Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

So on a whim I dropped $60 on this game. Even though it was on PS4, I wanted to have something to play on my much neglected Switch. I casually followed this game up to its release and it looked fun gameplay-wise. I got a lot more than I expected and walked away from this game delighted. I've never played a Ys game before, and after some research I learned that you really don't need to play any of them to enjoy one besides the first two that are one story. Each game is a new story that focuses around the main protagonist Adol Christin. Most of these games are old school top down Link to the Past type games. This is the first to go 3D third person apparently.  The graphics are certainly dated. They don't look much better on the PS4. Although in bigger environments there was some heavy pixilation of the characters and everything else. This only happened in one area of the world though.

The story was actually REALLY good. It was very light hearted through and through, but it was well written, and kudo's to the localization team for putting in a very good effort for the voice acting. I think there is some type of controversy over some of the text dialogue as there happened to have been some misspellings and grammar errors. Eh, I caught maybe one or two but it didn't really bother me. They're suppose to patch it next month either way. I adore the story and how well it was paced through the 50+ hours I played this adventure. The game lets you get a feel of how it plays at first, really not giving you much story besides your current situation. Its probably not until a good 10 hours in when you start getting deep into it, where it grasps your attention. But to set this premise up without spoilers, Adol is on a ship that gets attacked by a giant sea monster, he washes ashore a cursed island and has to find the other castaways that may have survived. While all this is happening he starts having strange dreams of a girl named Dana in the process, about her life and what not somewhere else.

When you start this game, you quickly establish a base camp with the few survivors you meet pretty fast. From there you start exploring the island little by little. You gather resources, pick up different characters that can join your party or join the home base. Characters that join your party can be swapped in and out as you please, except during important boss fights. Even though Adol is the main character, you don't have to use him. Your party size if fixed at 3 but the story never gets disrupted becasue cut scenes include the entire group as if they are always there fighting with you. Characters can have one of 3 damage types (precision/slash/bash), and its best to have one of each at all times. Certain enemies are susceptible to certain damage types.... this will allow you to break there stun bar and make them incredibly weak to all damage types. While you control one character at a time, the other two will still attack via pretty good AI. Even though the controls consist of only a single basic attack button, the combat is surprisingly varied. Not only can you swap between the 3 characters fluidly in combat, each character has special attacks that use up an SP bar. SP is gained through kills and regular attacks landing. Holding down the assigned button and pressing one of the 4 face buttons allows you to use these attacks. Each attack has a certain SP cost, and as you use them they upgrade. You can learn new attacks just by fighting a lot... they seem to randomly pop up. The SP meter can be upgraded to become larger, and you can equip gear that will reduce the cost of your attacks on the SP meter. You also have an ultimate attack that does a lot of damage. Its mostly good for annoying enemy types and powerful mobs, but Its always good to use it on a boss. It stops time so you never have to worry about missing due to enemy movement. You also can dodge and block.. while a little clunky, you can proc a flash guard and flash move by using these right when you're about to take a hit. This will slow down time and allow you to lay in a ton of hits on whatever you're attacking.

Survivors that don't join your party join the base camp and generally offer a crafting service or material exchange. Gear can be crafted and your weapons can be upgraded this way by having the right amount of materials. These mats drop from enemies and resource nodes. I never found myself having to grind out any of these mats as they pretty much came naturally as I played through areas. There is also eventually a doctor that can craft medicines and heal potions for you... but until then you can use fruits that you find around the map. Eventually these become useless to consume straight because your HP gets larger and larger as you level up. While you have meds to heal HP and cure conditions, you can also discover recipes and cook food with said fruits that heal and offer a bonus effect such as HP regen, faster SP regen, faster break bars, or immunity to all conditions... these are all timed, and you can't use another food until the time runs out. The healing effect counts for your whole active party, while potions and what not only work for one character. All the survivors together add up to remove obstacles that block certain areas of the map. These are purposely blocked off until you find the required amount of survivors because they generally have a higher level area behind them, or a chest with special gear that's purposely timegated. These adventuring gear pieces are character wide and give you abilities to climb vines, double jump, breath underwater, etc. At the start you can only equip on at a time, but as you progress you can gain more equip slots... I managed to get it up to 5 pieces at a time. A lot of these gear pieces allow you to visit parts of the map that weren't blocked off, but you couldn't reach anyway due to some environmental design that these gear pieces were designed to overcome.

Along with your main story, there will often be side quests to accomplish that will reward you with valuable gear, mats, extra gear slots etc. These tasks are generally easy, and require back tracking to a previous location you've already been too. There are also mini events that randomly pop called "beast raids". Its a small plot device used to gain more mats. While these are optional for the most part, they are worth doing. Its basically just a horde mode. You can upgrade your base with weapons and blockades gradually to make these easier and to gain more points. Most of these hordes consists of the latest enemy types you've encountered and maybe include a recycled boss.

So back to Adol's dreams about a girl named Dana.. at first its only story about her, but you eventually get to play as her in his visions, living at another location. Apparently this was added in the NA version of the game. I find it hard to believe this wasn't in the original because a lot of background and story is given here. Its not a lot of game play compared to the main map and the world is very limited in these sequences, but there is a whole dungeon to do. Dana is her own party member, and because of this, she's super OP. Eventually she gets two other fighting stances to make up for the lack of party members... so the swap characters button swaps her stances instead. Eventually Dana ends up in your main party in a much weaker form of course... why she is there is a mystery... when this happens you are given the option to swap between your visions of her and your real world to try and solve that mystery any time you want, while before that, the game would proc it at key moments. So you got some old Zelda mechanics going here with a sprinkle of Dark Cloud 2.

What I liked:

The story was well done, well paced, and satisfying if you obtain the full ending. The ending was almost an hour long with some breaks of gameplay sprinkled in. The best part about all of this is you can toggle auto scroll on and off with dialogue. While having it off can really break the flow of conversations when its voice acting and not text dialogue, if you're trying to drink some coffee or have a text, it really saves you from missing out on anything.

Crafting was never a chore. Nodes are marked clearly on your map, and respawn pretty fast, but I never found myself having to back track, farm or the need to look up where to obtain a certain mat. Its a super casual system.

The DLC mentioned in the trailer was free... at least for the switch version... and the DLC was just alternate outfits and accessories like sunglasses.

Combat was fluid for the most part... this game feels very dated at times, so some of the attacks that require some precision can get wonk and frustrating to land at times. but juggling special attacks and regular attacks to maintain enough SP to do maximum DPS was satisfying.

Custom button mapping! Thank god, because the default layout was a catastrophe. This also let me set up a dedicated button to use a condition remove med with a button press. This made combat better since I didn't have to pause the game with the inventory screen to pop the medicine manually.

The music is charming and nostalgic. Each zone type has its own style of music reminiscent of the PS2 days full of synth and repeating electric guitar rifts.

While this game has a heavy mix of voice dialogue and Zelda style text dialogue, the voice acting is quite good. Adol is a silent protagonist, which only says a few words here and there, but all of the other characters really come to life with their voice actors, and even the gestures they make. For such dated graphics, the emotions still come through really well.

The side quest system wasn't too tedious, the rewards were worth the effort, and you got some back story on whomever requested the task.

What I didn't like:

The side quest system.... wait what? Yeah the actual quests weren't the problem... its the system. They're posted on a bulletin board and then you have to go talk to the NPC at base about it. The thing is, that if you wait too long and do too much main story, these will go away eventually... that duration isn't really clear. I had one that popped and immediately disappeared because i didn't feel like doing it until after a big boss fight. The glaring issue with this, which i found out after i beat the game, is that missing too many of these will deny you the true ending, and will give you a really shit ending. Thankfully I only missed two of these quests, and one I'm pretty sure it was a bug that just wouldn't let me proc it. WTF? There was no indication that not doing these would deny you an ending. When you finish quests not only do you get rewards, but sometimes stat increases... while I think the rewards may be worth it, someone else may not and miss out in the end. They should have done a better job communicating how big of an impact this has.

While the combat is fine, the tab targeting is god awful. I never used it besides to see what the possible drops for an enemy was before I decided to risk attacking something that was 10 levels higher than me. Half the time initiating the targeting would not target the closest thing too you, and swapping is the same button as moving the camera, wtf? The sticks are the only buttons that can't be mapped, so I don't think there was a way to change this.

The camera can get just as wonky as the targeting system some times... its about as dated as the graphics for this game. Sometimes the enemy will go offscreen and disappear altogether until you turn the camera around... this goes for large ass bosses that devastate your HP bar with certain attacks. When you can't see the wind up, its not good.

Unnecessary invisible walls. This contributed to the camera problems at times, but when I can't jump a rail or a growing mound on a makeshift farm.. I mean c'mon... I get the old graphics, but not this.

While I complimented the voice acting... I had to add this nitpick in... there are a lot of recycled lines for some sequences of sleeping after setting up camp, and viewing vistas. This game has some GW2 style vistas, where when you see them, generally one of the party members will spout off one of their lines like "Its quite a view" or "Its so beautiful". For the most part they are... but one time I was in a cave and saw an old raggity pirate sail, and one of the female party members said "Its so beautiful". C'mon now.

Final Verdict

This game is well worth $60... but like I said in my original status, I bet this will be free eventually on PS+ Monthly games. Its one of those games that proves that  old graphics and really old techniques when it comes to music and what not, don't really matter as long as the actual game is fun and the story is great. I'll definitely buy a Ys IX if that ever becomes a thing. I'm honestly sad that it is over. I'm about to pass out now staying up this late to write a review. Hopefully it makes sense overall because I'm too tired to fix any mistakes or to catch them to begin with.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]