Finished Ys X!
Full 100% playthrough on Nightmare difficulty, all “trophies” (they built an achievement system into the game, so you can still get “achievements” on Switch lol). Every bit of side content done, and all NPC dialogue exhausted (the Falcom experience! 
)
Right then, let’s get into my thoughts about the game:
The new combat gameplay is a fantastic step forward. I’ve already talked about it in above posts, but the new focus on blocking/parrying and dodging is like playing an ultra-(ULTRA)-lite From or Team Ninja game. Of all the “3D” Ys games, this one by far has the best boss fights too. The final boss fight is one of Falcom’s best ever… Finally, a Ys game where it’s just a showdown, not vs a typical JRPG monstrous being, especially awesome that it’s a 2v2, and Red vs Red and Blue vs Blue 
The same cannot be said about the ship gameplay though. It’s just not good. After upgrading your ship a little bit it quickly becomes smashing all the buttons to fire all your special ammo and just disintegrate everything. The ship is also very slow at the beginning of the game, thankfully all points of interest are marked after completing outposts, so you won’t be aimless. I really doubt ship gameplay returns in the next game, so I’m not gonna worry about how it can be refined.
The story is a usual Falcom fare, trying not to spoil too much, but it was interesting enough to keep me wondering what would happen next, even if I guessed a lot of it like that he Old Man in Adol’s “dreams” was Rolo from the Runestones you find. It’s carried by the characters, which Karja, the only ally alongside Adol this time, is intensely more interesting and developed out compared to any of Adol’s old party members in previous games (besides good ol’ Dogi of course! (who is here but sadly not playable!) 
). That said there’s usual dumb stuff like typical Falcom “forced to fight your allies!” moments and Adol being given a curse that will kill him in 3 months, this really doesn’t even come up much and ends up just being used as a tool to let him know when one of the 3 Generals are nearby, it’s pointless.
There’s several tunes from the soundtrack I really like, I mean it doesn’t live up to the Falcom of old, as usual, but I think this game has a decent soundtrack for new Falcom. Surprisingly it’s mostly the “calm” tunes I liked, like the town of Karnac’s or the sailing tunes. There’s many great field and boss songs though, and this was the first time Falcom’s newest composer, Koguchi, was able to compose the final boss theme… and he hit a home friggin run on it!
As I played on Switch, you can tell this is finally a port done by Falcom and not outsourced like Ys VIII and IX (especially bad). It (mostly) runs very well and the resolution is great. As I’ve been saying in previous posts though, the graphics can feel like some of Falcom’s cheapest yet. I thought it was kind of embarrassing really, that they pointed the camera at this:
But I mean, the character models can look pretty good, and there is some OUTSTANDING animations in some cutscenes and boss fights:
This may have been sacrificial to get the game running as best they could on Switch. Their Kuro no Kiseki games look visually WAY better, though they are now coming to Switch next year, with Kuro 3 looking to be day 1, though there is some hints that Falcom may know something about the Switch 2… So hopefully when they transition to there they don’t need to nerf the graphics as much.
I’m somewhere between an 8.5 and a 9 on what to give this game, maybe I’ll give it the infamous “8.8”! But overall, really fantastic game, great new start to a new type of Ys gameplay style and I can’t wait to see how they take it from here!
(Note: I looked at the clips I posted here, they are MUCH more choppy than how the game actually runs for some reason! I think something might be up with my Switch’s capture feature?)