in their environment. Adol and Karja styling on bosses in bespoke animations looks really cool thanks to the strides Falcom’s animation department has made ever since Trails Through Daybreak. I can only hope the next game is consistent such that all of its qualities can bloom equally.
Verdict
Ys X: Proud Nordics offers the definitive outing of a game I already know I loved, but it’s precisely because of this that I’m left a little bit disappointed that they didn’t go bigger with potential changes. If this was DLC, I’d have called it great and left it at that, but this is a full game purchase that still stands alongside the original version of Ys X. Knowing that, it’s hard not to say “that’s it?” when seeing how it aims to improve that original version. While I already loved that game on both a mechanical and narrative level, this new iteration presented opportunities that just weren’t taken. The game still looks underwhelming a lot of the time, which is less forgivable given its made the full jump to current gen hardware. There also wasn’t much thoughtful reconsideration given to certain balance quirks.
For players who are new to Ys X or simply decided to wait on this version, you’ll have a great experience to look forward to. The original game was already decently generous in terms of content and length, and here it’s even better thanks to the new additions and improvements. Not only that, but the new content made specifically for Proud is far and away the best it has to offer. This is an excellent game packed with lots to enjoy, despite the cynical handling of its release overall. Some years from now, that won’t matter much, but I think this kind of thing shouldn’t happen again. It really could have just been DLC.
YS X: PROUD NORDICS IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another Action JRPG, you might want to check out RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army. If you’re interested in recent output by Nihon Falcom, check out our review of The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon.
Many thanks go to NIS America for a Nintendo Switch 2 review code for Ys X: Proud Nordics.
A hobbyist who took up the pen to write about their favorite pastime: games. While a lover of many genres, Isaiah Parker specializes in Platformers, RPGs, and competitive multiplayer titles. The easiest way into his heart is to have great core gameplay mechanics. Self-proclaimed world’s biggest Sonic fan. Follow him @ZinogreVolt
