Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA (PlayStation 4) review "It's not the Ys I remember...it's way, WAY better. "

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana isn’t the Ys I remember. Those games, with the exception of the odd duck third one, had a simple battle system where victory or defeat in was mostly determined by the combination of your character’s level and your ability to avoid running head on into foes. Hit them from behind or just clip them and watch their health deplete at minimal risk to yours; run straight into them and, unless they’re very weak compared to you, enjoy losing a sizable chunk of your life bar.

All of which worked well during the days of old, but may have become a wee bit obsolete by today’s standards. But Nihon Falcom had a few more tricks in their bag. Maybe Ys VIII wasn’t the first game to abandon the classic style for a more modern action-RPG experience — my journalistic integrity says I’m too lazy to actually research this — but it was the first that I played and that experience was one of the best ones I’ve had gaming in at least this calendar year.

The star of the game isn’t series protagonist Adol or any of his supporting cast; it’s the island of Seiren. At the beginning of Ys VIII, Adol and partner Dogi are enjoying a nice, relaxing journey by ship that promptly becomes much more stressful when a giant sea monster smashes the hell out of the vessel, leaving all the survivors shipwrecked on Seiren, a supposedly cursed island.

If you’ve played a lot of action-RPGs, you probably know how their stories go, with you controlling one or more heroes as they take on evil empires, demon lords and the like in order to save the planet from some sort of major calamity. In Ys VIII, while there might be one of those major calamities to concern yourself with, you won’t have much of an idea what it is until you’ve gotten close to the last of its six chapters. Until then, your goals are far more simple: explore the island, find the castaways, locate a safe place for them to congregate, collect enough supplies to build a new ship and find a way to eliminate that giant sea monster so you don’t have to start from scratch after it smashes the hell out of the new vessel.



And so you’ll explore a number of locations, looking for goods and people, while fighting monsters. A handful of the other castaways can join Adol on his journeys, leading their strength in battle. Most of them hang out with Dogi in the safe zone, where they open shops and bestow side quests.

Of the active party members, three can be in the field at once. Coincidentally, there are three different forms of attack, with two characters using each one. Many monsters will only be truly vulnerable to one of them, meaning that if you stick with Adol the entire game, instead of regularly switching characters, you’ll be hitting some enemies for minimal damage until one of your computer-controlled pals can break their defense.

Combat is pretty simple in this game. You’ll whack foes while dodging their reprisals. Those attacks will fill up a pair of meters — a quickly-rising one that allows you to use your basic combat skills with regularity and one which fills far more slowly and, when completely full, grants access to each character’s ultimate attack. You’ll be able to easily use items in battle to restore health or dispel status effects.

And you’ll be doing a lot of fighting, as Seiren Island is home to all sorts of dangerous life, including Primordials — dinosaurs that can only be temporarily stunned until you’ve made it a fair way into the game. To truly defeat a Primordial, you’ll have to access a particular cave to obtain a particular ore that can be used to craft superior weaponry. And to reach that cave, you’ll need the help of co-protagonist Dana.

Dana and her people lived in the distant past, when Seiren hosted a thriving civilization, as opposed to deserted ruins. Occasionally, when Adol sleeps, control shifts to her as you gradually use her abilities to open new paths for Adol’s party, as well as solve the mystery of exactly what happened to her people — a tragedy that plays a huge role when Ys VIII finally decides its plot should involve something other than simply striving to survive an island teeming with hostile animals.



Not that I was complaining about the lack of anything more than a bare-bones plot for most of the game. Ys VIII really hit that sweet spot where I was completely invested in the act of exploration for the sake of exploration. Seiren Island has a definite “metroidvania” aspect to it, as you’ll regularly be stopped in your journey by obstacles and will have to return later — when you get the appropriate item necessary to advance, have collected enough castaways to have sufficient help to clear a path or Dana has done something in her era.

I was in this zone where I’d go out and explore, discovering and mapping new locations and finding treasures, supplies and the occasional castaway, while occasionally helping my little “village” fight off monster attacks. I’d use the stuff I found to improve both my equipment and the village’s fortifications, while hoping I could get my hands on something that would let me climb those vines stretching up cliffs or double jump or breath underwater or walk on top of swamps or truly defeat Primordials and, later, undead. Everything you do has some sort of meaning to help you progress a little farther, making things pretty addictive because it seemed like every night I spent playing Ys VIII I’d do something that allowed me to get somewhere I hadn’t been able to visit before — even if I would quickly discover that new route led to high-level opposition or another stalling point until I found something (or someone) else.

And the same was true when I controlled Dana. In her time, she could do all sorts of little quests to gain good will, which would gradually unlock new levels of a dungeon that she could access. And that place was a treat to work through with its greater emphasis on puzzles to solve. Dana would gain a handful of different weapons and attack styles that tended to have effects beyond simple battling — in particular, the last one she obtained and its ability to make invisible platforms appear to open up entire new areas to visit.

Ys VIII is a pretty easy game for me to recommend. While there is the typical “world is being threatened” plot, it doesn’t really appear until late in the game, placing the focus on exploring a strange and hostile land in order to solve its mysteries. And it was a lot of fun to do so due to how virtually everything I did played a role in me being able to get somewhere new, which would lead to me finding something else that got me somewhere else and so on. This was one of those games that I found myself playing solely for the joy of exploring its world and that joy was all I needed to carry me throughout that journey.

Community review by overdrive (December 01, 2023) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.