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On February 20, 2026, Falcom and NISA will finally be releasing Ys X: Proud Nordics in the West. This re-release of 2023’s Ys X: Nordics promises to be a definitive version of Adol’s latest journey and provide players with a thrilling sea adventure as they discover new islands and fight monsters with Action-RPG combat. With an entirely new island and plenty of quality-of-life improvements, is this adventure worth going on, or should it be sent to the bottom of the sea? Let’s dissect the game piece by piece and make the decision for ourselves.
Take to the Seas
Before we get into the combat that comprises most of Ys: X’s adventure, I would like to spend some time talking about the most unique thing that sets this title apart from previous Ys journeys: the sailing.
Yes, Adol, the video game protagonist most famous for crashing boats by boarding them, gets to sail the seas and discover islands in this adventure.
Instead of having one large landmass to explore like most Ys games, any adventuring the player will do in this game happens in small individual landmasses, which typically have just a few chests and enemies. This system of exploration comes with several pros and cons.
The pros come mostly from my own preferences. I love filling out maps; it’s part of what drew me to the Ys franchise in the first place. So sailing off into the unknown and discovering a small island with a few goodies was bound to scratch that itch for me. Discovering stuff in Ys X is just as satisfying as it has always been, just with a new flavor.
The biggest con, unfortunately, comes from the variety in the areas you explore in this game, or rather, the lack of variety. Because every area in this game is a small island, that also means the tropical island vibe is the only type of setting you will be exploring in this game.
Ys X contains no jungle, no volcanoes, and no icy valleys. This is an at-sea adventure from start to finish, and unfortunately, that does begin to get old by the end of the game. I truly wish the game had done crazier things with the various islands you can find, as after a while, seeing the same sand and grass textures can get old.
Of course, the ship exists for more than just movement, as Adol and crew will repeatedly be attacked by the evil Undying Fleet at sea and need to defend themselves. These encounters are always short and sweet, as the player has a ranged projectile they can fire from anywhere, side cannons which almost always instantly destroy enemies but need time to charge up, and a few special projectiles mapped to the face buttons on the controller, which have special effects.
Because no sea battle will last longer than two minutes at most and enemy ships rarely have enough HP to withstand a few projectile attacks, this aspect of the game can often feel underdeveloped. The closest the game comes to providing a challenge at sea is with the fake merchant ship encounters, but even then, there are only three of these in the entire game.
While the sea combat in this game is very basic and often too easy at times, I do appreciate that this title is doing something unique with its ship battles instead of copying a certain Ubisoft title, as some other developers have done.
A Horizontal Evolution of Ys Combat
Now that we have talked about combat at sea, let’s get more traditional and talk about fighting enemies as Adol himself.
Ys X: Proud Nordics features one of the biggest changes to the franchise in years, as the party system introduced in Ys VII and later refined in later titles is gone. Replaced instead with a two-character system where the player is controlling Adol and his new companion Karja at the same time.
Basic attacks and the skill system remain, working the same way they have since Memories of Celceta. Adol and Karja’s skills are brilliantly designed in this game, not just as individual attacks but in the ways they play into each other.
Karja has plenty of ways to knock enemies into the air and then either go into the air herself to attack them or bring them down to earth with a big slash. Adol, by contrast, has multiple attacks that knock enemies away while his other skills can launch him toward them or shoot projectiles.
The big gimmick of the title is, of course, how the player can control both Adol and Karja at the same time by holding the R2 button. When doing this, the duo can slice through the health bars of enemies in the blink of an eye and perform special duo skills.
Controlling both characters at once is also how the game’s guarding system works, as the player can block any attack by standing still while controlling both characters. I actually find this method for blocking to be genius and a great homage to older Adventure games, where standing in front of enemies was a way to block.
The game rewards blocking right before an attack more than just standing around and holding in the block button, too, as blocking at the right time will often allow Adol and Karja to perform a powerful cinematic attack and completely fill up your Revenge Meter, which increases the damage done by skills.
These cinematic attacks appear to be Falcom flexing how much their games have improved graphically over the years, as Ys X looks positively beautiful even when compared to recent titles like Ys IX.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the combat in Ys X, but it does have several flaws, such as simultaneously being too easy yet taking too long to kill enemies. You will almost never die in the second half of the game due to Adol and Karja becoming so powerful, yet basic enemies will still take a very long time to kill.
Many fans, especially those introduced to the franchise with modern Ys, have expressed disappointment with this battle system and the changes that were made from previous installments.
While I loved the gameplay of Ys VIII and IX, I am actually glad to see Falcom experiment and change the formula with Ys: X. This franchise used to be a trailblazer and defined many mechanics still seen in Action RPGs to this day. The last thing Ys needs to be is stagnant, so I fully welcome any change to its combat system.
One complaint I do agree with other fans about, however, is that the combat takes far too long to ramp up in complexity. As for most of the early game, your skills can feel useless in comparison to duo attacks, and you are almost always rewarded for just holding in the duo button to block. However, I do not believe this is a fundamental problem with the combat, but rather a problem that plagues other parts of the game, merely leaking into battles.
That problem is, of course, Ys X’s pacing.
Sea Snail-like Pacing
Unfortunately, the entirety of Ys X’s sailing adventure is brought down by its pacing. Unlike prior Ys games, which typically have a short prologue before throwing you into the adventure, Ys X has an incredibly slow start. While you will occasionally be thrown into the field for some gameplay, the first 12 or so hours of this high-seas adventure are spent almost entirely on rails as you move from cutscene to cutscene.
Players won’t truly get the freedom to sail around, do sidequests, and explore the world on their way to the next plot point until the fourth chapter of the game. At that point, the player is finally given some freedom and only occasionally railroaded into a long series of cutscenes.
Prior Ys games like VIII and IX had their fair share of cutscenes, but they were paced better with the gameplay than the early hours of Nordics. Waiting for the game to truly begin can be quite a slog, to the point that players might even forget some early tutorials, like the perfect guard, simply because it takes so long for the game to pick up to a point where you will be consistently using it.
Perhaps the setting and gameplay concept of Ys X is to blame for this. As it is much easier to create consistent pacing when your game is set on a singular island as opposed to having an entire sea that the player can sail around, however they wish. While some games have been able to pull off this type of game world (Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag comes to mind), others crashed and failed much worse than Ys’ attempt (Like a Dragon 8 Gaiden: Pirate in Hawaii)
When it does finally take the training wheels off and let the player go wild, Ys: X Proud Nordics is an enjoyable action RPG. However, it takes far too long to do so. This type of pacing is much better suited to a traditional JRPG like Falcom’s Trails franchise, as it hardly fits an Adventure game like Ys.
As Ys and Trails have both evolved over the years, the two franchises have pulled various elements from each other. For years, elements of Trails, such as the way its sidequests are structured, have been imported into Ys, while games like Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter in return feature action-exploration gameplay that feels just like Ys.
I fully believe the reason for Ys X’s pacing issues comes from this homogenization of Falcom’s leading franchises, and I hope the next title takes a step back and allows Ys to focus on what it does as a franchise instead.
Proud Nordics Changes
Now that I have covered my thoughts on Ys X itself. It’s finally time to talk about what is new in this expanded port. Unfortunately, there is very little to talk about in this section.
To start, all DLC items and cosmetics from the original version of Ys X are included in Proud Nordics (though oddly enough, you still have to use them in the inventory as if they were still DLC items). This includes all alternate appearances for your ship as well as costumes for Adol and Karja.
Now that it is free of being a paid cosmetic, we can finally admit that Adol’s original armor costume looks dang beautiful in this game.
Cosmetics aren’t the only change in Proud Nordics, of course, as the game now features a new type of enemy drop: red crystals, which can be used to upgrade Adol and Karja’s skills without using them. This allows the player to quickly level and unlock new skills in the blink of an eye.
Of course, normal enemies do not drop these crystals. Instead, the game will occasionally spawn stronger versions of enemies with a red aura. These enemies will always be a few levels above Adol and Karja to both provide the player with a difficult fight and make them feel like they truly earned those skill upgrades.
While these stronger enemies can spawn anywhere in the game, it does feel like they are more likely to spawn in the new area created for Proud Nordics. Every time I visited that island, I ran into at least one of these enemy variants.
This leads us into discussing by far the biggest change in Proud Nordics: Oland Island. This island, created for this version of the game, is by far the largest island in Ys X (Being about 1.5 times the size of Viewpoint Isle). Once per chapter, after unlocking it, the player will be able to return to this island for some good ‘ol dungeon crawling and exploring.
Oland Island is one of the most fun parts of the Ys X experience. Exploring it, learning new lore about the place, and fighting bosses here is the most Ys this game feels. The sheer size of it makes it feel like an actual addition to the game, too, and not something that should have just been a patch note like the stronger enemies.
Exploring all of Oland Island will take players a few hours throughout their playthrough and is definitely something you should do to get the most out of your Proud Nordics experience, as I consider it to be one of the best parts of the game.
However, is Oland Island worth replaying the entire game if you bought the original version of Ys X? Unfortunately, I would have to say no. While it is an amazing part of the Ys X experience, it is also only 6 hours of this 60+ hour adventure. If you have already bought and played Ys X, I cannot recommend buying it again at full price just for Oland Island.
If you haven’t played Ys X, though? Then Proud Nordics is easily the definitive version of this experience. While there aren’t many differences from the original experience, the small quality of life updates and Oland Island make it easy to recommend this over the original.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, Ys X: Proud Nordics is a fine enough adventure and the definitive version of Ys X. While I cannot recommend double-dipping for players who already played the original version, any player who wishes to scratch their Ys itch should absolutely play this version of Ys X.
Ys X: Proud Nordics
Bottom Line
Ys X: Proud Nordics is a game that is often afraid to take the training wheels off and let the player truly explore its world. When it finally does though, this enjoyable Action-RPG is a welcome entry in the journals of Adol Christin. Sadly the new additions created for this port do not justify buying it a second time.
