Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

released on Jul 21, 2016

Ys returns with a brand new adventure for the first time in 8 years! Adol awakens shipwrecked and stranded on a cursed island. There, he and the other shipwrecked passengers he rescues form a village to challenge fearsome beasts and mysterious ruins on the isolated island.


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This review contains spoilers

Completed on Hard Difficulty.

Legendary adventurer Adol Christin has found himself shipwrecked on the Isle of Seiren after setting sail on a passenger ship, the Lombardia. Together with the survivors of the shipwreck, they must fight their way across the island to figure out a way back home. At the same time, Adol finds himself drifting into the ancient past of the island to the nation of Eternia as he sleeps, dreaming of Dana, a woman chosen to become a spiritual leader for her person. Together, in a tale that transcends time, they must do all they can to stop the world from ending as evolution threatens to wipe out all they hold dear.

Ys 8 is a light, breezy, colorful action role playing game that emphasizes exploration and character relations over plot in its attempt to create a tale of shipwreck and camaraderie. Much of the game is dedicated to building a community of shipwreck survivors in episodic quests across the island the cast of characters is stuck on. This gives the game a flavor that I can only describe as cheerful - these adventures are delightful, and its wonderful to see everyone work together to build a life for each other on this island. Conflicts flare up, drama swells, and then everyone gets back to the major goal of getting off this island. This portion of the game is interweaved with wave base raids of enemies that push you to perform tighter and more effective combat in order to reach high scores that grant you more resources to play with. When you're exploring the overworld and discovering new locales and individuals, Ys 8 fires on all cylinders.

Where Ys 8 stumbles is in its injection of its traditional JRPG style plot; the mysterious blue haired girl that appears in Adol's dreams eventually materializes in the present day and reveals through time travel excursions that uh....the rest of the party can experience in the present....that her people, the Eternians, were wiped out by a fate they couldn't fight against. This triggers your traditional JRPG plot in which your party must band together, defy fate, and kill god. It feels stapled onto the game's third act in a way that deflates momentum and tasks you with investing in a brand new story component that is both not really fleshed out terribly well or interesting due to its being the game's own prequel in a sense.

All of this is channeled through a smooth action RPG combat system that emphasizes dodging and activating special abilities using the right bumper and the face buttons to maxmimize damage. There's minimal friction here - you unlock skills as your characters level up, upgrade items using collectible resources hidden all over the island, and perform side quests for the villagers you rescue that grant you more materials and build up positive relationships with them. It reminded me a whole lot of the battle system in Star Ocean: The Last Hope in that it was fast, light, and flashy. You can also learn recipes to cook meals at the camp fire that allow you enable different status effects that help during combat, and craft items that allow for recovery and other improvements throughout the game. It's rather straightforward as action RPGs go.

Much of Ys 8 is quite lovely - the gravity of its back third sends much of the warmth of its first two acts tumbling into the ether as it ramps up stakes in a way that feels out of step with the rest of the driving force of the game. Its combat is smooth, its exploration and systems are neatly assembled with minimal friction, and its music is absolutely rocking at all times. As long as you can stomach the shift in gears about 25 hours in, Ys 8 is a heckin good time.

This review contains spoilers

Ys 8 is an interesting game. With this review covering my personal experience with it, which inclines me to say to take it with a grain of salt and not as your guiding light as to how to feel about this game should you play it.

- Gameplay:
Starting off I'll cover the gameplay, as it's probably the strongest point about this game, I played it on normal, and didn't have any trouble playing through it, I think I covered all of the content the main game had to offer, and can say that it's quite good. There wasn't any need to grind bar for materials for upgrades later in the game, and it was all around pretty good, solid and fast paced combat, with some skill expression, at the very least it was as if I had the option to route combos and practice things like perfect guard or perfect dodge, I'd say that it has the potential to have a higher skill ceiling but isn't a necessary part of playing the game.

That being said, the Raids? Uh, wave based defence section's? I can't recall the name off the top of my head. But they're a bigger part of the game then I'd liked, feeling like they take way too long, the scoring system for them is odd, and they all around aren't that interesting. Quite frankly if the game didn't have them at all I'd feel a bit more positively about it, but maybe others might enjoy that part of the game.

Lastly is exploration, probably my favourite part of the gameplay, I have a fondness for games that restrict exploration to smaller "zones", with some collectibles scattered throughout these zones that yield materials that you can collect and use toward things like upgrades or trading for items and a percentage which represents how much you've cleared the "fog of war" in each area. I personally adore this system of exploration and it makes the game damn near perfect in my eyes, coupled with the combat itself.

- Graphics and sound design:
Honestly I just feel like it's important to mention but I don't have a lot to say about it for this game, it's not groundbreakingly innovative, nor is it dead ugly. It's a vita game or port of a vita game if you're not playing it on the vita, it communicates it's visuals well, the sound design is clean not particularly offensive or annoying, with a varied soundtrack that doesn't overstay it's welcome. I frequently listen to video game music in my down time and none of the music has made it on that, which would be how I'd rate the sound track for most games. Quite frankly it's about average.

- Story:
The last thing I'll talk about as it's the only other thing I'd want to mention on here. In my honest opinion, second to the weakest part of this game, at least in the later half. Initially the game focuses on a ship wreck type of story pacing, finding survivors of the wreck, exploring the island and gathering supplies where they're able to, and slowly uncover the mystery that seemed to be surrounding the island. Now if it stopped there I'd probably bump it up to a 4 and a half rather then a 4, but it doesn't stay consistent to that theme, maybe it would have a been a struggle to make a whole game about that? Maybe not? But what I do know is that the entire mystery with Dana and Adol sharing memories with her, it was quite boring, any time I lost control of Adol in favour of playing as Dana I was just uninterested. I'd have to ask other people about their opinions to see where I stand, but suffice to say this definitely brought the game down for me, coupled with the raids is what makes it lose what would have been an easy 5* from me.

- Closing comments:
Thank you for reading all this way, honestly despite my issues with the game, this is probably my second favourite entry into the Ys series, it having made it to X Nordics by the time of writing this, and me not having play neither X or IX. At the very least I'm eager to see what else Falcom have planned for the Ys series.

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana was a very strong way to start off 2024. This game is truly a masterpiece, amazing characters, an amazing plot, and extremely fun gameplay. Ys VIII follows Adol Christin, an adventurer who is sailing on a luxury ship called the Lombardia, which crashed onto a mysterious island called the Isle of Seiren. You must work together with the other castaways to find a way to escape this island, while solving the mystery of the island itself. The gameplay of Ys VIII has you traveling to different segments of the island, and fighting monsters with some pretty basic Action RPG combat, however, this combat is extremely fun. You meet a wide variety of characters, who join your party and help at the base, including Dana, a mysterious girl found on the island who doesn’t remember her past. Overtime throughout the story, the base will be attacked and you’ll have to defend it in raid battles. These battles you’re able to place defenses to keep large waves of monsters from reaching your base. Ys VIII has an engaging story, memorable characters, fun gameplay, and a truly amazing soundtrack. This is truly one of the best games of all time, and I’m so glad I finally experienced it for myself.

bom como todo Ys mas se estica no final e eu odeio toda parte que tem o gameplay no passado da Dana, foi o que fez eu parar varias vezes, não ligo pra ninguem ali, parece encheção de linguiça pro jogo ter 60 horas mas de resto é show de bola

This game is pure adrenaline with insanely hype ass music and combat. Seriously the combat on high difficulty in this game feels like taking a tab of acid then flooring it 120 MPH on the freeway. Story doesn't slack either with some extremely dark moments and a ending that left me bawling. It's Falcom so you already know you are getting some of the best bazongas in the business, the women here are NOT ashamed to show off some real calcium calamities. Dana Forever!

If you like action jrpg please play this game... no more words.