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.
- 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.