*Beat the game twice on Switch and third time on PS5.

Ys VIII is a pretty fun game from start to finish. Gameplay of the three-party system was beginning at its peak and exploring the Isle of Seiren was the most fun part of the game. The locations (while still very much an upscaled Vita game) were visually pretty to look at it and the music were some of the Falcom Sound Team's best music in general. Characters, while still simple, were enjoyable and the mysteries around the island is what enticed me to continue to play. The true highlight of the game was definitely Dana Iclucia and the entirety of her story. Doesn't help her va, Brianna Knickerbocker, absolutely played her amazingly.

Now for a few negatives. Character models become a bit choppy whenever they stand underneath a shadow. Map navigation in the menu is clunky, which doesn't help when you need to find a specific item or quest destination from an elevated level. Raids and hunts, while not bad modes, are pace killers. Thankfully, you don't need to do all them. I also experience audio imbalance between the voiced lines. Sometimes, it's loud and then sometimes its a bit too quite (Probably something related to porting it to PS5) While I did say, the characters were enjoyable, the story itself isn't the most amazing thing ever. The basis of escaping the island to the entirety of Dana and the Eternians made the story pretty enjoyable, though some parts of it could've been trimmed down or just not been there. Biggest example being the Nameless Ripper subplot. It didn't add anything to the story and the consequences of that subplot was ultimately minimal in the grand scheme. Finally, the true ending itself is a bit conflicting as it unnecessarily retcons the whole journey of the game to justify itself and Maia's reveal kind came out of nowhere. It's not that bad, but it does say that the journey was better than the destination itself.

Despite my gripes, Ys VIII is still a great game that is still sentimental to me as it was the very first Falcom game I ever played. Still recommend it, though I personally feel you should still play other Ys games before this one.

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.

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.