JRPG Ys10: Nordics is now available on PC, with PC-specific features

The Ys series (it rhymes "peace", thanks) is a JRPG that dates back to 1987. Recently, they have begun receiving English translations earlier than before. The latest example of that is Ys 10: Nordics, which just released in English following a Japanese/Korean/Chinese PC port in March of this year.

In this PC version of Ys 10, local co-op is available, as well as a number of other features, explained in a blog post by Peter 'Durante' Thoman, a former modder who was known for his Dark Souls fix, and helped bring The Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel on PC. He now runs his own PC porting company. Durante's post highlights the PC version of Ys 10, which has improved draw distance and supports any aspect ratio or resolution. It also has high-quality keyboard/mouse support.

I like the live preview of graphics settings. It's great to see how each change looks. More games should offer this feature. It's always frustrating to have to wait until a scene is properly lit to see the results of lowering shadows to medium in order to save frames per second. The PC version also features "Higher Quality Wind Paths", meaning that the pale blue arcs that indicate where you can gain speed in the sailing sections follow gentle curves instead of sharp low-poly angle.

The PC port is also impressively compressed and takes up less than 7 GB. This is a blessing, as Space Marine 2 takes up almost ten times the space of my SSD. There's also support for dynamic cloud synchronization, which means that if you play on a Steam Deck, your save will still be uploaded to the cloud if you just put the game into sleep mode.

After watching the launch video, which featured some real anime voices in it, I wasn't too excited about Ys 10 at first. You can get my attention by using phrases like "Full Rebinding for both Controller and MKB, Support for Primary and Secondary Bindings, and Mixed Use" in your blog. Ys 10 Nordics is now available on Steam and Google Play.