Ys X is of course the latest entry in the Ys franchise, and its demo was released on October 14, 2024 in an effort to drum up interest in its full release on the 25th. Fitting in with modern trends it's a pretty substantial demo - you get to play the first three chapters of the story, and any saves and even achievements you earn carry over to the full version.
The developers apparently drew some inspiration from games in the Souls series for its combat, and that is pretty evident after playing a bit of it - there's a lot more focus on dodging and countering enemy attacks and healing is more restricted, giving you a limited number of potion bottles that must be refilled after use, and dying sends you back to the last checkpoint stone you activated. Thankfully don't go ridiculously overboard with the influence - there's no dud equipment, tedious rare drop farming nor any need to build your character in one extremely specific way to stand any chance, and leveling is still a largely automated process that bolsters all of your stats. The fundamentals of party based Ys are still here too, with one character under your active control and the others controlled by the computer, though you control only two characters this time - Adol and Karja. A strange new mechanic is that you can hold R2 to effectively control both characters at once, massively boosting your DPS beyond what each character can achieve individually, even with skills. Since R2 is also your block and parry button (the former active any time you're not attacking, the other requiring a more carefully-timed press), it seems there's little benefit to fighting individually in most circumstances. Another new addition is that you can press L2 to launch out a "mana rope" to both traverse obstacles in the environment and pull yourself closer to enemies for attacks, a bit similar to the new traversal mechanics seen in Ys IX. There are some segments where you're traveling over the open ocean, complete with a fairly simplistic naval combat minigame to deal with attacking enemies. This is also easily the most talky Ys game yet, with a lot of front-loaded dialog scenes and even more in between each story beat, with many elementa that don't get their due explanation until later in the story; it's almost on par with the Yakuza games. Honestly I think I spent about 2/3 of my time with the demo watching cutscenes and the rest were action beats, which is not really what I think of when I picture the fast-paced actiony franchise that is Ys.
All told, it seems like another solid entry in the Ys series, but for personal preference, I like when Ys is just trying to be itself and not cashing in on something that's currently popular. Felghana was a fantastic remake that perfectly captured the fast-paced style of the series roots, Ys VIII took the party-oriented format up to 11 with its great combat, fast pacing and well-realized characters and worldbuilding, while Monstrum Nox and Nordics just feel a bit bandwagony, trying to cash in on games like Kingdom Hearts 3's open-world design and Dark Souls' brand of combat; neither feels overly derivative of the games they're aping from, but at the same time they also lose part of their core identity. I'll probably grab the full game of Ys X eventually, but not right away; especially with the HD-2D remake of Dragon Quest III out next month and Fantasian: Neo Dimension coming not long after that.
Developer: Nihon Falcom
Publisher: NIS America, Nihon Falcom
Released: 2024
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch