Ys X: Nordics Is Great on the Steam Deck So Far - Review in Progress

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Ys X: Nordics was provided by NIS America for review. Thank you!

This month has been crazy for JRPGs. It started off with Sword Art Online. Then we had Metaphor: ReFantazio launch not too long ago. And now, towards the end of this month, we have two more awesome JRPGs coming out: Ys X: Nordics and Romancing SaGa 2. Luckily, I have been playing Ys X: Nordics for reviewing, and I am having a blast with it. It has a fantastic combat system, and I love the dynamic between our two protagonists, Adol and Karja. I do have a bit more to play before giving a full review of the game, but I am very confident it is very Steam Deck playable.

For my review, I have been playing exclusively on the Steam Deck, and I have been loving every second of it. At the default settings, which hover around a combination of Medium and Higher quality settings, I was getting some great performance. On land and in fights, I was hitting a nice solid 60 FPS, while sailing was getting around 54 FPS. There are also some cutscenes that I found dipping to the 45 range and even to 37 at one point, but it would come right back up once we got out of the cutscene.

There are some cities and more busier areas that do drop as well, so playing like this at 45 FPS has been my go-to. It still feels very smooth and great to play overall.

I haven't gone on to start looking into diversifying settings yet, but I do have some areas where it gets much heavier. I do believe there will be a way to play at 60 FPS, and a way to push graphics up with 30 or 40 FPS capped. Either way, I am confident that Ys X: Nordics will be fully playable on the Steam Deck, and while I haven't beaten the game yet, I have found no glaring issues with playing through and the settings have been keeping the game looking fantastic.

For now, you can wishlist the game ahead of its October 25th release date. The Japanese version has already released, but the October 25th date is the release for the English version. I am having a blast with the game so far, and as a fan of the series (and Nihon Falcom games), you will not be disappointed in terms of content and playability. And yes, the game has HDR support that does work and is recognized on the Steam Deck screen, as well as cloud saves and 16:10 resolution support.

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