Alright, guys. It's a bit late, but this took a while longer than expected, so I hope you can forgive me, but here are my final thoughts on Ys VIII. This is the longest damn review I've ever written, I swear... XD
Draggy Reviews: Ys VIII – Lacrimosa of Dana
A few years back, when my PS4 was still relatively new and I didn’t have many games for it, I was utterly fascinated with the title and cover of Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana. Seeing that Falcom, the same company behind the Trails of Cold Steel games that I had played up to that point (1 and 2), made it, I got curious to see what other games this company makes. And I ended up buying the game purely on that whim.
And I was very disappointed when the gameplay absolutely did not want to click with me. I played it up until the second major area and then put it down, because I felt as though I struggled way too much.
However, this year, I was introduced to the rest of the Ys series, and that made me want to pick the game up again, and so I did. And after all these years, I was finally able to finish it (and I am still confused and upset at my past self for not grasping how this game works). Here are my thoughts on Ys VIII – Lacrimosa of Dana.
Story (8/10)
In Ys tradition, you play as red-haired, silent protagonist adventurer Adol Christin, starting the game on a journey on board the cruise ship Lombardia on the way across the Gaete Sea. What looks at first to be a leisurely cruise soon turns sour when the Lombardia is caught up in a storm and attacked by a mysterious, gigantic sea creature. Adol and the other passengers are tossed into the ocean during the attack, and he awakes at the shores of the mysterious, forbidden Seiren Island, that we heard earlier on is feared by every sailor the world over. With good reason, as is very quickly shown. Establishing a village together with the other survivors of the shipwreck, Adol must help find a way to get off the island, alongside companions that he meets throughout the course of his exploration and search for more castaways. What sounds like an incredibly simple setup soon turns into an equally incredible plot with many twists and turns as you learn more about the island, its history, and the dinosaur-like Primordials that roam it.
At the same time, it is a very touching and emotional story, as you witness how the castaways, total strangers at first, grow together and become true companions who support each other through the darkest of times as the village is repeatedly attacked by stronger and increasingly dangerous threats – peaking in the Primordials themselves coming to attack, monsters that cannot be defeated by normal means, indicated in gameplay by them respawning the second you defeat one.
However, unusual for a game of its type, Adol’s side of the story is not the only one. Throughout the story, Adol dreams of a mysterious girl called ‘Dana’, and some ways into the game, you get to play as Dana herself, and are thrown into the society of the Eternians, humanoids who are taller than your average human (with the exception of Dana herself, who is about as tall as a normal human). And this is where the story really picks up for me. Learning about Dana, her society, and how her story connects to Adol’s, as Dana herself dreams Adol’s adventure in the future, is an incredibly engaging storyline, and when the two finally meet up in Adol’s timeline, as Dana’s parts take place in an unspecified distant past of the island, where Primordials were called “Saurians” (dinosaurs, as I said), and were seen as a common occurrence, you have to unravel a mystery that – for all intents and purposes – can decide the fate of the world. Which is exactly what happens when you learn about the true purpose of the Great Tree of Origin the Eternians worshiped, the Wardens of Evolution that protect it, and the cataclysmic event known as the Lacrimosa, facilitated by said tree. And in Dana’s world, finding out just how she ended up sleeping until Adol’s time, the true history of the kingdom of Eternia, and the mystery surrounding the girl Io that Dana meets on her treks to the crypt beneath the sanctuary in the Eternian capital. The way these two things intertwine, and the way Dana’s parts are spaced out in comparison to Adol’s, are very nearly perfect.
It is a story that kept me hooked from start to finish, and a story I would call next to flawless until the ending.
A particular, very personal highlight for me, however, is at the end of Chapter 2, where you confront a serial killer simply known as “Nemo” or “Nameless” who had been undercover in Castaway Village for a time. You fight him in a tough boss battle, and after you win, he starts gloating about how it was not the end, and that he’ll come back, and I was ready to groan and roll my eyes, as this trope of the villain getting away despite getting his rear end handed to him is one of my personal pet peeves after two consecutive Falcom games that I have played overused this trope and similar ones like it’s going out of style.
But Falcom showed me that they can indeed pay different notes, too, as the moment the villain said “I am not finished”, dramatic irony struck in the form of the third major boss of the game, and the first Primordial you face, Avalodragil, showing up, tackling the guy to the ground, and then carrying him off in its jaws. I admit to feeling a sense of catharsis after seeing this happen, particularly because said villain was presented as irredeemably evil. Amazing storytelling on display here. The entire climax of Chapter 2 was definitely one of my favorite moments of Adol’s side of the story.
However, I do have two criticisms to list for the story. One pertaining again to Adol’s side, and the other to the ending. Let’s address my gripe with Adol’s side first.
While I did end up liking all the villagers, and wish no harm upon them, and ALSO am happy that the 24 people the game wanted you to save can – and will - all be saved (because they are likeable characters), I do think it would have been better for the overall sense of drama to find at least one or two castaways dead, to sell the threat of a dinosaur-infested, forbidden island a little better than it is depicted here. You find some castaways in locations that border on me going “it is sort of implausible for this person to have survived here of all places”, and if said person is found behind rubble you need over ten people to get rid of, it only makes me ask “how the heck did you get here?”.
I also think that Carlan turning up alive and well was not a very good move, honestly. Him turning out to be alive after having his boat smashed by Oceanus makes the monster look even more underwhelming than the boss battle implied it was.
Okay, now for the ending. This is partially why I took longer to write this (the length is the other), because there was plenty to think about, and after mulling it over, I came to a conclusion:
My thoughts on the ending are… conflicted, to say the least. Because on one hand, I do think this is the one way the game could have ended, and thus it makes the most sense. On the other hand, you have a character involved in said ending, and I simply must agree with Shrimpy after thinking about it for a while, and taking personal experience into account, that character really got the short end of the stick. Namely, poor Dana. She lost everything. Her home, her people, her own very existence got erased, and she is now managing the one thing that brought so much pain to her and her loved ones.
For all that she did for everyone’s sake, she was not rewarded at all. Sure, she became a goddess, but… she cannot enjoy the world that she helped save, only observe. And she will most likely be forced to do the very thing that brought her so much hurt. Dana does not get a good ending.
It is remarkably similar to Feena and Reah’s fates in Ys 2 and Ys Origin, and I cannot help but think that someone on the writing staff really had it out for the three of them. Granted, the second I found out what ‘Lacrimosa’ actually means in the context of this game, I was convinced Dana wouldn’t make it out of the game unharmed, but… the poor girl deserved better. Much, much better.
Again, personal opinion, because I am sort of sensitive to this kind of thing in particular, but I think they could have at least made some kind of effort to reward Dana instead of just tossing her by the wayside like that, and be like “yeah, you’re a goddess of Evolution now. Have fun invoking the Lacrimosa, that thing that hurt you not once, but twice. Bwahaha!”. It just feels unfair, y’know?
Characters (10/10)
Well, what can I say? The characters were all fantastic. From the playable cast to the castaways, they were all likeable, engaging characters I was happy to spend time with. I was eager to learn more about each of them, their stories and motivations, and it was a joy to do quests for them because of this. Particular highlights in terms of characters are of course Dana herself (who very quickly cemented herself as my favorite character in all of Ys, perhaps even one of my favorite characters in general), and Hummel, whom I completely misjudged as an abrasive edgelord. Turns out the guy is just a little quiet, but he is overall a nice person, albeit a little distant. Kind of like me, actually. For Dana, her personal journey and character really gripped me from the second she first appeared, and it only got better from there. I do have a particular soft spot for characters like her, the ones who try their best for others, and who are not afraid to speak their minds. She hit all the right notes with me, and that is why I can now confidently call her my favorite character to come out of Ys. And it is a shame that we likely won’t see her again, outside of a spin-off maybe.
Other character highlights include, for me, Sister Nia, the resident nun, who learns to not blindly trust in a predetermined fate given to humanity by an almighty being, instead learning to believe in the individual human being capable of deciding their own fate (which is absolutely in line with how I think, hence why this line of thinking very much resonated with me), the stalwart General Griselda, whom I did not see a whole lot of, but she was very likeable, the stern, yet helpful police officer Euron, who has hidden depths as a craftsman, and the married couple Alison and Ed. You meet Alison very early on, and she tells you that she is seeking her husband. Finding said husband, Ed, was one of the things I admit to being most invested in during my time with the game. I was hoping every new castaway I found would be him, just to reunite the lovers. And when Alison’s baby was born shortly after I finally found him, that was another highlight for me. Said baby can be named, by the way. I decided on ‘Luke’.
And then, I also really liked the characters of the Wardens of Evolution, the main ‘antagonists’. I put quotations around ‘antagonists’, because while they are initially presented as such, their only interest is in observing what happens. They have no intention of stopping you trying to stop the Lacrimosa from happening, they just do not believe you can actually do it until you do it. They are friendly, for the most part, and that friendliness sticks with them, until the very end, which honestly surprised me, as I thought that their initial friendliness would just be a red herring, and they’d turn out to be incredibly evil. Not the case. You don’t even fight them as bosses in the final dungeon, which is incredible to me, as I have not seen many games do something quite like this.
Gameplay (9/10)
This game is a nearly perfect action RPG. I enjoyed myself a lot. The combat was fluid, switching between characters for different combat situations was exciting, and just simply the act of exploring Seiren Island brought me much joy. The exploration in particular is a definite highlight, one of the best in any game that I’ve seen so far. I liked all the little things they added to vary the combat segments up a little, too. The fishing minigame is fun (I do, however, wished that some of the later fish wouldn’t take AS long to catch, because halfway through mashing X for a long while on those, my thumb started to seriously hurt), scouring the land for materials to craft items and equipment is enjoyable, and doing sidequests is for once a highlight in its own right, because it is the sidequests where you get to learn more about your companions and the other villagers.
Each character is incredibly fun to play as, but my top three (and main team) eventually ended up being Dana, Hummel, and Ricotta.
My one gripe with the gameplay is with the raids and hunts. While I do think the mechanic itself is enjoyable, I did find them to be a little intrusive after a while, especially because I did not feel very rewarded by doing them. The material rewards are good, yes, but for how stressful these get (especially the hunts), I do wish the rewards were a little more… substantial. I also wish they were spaced out a little better. Towards the end (and I MEAN the end), the game just bombards you with one raid after another, and likewise for hunts, when you are long ready to finish the game, which I confess I did while still having raids and hunts open (I’ll need to go back and get that achievement eventually).
On Dana’s side of things, gameplay was incredibly enjoyable, too! Her form changes were amazing and added a lot to her gameplay (present timeline Dana cannot transform anymore for plot reasons… emotional plot reasons). It reminded me quite a bit of how Arnice could transform and change her weapons in Nights of Azure, and any reminder of my favorite game ever made is a good thing in my books! The post-Vita version exclusive dungeon and bosses were incredible, too! I had a lot of fun exploring there with Dana alone. A definite highlight for me, and it is also on this side of the game where I found my absolute favorite boss in the game, and one of my favorite bosses in games in general: Io in her dragon form. And absolutely genius battle that pits you against an opponent who can transform like you can, and you have to match her transformations in order to be able to do good damage to her, while also avoiding her super fast attacks. All in all, a very, VERY enjoyable fight.
Music (8/10)
I love the music in this game. Some tracks are downright godlike (highlights include ‘Iclucian Dance’, ‘Hope Alive’, ‘Riddles of the Labyrinth’, and ‘Origine Della Vita’). My only gripe with the music would be that I WISH some of the bosses had their own battle theme. Compared to most of the other songs in the game, I found the standard boss battle theme to be a bit of a weak point. Not that it’s a bad theme by any means, it is still very good, but it doesn’t stand out a whole lot, especially when compared to some of the other boss themes the series has to offer!
Conclusion
As you can tell from the utter wall of text that is this review (sorry about that), I found Ys VIII – Lacrimosa of Dana to be an absolutely fantastic experience. I am glad that this is the first Ys game that I played for myself, and I regret that it took me until now to gather up the courage to finally experience it.
A solid 9/10 for me.
And here's my updated top ten games list:
1. Nights of Azure
2. Blue Reflection
3. Megadimension Neptunia VII
4. Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor 2
5. Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon
6. Dragon Star Varnir
7. Ys VIII - Lacrimosa of Dana
8. Atelier Lulua - The Scion of Arland
9. Etrian Odyssey Nexus
10. Tales of Berseria
