The Western release of Ys X: Proud Nordics for Switch 2 is even better than last year's Japanese release
Back in 2024, NIS America launched Ys X: Nordics in the West following its Japanese debut a year prior. This was a notable release for many reasons including it being Falcom's first new game to launch on Nintendo and Sony consoles at the same time in Japan. For the West, a PC version through PH3 was also added. I covered all platforms back in 2024, and have since bought and played the Japanese release of Ys X: Proud Nordics for Nintendo Switch 2 for my Ys series Switch 2 backward compatibility feature. That brings us to today. You might wonder if there is any point to just writing about the Switch 2 version of Proud Nordics again, and normally you'd be right. The difference this time, is that the Switch 2 (and PS5) versions of Ys X: Proud Nordics for the West feature not only Falcom's work, but also PH3 working on the console versions. I'm going to focus on the Switch 2 Western release here because the day one patch is not live on PS5 yet.
Before getting to how the Western release improves upon the Japanese version, I'm going to quickly cover the Proud Nordics technical upgrade. Ys X: Nordics was clearly a game built around the original Switch hardware and scaled up. This was different to the Daybreak ports that were built for PS4 and the likes of how Horizon which felt like it was built for PS5. Ys X: Nordics on the original Switch delivered the best modern Ys yet in terms of visuals and performance after how middling to mediocre the Ys VIII and IX ports were. Ys X: Nordics on Switch targeted 30fps and delivered a slightly soft visual experience both docked and handheld.
Ys X: Proud Nordics for Nintendo Switch 2 delivered the largest upgrade in resolution and frame rate that I've seen so far with it not only running with a 60fps target by default, but even offering a 120fps target performance mode both docked and handheld. The visuals saw some cuts for this, but it was a fantastic handheld experience. I remember it only really struggled noticeably when playing the new locations added in Ys X: Proud Nordics.
Note: For the images above, I used 4K capture for the Quality mode and 1440p capture for the Performance mode due to capture card bandwidth limitations. You can still see the massive upgrade in the English release's 120fps target Performance mode.
Ys X: Proud Nordics' Japanese release is already what I consider one of the best upgrades on Switch 2, but the Western release takes things further. When I first booted it up, Ys X: Proud Nordics looked more stable than the noisy Japanese release when played in the perfomance mode. I then tried the default 60fps mode and that also looked better than what I remembered of last year's release. I redownloaded the Japanese release and was surprised to see how much of an image quality improvement the Western release is. I spoke to PH3's Durante about this and he told me how Ys X: Proud Nordics on Switch 2 is the first Switch 2 release PH3 has worked on and how it added DLSS to the Western release. You can read my interview here. Durante also told me about working on adding PSSR to the PS5 Pro version, but I'll save the PS5 version for another article.
The only unfortunate thing about Ys X: Proud Nordics is that there is no upgrade path for existing owners and no save transfer. The latter I can understand to some degree since there are changes even to base game content in parts, and while you can load a clear save to begin a New Game Plus run, this is pretty much a brand-new release. It is also launching at full price with a lot of the base game DLC included, but not all.
Note: For the images above, I used handheld capture using the Switch 2's screenshot functionality. There is no other way to get handheld capture right now. You can easily see the difference in quality between the English and Japanese releases with the former being a lot better even in the Performance 120fps target mode.
One more thing to note when it comes to how this compares to the PS5 release, the Switch 2 version of Proud Nordics still has loading screens in between areas and when you exit buildings or houses. The PS5 version of the base Ys X: Nordics and the new Ys X: Proud Nordics version both do not feature loading screens. The game just fades in and out to transition between locations. The Switch 2 version is notably slower thanks to the loading screens here.
I'm in two minds about Ys X: Proud Nordics right now. For those who have never played it before, Ys X: Proud Nordics on Switch 2 is my favorite version of the game by far thanks to the excellent handheld and docked experience in the Western release. If you already played Ys X: Nordics and want to replay it, Ys X: Proud Nordics is the best way to do so, but it is hard to recommend for those who just want to experience the new content.
On a technical level, I consider Ys X: Proud Nordics on Switch 2 as much of an upgrade as the Switch 2 Editions of No Man's Sky and Factorio. We don't see many games improve this much visually between regions anymore. Usually, the delayed Western launch of a Japanese game ships with all the updates from the get go. With Ys X: Proud Nordics, NIS America and PH3 did a lot more than just that to deliver an enhanced version of my favorite portable release of Ys X.
Ys X: Proud Nordics launches on February 20, 2026 for the West on PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC (Steam, GOG, Epic).