Overall I enjoyed moments of Ys 8, but I kind of came away from it with a so-so feeling.
Pros
- The reveals of Eternia, the interweaving of past/present was very cool, although it did wear thin by the end.
- Mapping out an island was an interesting structure (although again, became repetitive). It was cool going up the mountain.
- I enjoyed aspects of Laxia and Sahad's characters
Cons
- There's something about the way that Falcom escalates their stakes into almost chuuni-worldbuilding territory that I never really like... like the story of Eternia and that tragedy I found interesting, but somehow when the story jumped up to 'now we we need to construct some huge world lore' feels off to me. Those kinds of gigantic stakes just end up sounding ridiculous when the game spent like 15 hours building up characters in more reasonable scenarios. Like with the whole 'past races' thing, it just feels like 'well, ok...' when it's all dumped on you at once.
I've noticed recent Ys games seem to be really hammering home deep lore, but to me it feels sort of 'against' the idea of Adol's adventures being these rediscovered myths, almost. I don't have a sense of 'myth' so much as a game that's trying to construct and justify why its world exists or something - where I'd rather have more understated/unexplained magic.
That being said, you can more or less ignore all the lore reveals and it doesn't affect much of the game. But Ys 8 felt really long overall - my playthrough was fairly rushed and it still came out to around 22-23 hours. Bosses started to feel really repetitive - you just watch their moves enough to get the Flash Guard timing down, then spam attacks. I did like that wacky top-down view dragon boss that fires bullets and rolls balls at you, although the camera shaking all over the place made it hard to control.
The upgrade system is also a bit silly.. you just get linear DEF/ATK upgrades, and you rarely run out of materials to upgrade to be strong enough to win the fights. It felt really routine to do those upgrades.
Definitely one of the worst habits Ys games have picked up over the past few installments is all these 'modular', 'reskinned' feeling rewards systems - there's always someone giving you stuff for filling out the map, there's a item rank trader, a blacksmith... it makes meeting the characters feel a lot more disposable/artificial than organic.
Ricotta and Hummul were fairly poor characters... the raids were kind of slow/boring...
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Overall, the idea of Ys 8 is really great, but I think this is one of the weaker entries in the series to me - even if it's really smooth/streamlined to play. The Adol/Dana stuff is great, but it doesn't quite make up for how bloated and long the rest of the game feels.
Pros
- The reveals of Eternia, the interweaving of past/present was very cool, although it did wear thin by the end.
- Mapping out an island was an interesting structure (although again, became repetitive). It was cool going up the mountain.
- I enjoyed aspects of Laxia and Sahad's characters
Cons
- There's something about the way that Falcom escalates their stakes into almost chuuni-worldbuilding territory that I never really like... like the story of Eternia and that tragedy I found interesting, but somehow when the story jumped up to 'now we we need to construct some huge world lore' feels off to me. Those kinds of gigantic stakes just end up sounding ridiculous when the game spent like 15 hours building up characters in more reasonable scenarios. Like with the whole 'past races' thing, it just feels like 'well, ok...' when it's all dumped on you at once.
I've noticed recent Ys games seem to be really hammering home deep lore, but to me it feels sort of 'against' the idea of Adol's adventures being these rediscovered myths, almost. I don't have a sense of 'myth' so much as a game that's trying to construct and justify why its world exists or something - where I'd rather have more understated/unexplained magic.
That being said, you can more or less ignore all the lore reveals and it doesn't affect much of the game. But Ys 8 felt really long overall - my playthrough was fairly rushed and it still came out to around 22-23 hours. Bosses started to feel really repetitive - you just watch their moves enough to get the Flash Guard timing down, then spam attacks. I did like that wacky top-down view dragon boss that fires bullets and rolls balls at you, although the camera shaking all over the place made it hard to control.
The upgrade system is also a bit silly.. you just get linear DEF/ATK upgrades, and you rarely run out of materials to upgrade to be strong enough to win the fights. It felt really routine to do those upgrades.
Definitely one of the worst habits Ys games have picked up over the past few installments is all these 'modular', 'reskinned' feeling rewards systems - there's always someone giving you stuff for filling out the map, there's a item rank trader, a blacksmith... it makes meeting the characters feel a lot more disposable/artificial than organic.
Ricotta and Hummul were fairly poor characters... the raids were kind of slow/boring...
---
Overall, the idea of Ys 8 is really great, but I think this is one of the weaker entries in the series to me - even if it's really smooth/streamlined to play. The Adol/Dana stuff is great, but it doesn't quite make up for how bloated and long the rest of the game feels.
3 Comments
2016 falcom character design...
I completely agree with you bro it's easily one of the worst Ys games I've played and I only got 2 left to play
crimson2877
11 months ago