Hi everyone!
I am really happy to announce that Ys X: Nordics will support local cooperative play for 2 players at launch. Before moving on to discussing the feature in more depth, there are a few very important facts I need to clarify:
- This is still an experimental, unofficial feature, developed by me personally with a budget of 0 €, and some pretty wild hacks.
- While the standard single-player game has had many full passes from dozens of in-house and external beta testers, to the best of my knowledge the only people who completed the entire game in coop are my friend and I. Please keep that in mind.
With that out of the way, let's talk coop!
Background & Development
Those who have been following the franchise on PC for a while might know that we first introduced local coop in our patch for Ys VIII. It was an extremely experimental feature, restricted to just combat areas, but a core group of people (including yours truly) greatly enjoyed it even with those limitations.
For Ys IX, I spent quite some time improving cooperative play in many aspects, and in addition to sporting some quality-of-life improvements coop now also worked for many non-combat interactions -- such as opening chests or initiating dialogues with NPCs were supported for both players. However, the Ys IX local coop patch was only completed substantially after the game was released.
With Ys X following a different overall development strategy and timeline, it was possible for me to start working on coop much earlier, with the goal of completing it in time for release. This was not easy, and it is only possible because I spent some time almost every weekend since March working on it. A particular challenge was the fact that Ys X is built on top of an entirely new engine and technology stack compared to Ys IX -- so while I could re-use a lot of the implementation from VIII to IX and spend time focusing on polish and adding new features, coop in Ys X basically meant starting from scratch.
Nonetheless, I think the coop feature in Nordics ended up being the most intricately developed and polished across all the games so far, and I hope that coop aficionados everywhere enjoy it.
Coop Overview
To get started playing in coop, you first need to enable the general feature in the "Coop" tab of the settings menu:
You can then press the "Select" button (or equivalent) on the second controller to enable or disable coop.
Towards the top right corner of the screen, an icon will display the current "Coop State", with the following options:
These mean, respectively:
- Coop Disabled: Coop is disabled, you can enable it by pressing select on the second player's controller.
- Coop Impossible: Coop is enabled in principle, but currently it's impossible to play in coop due to some factor, e.g. only one character being available, or one of a few very rare restricted scenes happening.
- Coop Active: Coop is active during normal gameplay, and each player controls their assigned character (as per the settings that govern coop character selection).
- Ship Coop: Coop is enabled while sailing around on the ship. How this is handled depends on the "Coop Ship Control" setting, either with shared or split control, or assigned entirely to one of the players.
- Fishing Coop: Coop is enabled while fishing. The meaning of this depends on the "Coop Fishing" setting: either just one player plays the minigame, or both have to contribute but it's harder.
In addition to this icon, player indicators (as seen in the screenshot on top of this post) can also be displayed. The visibility of both the coop icon and this indicator can be adjusted in the "Coop" -> "User Interface" section of the settings menu.
Gameplay Information
Basic per-character combat in coop is pretty straightforward, and works just as if you were controlling the given character in single-player mode. However, there are a number of special situations which need specific handling, especially given the nature of Ys X:
- Blocking is shared between players (for story reasons), and perfect block requires both players to have good timing - otherwise it would be too easy.
- Unlike the single-player game, normal duo attacks do not warp both partners next to each other. However, invoking a duo skill does.
- Both players can independently use the Mana String, but there is only one shared target (because there is also only one camera). This needs some coordination.
- Adol and Karja can only afford to use one Gullinboard at a time. Either player can mount it using the normal action binding, and the other will magically join them when also pressing the same button while one player rides the board.
- When trying to move too far apart, Adol and Karja start being pulled together by a dark version of the mana chain, as shown in the screenshot below. It becomes gradually more powerful depending on the distance between the players, and the time it has been active for.
- All menuing is controlled in a shared way by both players. This means that it's very easy for each player to e.g. do their own equipment and skill management.
- For the first time in Ys coop, each player can independently set up their preferred action button bindings in the input menu. Note that P1 bindings will be displayed on screen.
Gameplay Tips
Perhaps the most difficult part to get used to when playing coop is the camera. We highly recommend the "Functional" coop camera option: it will sometimes clip through walls or floors, but will do a better job of keeping both characters in frame and staying stable, so it is a much more playable option. When either player is behind some object, a circular cutout will appear to allow for at least some control until one of the players re-positions the camera:
In our experience, it makes the most sense to figure out who of the two coop partners is more comfortable with controlling the camera, and having them primarily in charge of doing so. It also usually makes more sense to have a somewhat higher-up camera perspective, rather than a straight over the shoulder view.
Another tip is to not be reluctant to use some mechanics to your advantage, or to get past rare situations where coop does not work well. Remember that it's easy to turn off and on again for just a few seconds by using the P2 controller. You can also use mechanics to your advantage, e.g. if one player fell they can be teleported up by the upper player invoking a duo skill.
Conclusion
I'm very happy with how the coop feature turned out, and with the fact that I managed to get it done before the game release.
To give a brief impression of late-game combat in coop, here is a short recording of a battle (story spoiler free). This is cut from a "real gameplay" background recording, which is not too happy with the amount of effects on display, and Youtube compression doesn't help, so please excuse the image quality:
The action probably looks extremely chaotic, but it's far more manageable than it might appear when you have been playing in coop - and starting with much less flashy skills - for many hours.
While I realize that committing to playing an entire JRPG story in coop is a big hurdle, I also believe that it can be very rewarding, and it's a shame that the few franchises which used to be known for supporting this type gameplay have stepped back from it. I hope this work on Ys X (and its predecessors) makes up for that to some extent.
Enjoy!
- Peter "Durante" Thoman, CTO, PH3