JRPG Christmas seems set to continue all year long, but deep in my heart, I think the one I might be most excited about is Ys 10: Nordics, which is finally being released outside of Japan this fall.
Ys 10 landed in Japan back in September, and contrary to what we've come to expect from a very global game industry, no worldwide launch was announced at the time. Now, finally, publisher NIS America has confirmed that the game is getting an English release across PC, Switch, PS5, and PS3 in "fall 2024." Sadly, we don't yet have a more specific release date than that.
Developer Nihon Falcom has come to be known over the years for continuing to make the kind of JRPGs that seemed to die out after the PS2 era: back-to-basics adventures with rock-solid combat systems, excellent world-building, and a memorable cast of characters. These games aren't as flashy as, say, the latest entries in the Final Fantasy series, but they have more than enough heart to make up for that fact.
Ys is a particularly long-running project for Falcom, since the first entry in the series launched for Japanese computers way back in 1987 - and, incidentally, was just re-released on Switch for the historically curious. Ys is an action-RPG series known for particularly adventuresome stories and fast-paced combat systems, and it looks like Ys 10 is no exception.
We've spent the past few weeks asserting that 2024 looks like the year of JRPGs, particularly given how the start of the year has gotten stacked with everything from Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. There's a lot more coming through the rest of the year, but honestly, it's tough to imagine much better than the comfort food of returning to Ys.
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