izigame.me

I greatly enjoyed Nordics. I think the battle system is much better than in Napishtim and Seven (the first games with their respective battle styles). I think it will be subjective as to whether someone likes it more than 8 or 9, but I personally like the new direction over perfect guards and dodges being as insanely powerful as they were. Parrying is still very strong and encouraged, but it's not all-consuming overpowered. You're still incentivized to play fast and loose via chain attacks giving you a skill point cost reduction.
Obviously it's got to be said that this PC port is one of the best ones out there in the entire industry, period, and deserves only the highest praise. I think this is PH3's best work yet, and that is saying something. It is the definitive way to play Ys X, and that's not just by nature of it being on PC, but because of all the additional features added. The only minor thing I thought was curious to be missing is that there was no map supersampling, unlike in the previous few titles.
Music, I also gotta get out ahead and say it's another fantastic soundtrack. Some tracks like "To Be Free", "Through the North Wind", "Heat Hazard", "Young Swordsman in the Eyes", "Destined to Keep Running", "If I Could Go Back to Those Days", "And the Adventure Begins", and several others (I really gotta stop before I name 20 tracks) instantly got added to my all-time classics list. I will say that some songs like "Depths of Gray", "Deep Inside Where No Light Reaches", and "Shield Brothers" probably get heard a bit too much, and it would be nice if some of the lesser used ones could have seen some more time. But it's a minor complaint.
The cross action system is a bit on the unique side, and it will take a few hours at least to internalize it, but once you do it's a pretty satisfying system that allows for player expression in ways the series simply wasn't capable of before. The flow I mostly settled on was using individual skills or basic attacks to start, parrying when the enemy attacks, and then using duo skills once the revenge gauge built up enough for how i felt in the moment. I think the 2 biggest weaknesses are 1) the aerial combat is basically nonexistent and doesn't feel great, and 2) while skill animations are playing out you get something like a 90% damage reduction.
For #1, I understand aerial combat being low on the priority list when you are making a new combat system in a new engine, because aerial combat has never really been a focus of the series. I'm glad they focused on the main combat feel, which is what REALLY matters, but would like for aerial combat and jumping in general to feel better in the future games.
For #2, I'm guessing they made it this way for ease of casuals, because some of the skill animations are pretty sick looking and lengthy. But I don't see how this choice persists in the long term, because you should be forced to commit to a skill and eat shit if you chose poorly. They need to just make the skill animations shorter, I guess. Either that or allow you to animation cancel out of them. (Possibly both?)
The ship combat, I don't see as a major selling point of the game. It exists primarily for thematic cohesion of the setting and a way to explore in a different manner to previous Ys titles. That said, the ship combat was never unfun to me. It was perhaps a bit on the easy side, but I was never upset to take several battles here and there. I think they perhaps introduce it in the worst light possible, because you are on a derelict ship that is nigh-unseaworthy, so it is slow as molasses and controls like garbage. Makes a lot of sense from a role-playing perspective, but again not necessarily the best first impression. There are a TON of upgrades though, and by mid game you will be zooming around like crazy, without even worrying about sticking to the jet stream currents. (Also fast travel exists once you've been somewhere, so it's not like traveling is tedious.) If this combat doesn't click with you, then you are practically never forced to engage with it, and can avoid all the encounters out on the sea—so I can't forsee it being a slog. (It is a very good source of ship upgrade materials though.)
I'd say the story of at least 70% of Ys games are basically just an excuse to go on adventure. I feel like people tend to have nostalgia glasses on a bit too much when it comes to that. Does this one punch above that? Absolutely. It's a very strong premise to begin with. After that it kinda steps back, to being events that propel the journey forward in order to get out of the way of the gameplay and exploration. But in the final 30% of the game it comes back out of the shadows with a twist that I certainly wasn't expecting and a strong conclusion to the themes and main-focused characters. I think the side characters weren't quite as strong as in the previous couple games, owing a lot to them not being in the party. Some of them definitely had some shocking turns of events to their arcs I wasn't expecting though. Karja is definitely in the top few characters of the entire series. Also, there is a ton of lore to the Obelia Gulf region explored that I found very cool and interesting.
For perspective, I've been the kind of guy who would rather silent protagonists slip into being a thing of the past—especially when it comes to Zelda, Persona, Dragon Quest and those kind of games. But for some reason in spite of that, I've still been okay with Adol being mostly silent for some reason. Maybe it's the way they handle it. I will say I'm kinda getting to the point where I'd be alright with him being fully voiced. It's not like they don't have the voice actor right there. I do hope they eventually do this in the future, but I will say I was genuinely impressed with how well Adol's goofy personality gets across in the game, and was shocked at how well they handled the bond between Karja and Adol coming through despite this massive limitation. So more power to Falcom.
One place where the game can be inconsistent is the visuals. On the one hand, the main character models and animation work is better than ever. On the other, we have low texture work, much less post-processing and lesser lighting than Trails through Daybreak, and some of the environments are a bit lacking—especially land geometry out in the distance. I understand that Falcom were developing for the Switch foremost and lack the resources to truly retool for higher fidelity on multiplatform while doing a simul-release, and this is the reason for this. It's mostly not something that gets in the way of things, but it is at least something worth noting.
Overall, most of my true complaints end up being the result of the game being small budget, small dev team, and short dev cycle—and developed primarily for the Switch. I also think the game is a bit too easy, but realize I should have played the game on higher than Hard. The superboss on Hard while doing a no heal challenge—oh man, now that was the type of resplendent challenge I was looking for. So I see that it's not that they don't know how to make a challenge anymore; it's more like Mario or Kirby where the challenge is left to optional endgame stuff in order to keep the game accessible to little Timmy down the street (and especially in this case where they don't have the dev resources to fully rebalance the game on higher difficulty). I'm definitely looking forward to replaying the game later this month on Inferno difficulty, and I think that says a lot. I'm also looking forward to how Falcom builds on this battle system in future titles!