Sholva Ys X: Nordics Review

This is what Adventure is all about. Ys X Nordics is the first entry in a while that goes back in the timeline, quite a bit actually, right after the events of Ys I and II, and it is really nice to see a very young Adol and Dogi finding new adventures in the lands of the Normans. As usual, the Performance of the PC version for this game is absolutely fantastic, being a port from PH3, and we have an extremely well optimized game, packed with Settings. Coming back from their previous work with Trails Through Daybreak, we get Multisample Anti-Aliasing and the great Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing too. When both are combined, we get an extremely clean looking presentation, which really elevates the already pretty clean art by Falcom in this game, and the new Engine, of course. As far as performance numbers, on my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti, this game can be enjoyed at pretty good frame-rates at 1440p, 2x MSAA with SGSSAA and mostly Ultra Settings with a couple settings toned down (Shadow Resolution and Filtering) if you want, but not totally needed. The FPS at these settings tend to reach 120 quite often, only dropping a bit in intense cutscenes. Another option is to increase MSAA to 4x, and still be around 80-90 FPS, which is also pretty good like that, or we can lock the FPS to 60 FPS and forget about the FPS counter and just enjoy smooth gameplay all around, the whole game. At Default, console like settings, even 4K DLDSR is possible at 100 FPS or close to it. There’s plenty of room and scalability in the settings, both CPU and GPU scaling, to enjoy this game as best you see fit, because it is an excellent port. Moving on, Gameplay is also pretty smooth and responsive, as it couldn’t be any other way in an Ys game, and the new engine shows its muscle in the Animation department, both in regular gameplay, and particularly action Cutscenes. These cutscenes have an insane level of polish and animation never seen before in a Nihon Falcom game, only getting close are the latest entries in the Trails series, at least up to the one I’ve played. It is fantastically animated and, as usual in all Falcom games, Characters are actually quite expressive for this art style, which a strong point in their games, they manage to convey lots of different expressions and emotions via their very skilled animation on the characters’ faces, eyes, mouths, and bodies, even with the simpler graphics compared to other, bigger AAA productions. The Sountrack packs quite the punch too, ever since playing the Demo, weeks ago, some of the tracks have been stuck in my mind, and obviously now that I’ve completed the game, even more so. The OST does not disappoint, as expected, I always look forward to new Falcom games, particularly in their JRPG series, because of the soundtracks. Voice Acting (in English) is excellent, I recognize a few voices from other Falcom games, for sure, and some I don’t, and all of them did great. Our boy Adol has more lines than usual, haha, but he mostly remain the silent one we’re used him to be, don’t get your hopes up, but I was surprised hearing his voice more often than usual, it’s good and it fits the moments when we hear him. The Story felt quite interesting and always making me want to keep exploring and adventuring and…yeah, Adventure is what Ys does best, better than almost any other JRPG franchise I know, that’s for sure. Having a Ship we can customize and improve and all the crew and stuff we can do on it…yeah that felt great, even if it’s not the first game that has done it, of course, it was nice to see Falcom’s take on the pirate ship shenanigans, instead of being on the other end and ending up stranded on some unknown island after a shipwreck :P As for Controls, it pretty much controls like most previous Ys games, with a couple new mechanics here and there, and the PC port has an excellent Keyboard and Mouse implementation, even for Menu Navigation, and this is great. I mostly played with my DualSense, but tried Mouse and Keyboard a few hours too, and it’s just naturally good, and easy to control, as we can quickly use skills without having to press a modifier. All in all, another excellent PC release from PH3 and NISA, I had a ton of fun with this new Ys game, explored every corner of the map, and it felt great.