In recent years, I’ve fallen head over heels for Ys, a lesser-known series of action RPGs by Nihon Falcom. The Ys series has been around for nearly as long as I have, but I’ve never really known anything about Falcom as a developer. So at some point in the last 12-24 months, I looked up what they have on the Switch eShop besides a handful of Ys titles.

One of the things I found was The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails. It sparked my interest, so I looked a little closer, and my first reaction to seeing the screenshots was “Wow, this looks very similar to Ys!” And it is a lot like Ys! Nayuta is actually a spin-off of The Legend of Heroes, which is probably Falcom’s biggest franchise, but while the Heroes games are more traditional turn-based JRPGs (to my understanding), Nayuta is a side-scrolling(ish) action RPG.

And so I had placed The Legend of Nayuta on my wishlist for some time, waiting more for a time when I would actually play it than I was for a sale. Then January 2026 rolled around, and I was all like “Well, I just finished up Clair Obscur, what do I want to move onto next?” I think the writing is on the wall for what I chose.

The first thing that I noticed about this game was that the hardest difficulty mode was locked. So at least two playthroughs would be required for 100%. Classic. But not the good kind of classic.

I jest, though. That’s unimportant. The real first thing I noted is that Nayuta is a very wordy game. Like, probably the thing that I enjoy least about it is the sheer volume of dialogue. Now, I usually do my best to try to care about the stories the devs are trying to tell, but so much this game is just repetitive filler that tends to be common in JRPGs. And yes, it is an RPG, but it’s an action RPG. Give me a story, a reason to run and jump and beat up monsters, but keep it brief. I sometimes like 10+ minute cutscenes, but not in a game like this. (I think Ys might be the same way, actually, but I’ve never felt a need to mash through dialogue in a Ys game.)

It doesn’t help that all the characters are little more than your standard anime archetypes. Plucky hero! Doting sister! Amnesiac swordsman! They’re all here! So yeah, as much as the story wanted to make me care about these characters… I just wasn’t feeling it. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to cry at one or more points during the finale, but I simply did not resonate with it on any emotional level.

The plot, on the other hand, was kind of interesting. Having played all the Xenoblade games, nothing in any game’s plot is really going to blow my mind at this point, but this one got me pretty good. At first it was very much a paint-by-numbers “save the magical realm” kind of thing, but then there’s a pretty big revelation that a third of the Earth exploded at some point in the past and the planet is now slowly crumbling to pieces, and the magical realm is actually a space station that’s going to re-form the Earth’s core and regenerate the planet. Which will of course kill every currently living thing on the planet, but you’ve gotta break a few eggs, right? So yeah, I may not have cared about the characters, but I’m very much interested in the game’s world, history, and lore.

And now, let’s talk about the running and jumping and swording bits. Nayuta is a very simple kind of game. At first you’re greeted with a looooong tutorial where you have to just run around and talk to townsfolk for much too long. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, you’re granted access to the world map, when you get to pick a stage and then get to slashing. Stages are largely left-to-right affairs, with plenty of alternate paths, collectibles, and enemies along the way. Also once in a while you may come across a puzzle. They’re much too rare, in my opinion.

What makes this game special is that once you’ve completed a section of the world map, you’ll get the ability to change the region’s season, which alters most of the levels. This changes the landscape, gimmicks, and enemies in a stage, making it harder and materially different from the first time you played it. Then in the post-game you can choose a third season for each region, and then in New Game+ you get the fourth season. So most stages have four distinct versions to play through, and while it does sound a bit like Falcom stretching out their content as far as they can, the changes are thorough enough that I honestly never felt like I was just playing the same levels over and over with different seasonal themes.

Every stage also awards you with up to three stars per stage: one for clearing the level, one for finding all the collectibles, and one for clearing a unique challenge, like beating a stage while jumping less than ten times. Earning these stars is for more than just bragging rights – for every six you earn, you’ll gain access to a new sword technique. Sometimes it’s simple things like extending your combo, sometimes it’s a new special move, and sometimes it’s a move that probably should have been available by default, like blocking. It’s always nice when there’s a tangible, valuable reward for doing something that would just be busywork in most games.

While the core gameplay is fine, that’s really all it is. The stages are generally short (which makes replaying for stars much easier), some of them get quite complex, and many of them have unique gimmicks, but it never feels especially engaging. I’ve spent some time pondering why exactly that is, but I can’t come up with a reason. Playing New Game+ helped to shed a little light on what might be part of the problem: the game is generally too easy on Normal difficulty. Yeah, I died on a couple of the bosses because I was playing fast and loose, but never really felt like there were any roadblocks. There was never any real danger. I never had to try.

That was, until I started NG+. And let me tell you, that was a mistake. I only started a second playthrough because I figured it would be a snap to round up all the achievements. And one of them was for clearing the game on the unlockable Infinite difficulty level. Let me tell you, the game becomes entirely too unforgiving at that level. Even at max level, even with the best gear, I was getting clobbered repeatedly on even the earliest stages. But the thing about that was, is that I was having way more fun when I had to actually focus on what I was doing. It doesn’t help that there’s an NG+-exclusive season for each region, with monster levels that are boosted into the stratosphere.

I think it’s important to note that the New Game+ actually does a lot of cool things. It adds new characters, story content, and sidequests. Most of that is kind of forgettable, sadly. It also lets you choose which elements from your previous playthrough that you want to keep, so if you wanted to say, start at level 1 but keep all your armor and money, you can do that. Lastly, you’ll gradually unlock options in a special shop, where you can spend points on special NG+-exclusive features, like the new season for each region, increased movement speed, increased level cap, increased experience points, so on and so forth. Those special points are earned by unlocking achievements, and that was the biggest driver for me to start a second run in an effort to unlock more of them.

The downside to NG+, and the reason I gave up on it halfway through, is that even though it was fun to bash my head against the jacked-up difficulty level, the game is still 50% cutscenes by volume. And you can’t skip cutscenes. It’s brutal and baffling, and doubly so for me because I didn’t even really like the story that much the first time around. So on my NG+ run I spent a lot of time mashing the B button mindlessly with my eyes rolled back in my head until I was allowed to play again. It honestly might be Nayuta’s biggest flaw, at least in my opinion. I probably would have finished my second playthrough if it didn’t grind to a dead stop after every couple stages.

The Legend of Nayuta, as it turns out, is actually a PSP game from 2012. Whoops! That sure explains a lot, at least. And honestly, while I don’t have intensely negative feelings about the game, I think I would have liked it a lot more back then. It’s really quite an average game overall, though the whole ‘lack of cutscene skipping’ thing really soured me. Probably more than it should have. All of this said, I don’t think I’d ever recommend it. Again, I don’t think it’s bad by any means, and in fact it seems like my general opinion of the game is quite high, but it didn’t truly spark any excitement or wonder in me. Next time I get the hankering to play an Ys game, I’m just going to replay an Ys game.