TOUT SIMPLEMENT INCROYABLE 😭😭 J'adorais déjà les jeux Ys mais wow, ce jeu est un véritable chef-d'œuvre. Le scénario est magnifique et émouvant, il y a tellement de contenu / contenu bonus (donjon bonus et boss secrets, etc.), le scénario de Dana est génial et c'est presque comme avoir un jeu dans un autre jeu. Tous les persos et party members sont très bien écrits, l'OST a tellement de bangers, et je pense que Dana est l'un des meilleurs persos féminins des jeux-vidéo ! À mon avis c'est le meilleur jeu d'Ys, je le recommande fortement.

Finalement, DANA JE T'ADORE 😭😭😭

Once again, I have no one to blame but myself.

I was in the mood for a Action RPG after investing way too much time into Baldurs Gate 3 because I kept making new characters and experimenting with alternative choices, while not actually progressing with new content. It's just a strange quirk I get with those kinds of RPGs. Same thing happened with Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, and Divinity II especially. Digression aside, I wanted to scratch the ARPG itch I get often. I then saw talks of the YS series anytime I look up ARPGs I haven't played before. This isn't my first forte into the series though, that would be with YS Origins. I'll be honest, I don't remember much about that game other then that it was good. I liked what I played, but it didn't stick with me afterwards. It wasn't because of anything it did wrong on a gameplay side, it's just that the story and characters didn't interest me much. I don't know, I feel there's something about that game that I'm missing the appeal of.
Still, a lukewarm first impression is better then a bad one; so why not try another game in the franchise? Out of all the games I looked at, I felt VIII would be the one most up my alley with its action mechanics, and RPG customization and leveling. I knew only a little bit of background going in from the mainline games; such as the main character is named Adol whose a odd "sort-of" silent protagonist, his travel companion Dogi, the soundtrack always goes exceptionally hard, and action is normally kept at a brisk pace. And I thought I knew that these tend to be shorter RPGs, but my 50 hour game file is telling me how much of a fool I was. This game is long, fully-featured, but maybe just a little too loaded.

One thing that I wasn't expecting was the lack of budget. Not a bad thing by any means, more surprising since I assumed a franchise going for this long would have more money going into it. But looking at this game's background more, this came out in 2016 for Vita and PS4. The former explains everything, so expect some very simple and stilted cutscene animations, inconsistently voiced dialouge, and other cost/time saving measures. This is not a crack at the team or the game's quality, this shows me they worked smarter with their constraints as they invested their resources into what Ys VIII excels in. Especially the design of the island and how connected every location feels.
I suppose the most distracting presentation aspect is the voice acting. (Yes I had the dub on. No I will never apologize for being a dubbed degenerative.) Inconsistent is the word of the day. Some aren't too bad. Others are a lot harder to swallow. It felt like some of these actors had only one take to say their lines, or that they weren't clear on the kind of character they'd be portraying. I felt the main characters that you hear all the time were the most well-performed, but there were certainly lines where I'm like "Maybe you could've tone it down". Nothing here felt bad to me, just more distracting.

The story itself, without going into major spoilers, took a while to hook me. There are two plotlines with the Castaway Village being built in order to survive and escape the deserted island the main cast found themselves shipwrecked on, and then you have the backstory of the island itself and the civilization of the previous inhabitants; but I found myself glossing over the latter a lot. I'm not the biggest fan of the "Advanced Ancient Civilization" trope as I'm always more concerned about the present day issues happening to our main cast rather then whatever happened before the main plot began. I've definitely seen it unnecessarily used in many a story where it adds very little to the overall plot but takes up way too much time. I felt myself getting pretty antsy during these sections, but soon enough the game slowly showed its cards and I was all "Ah! That's what you're playing with." The civilization itself wasn't too enticing still, but the way its used to expand on the mysteries infestering in the plot was surprisingly clever and effective. And overall, the story in general became more and more engaging the longer it went on, which made its gradual buildup well worth it.
As a relative newcomer, it is odd that the main character, Adol, is silent but only kind of. He has dialouge options to pick like any RPG protagonist, but he's also shown to speak during combat and will have quips for many things like fishing. Also the fact that he his named Adol. No, not that his name is weird. More that he does have a name that all the characters address him as. Most other RPGs would have the player name the main character if they aren't going to say much anyway; but here you can't since Adol himself is his own character with an already established backstory. It's a real fine-line between a player-insert and having an existing personality, and I was not expecting it to work so well. Even though I don't mind silent protagonists most of the times, there are points when the story actually starts to suffer when your main character doesn't display much emotion or they just blankly stare as other characters have to carry the conversation themselves. Here, it never felt annoying. It was just enough added to make things interesting.

But who cares about emotional feelings, I want to feel physical feelings of pain from mashing the 'A' button for fifty hours straight. OK it's not actually that simple, though fuck, some of those fishing mini-games can genuinely be painful with all that button mashing. You have one combo, plus a charged attack after a few seconds of not attacking, a aerial combo, a downwards strike while your descending in the air, four equippable skill moves, and a limit break super attack. Not a lot admittedly, but they're used well enough for the addictive gameplay loop. Build the SP meter with combos and charged attacks to unleash skills, which will then gradually build up your limit break. Skills vary a lot and are gradually earned as you level up and progress the story. SP gain is real easy, which allows you to unload a ton of skill attacks on the enemy at any point. Honestly, the speed at which this happens is why it almost never gets old. You're never waiting to be allowed to perform the cool attacks, and the higher your aggression then the more SP you build, meaning even more devastating attacks. Still enemies are plentiful and often fast as hell, so you'll need to utilize the game's defensive options. You can either dodge at the last second of an incoming attack to slowdown time, or you can guard before being struck to greatly increase your damage for a short period of time. Both provide full invulnerability. I felt the dodge slowdown was kind of vague to initiate. Even after fifty hours I was never quite sure how close I needed to be to the attack, when to dodge, and what direction to dodge to get the slowdown. Most of the times I would activate it by complete accident. The guard felt a lot more consistent though. It's a pretty tight window, but not having your character roll out of the way meant I was able to pinpoint the timing of attacks much more reliably. And because I played Ys VIII on hard, these abilities were a godsend and incredibly satisfying to pull off as messing up resulted in a huge chunk of health disappearing, but it made success a lot more fulfilling.
Many enemies also have weaknesses to specific damage types, which vary between the party members. Using the correct damage type will break the enemy and make them vulnerable to all damage types. I'm fairly neutral about this. It encourages swapping characters constantly, which is thankfully instantaneously, so you can't stick to one playstyle and make the combat feel stale. But at the same time there's not much more to it then that. I was honestly expecting enemies to start having multiple weaknesses that offers more of a choice of which character you wanted to use while still being a restriction to overcome, or maybe they would periodically change their weaknesses, and so on. Yet because battles are lightning quick, it doesn't linger enough to drag the combat, rather its just enough to add some spice to the many, many fights.
While not the most complicated or even my favorite ARPG combat, it does its job as well as I could've hoped. Even with the few recolors, enemy variety is high from start to end. Characters play distinctly from one a other, especially the ones that share the same damage type. The RPG systems are simple enough to not have a laundry list of menus and stats to manage, but offers a decent amount of customization and equipment to sought after in the short and long term that kept me playing.
Speaking of equipment, it's really interesting how, because the setting here takes place on an island after a shipwreck, there's no traditional currency. Rather every armor, weapon, and accessory not found in a chest has to be crafted. Luckily no items are ever obnoxiously rare and the game catalogs where to find what, whether they're harvested in a dungeon or dropped by a specific monster. Will say, I did use the 5th party member constantly as they could steal items from monsters, so not sure if that affected how much I felt compelled to grind for materials.

With all that said, goddamn this game is long. I was interested in playing through most of it, but there's so much to do that I stopped at roughly 90% completion. Did get the true ending, played through a lot of raids, fought a few secret bosses, cleared every quest, and fished till my thumb actually started to hurt. And the story has you backtrack back and forth all the time. If you drank everytime you had to go back to the Castaway Village, I'd be concerned for your liver. But mercifully fast travel is extremely accessible and load times are very reasonable. If not for those two things then this would've been dire. Still there's so much dialouge and story scenes, a lot of them even optional that are dependent on whether you complete quests at the village (which are timed depending on story progress) or giving gifts to the survivors you find on the island. There's a lot to do, and I did start to feel fatigued by the end, though as mentioned earlier I was enjoying the story more as it went on so things certainly could've been worse.

Even after all of this, I feel I still don't fully grasp the appeal of Ys. I did leave a lot unsaid as it would bloat this review far more then it already is, but I came away from Ys VIII thinking "Yeah that was good". Not too dissimilar to how I felt about Ys Origins, though I liked pretty much everything here in VIII more apart from it being a bit too long. But maybe I felt that way as I was intending to have a small in-between game, and not a fully-loaded RPG. That's definitely on me for not looking into its average playtime.

Also I'm shocked by the lack of love I see online for Hummel. He's literally designed to be a fan favorite character who'd get so popular that Ys fans would get sick of seeing him in every game and spin-off.

A beautiful and engaging A-RPG,
Where the world and various characters feels organic, it's a game where you're actually happy to care and bond with the various people you'll encounter through your aventure on Seiren in the game.

Ys VIII is a game where every element and especially the world portrayed through the prism of the cursed island of Seiren interconnects beautifuly with each other, and the 100% quest just compliment that so well, since the game has a lot to offer for thoses who will take the time to appreciate it.

Personally I was enthralled to complete it as much as possible as the experience that this game has to offer is a singular one,
There is not much A-RPG in this setting and with this particular gameplay mechanics, furthermore, the story portrayed through Adol and Dana point of views is an emotional one, who will stays with you for a long time.

It's a story and game about how as human we can stand proud and advance further when we are together, a story as old and familiar to a lot of JRPGs, but really well-portrayed here, with an awful lot attention to details especially when everything just click together.

To conclude, personally the story and themes of the adventures will continue to resonnate with me.

And I wish that the players who will come across Ys VIII will enjoy their adventure on Seiren Island as much as I did.

Just finished this as my first Ys game and I'm not as positive on it as a lot of other people seem to be.

I've heard people say that Ys VIII has one of the better stories in this franchise and let me tell ya, that's not exactly encouraging. I have some amount of tolerance for convoluted stories but I do have a threshold where it starts to get too much. For the majority of the game I was on board with the plot, but the nonsensical elements ramped up until the ass-pull true ending where the story lost me. What's worse is that I grinded sidequests and menial tasks in order to get this ending so I'd get a satisfying conclusion to this game that I spent a long time on. I wish this game and other games didn't have requirements in order to avoid getting the bad ending because I did not enjoy the grind. And even though I didn't get the so-called 'Bad Ending', It still feels like I got a bad ending... as in a lackluster, poorly written one.

But I wouldn't be bothered by the ending if I didn't care about the story up to that point. And yeah, I enjoyed a lot of aspects of this game's story and characters. The protagonist and his makeshift JRPG squad are castaways on an Island after their ship sunk. It's a pretty neat setup for a game like this and I enjoyed how simple it was at the beginning. But they added a lot of new elements to the story, which was okay at first because some of these elements were interesting... but some of the added elements just muddied the parts that I liked about the story.

I've talked a lot about story so far and from what I understand the Ys franchise isn't usually about the story. But I have similarly mixed opinions on the gameplay. Ys VIII is an Action RPG, which is a genre that sometimes feels confused as to what it is. Are you an action game? Or are you an RPG? Or are you a Jack of all Trades, Master of None? Well in my opinion an Action RPG like Ys VIII should be judged mostly as an action game, because for all intents and purposes that's what it is. RPG elements like equipment and defensive stats matter somewhat in battle, but for a lot of encounters I was able to ignore these things by simply dodging the enemy's attacks. So it's not purely strategic in the way a turn based RPG is. And for that reason I can't help but be underwhelmed by the fact that so much attention was put into the RPG elements of the combat while the action was nothing special.

Ys VIII's combat is okay. Not amazing. Definitely not even close to being Platinum Games level, even when you compare it to some of their weaker combat systems. Enemies in Ys VIII have a bad habit of not reacting visually to being hit, which makes combat look stiff and lifeless. Hits don't feel like they have any impact. I do think they managed to design a number of interesting boss encounters, but I never thought that the action combat felt great to play. Interesting game design, but poor game-feel. What I did like about the combat system is that you have a ton of moves for each character that you can allocate to four move slots. This slightly alleviated the game-feel problem because at least I was using moves that I thought felt the best to use. It definitely didn't come close to solving the issue though. Another thing that I appreciated about the combat system was that status effects required certain items to heal. As an Action RPG skeptic, things like that really help justify this genre's existence.

I found things to like about this game but no individual part of it was a slam dunk. The story has its moments, but I'm left unimpressed on the whole. The gameplay has its moments, but I'm left underwhelmed. The exception to all of this is the incredible music, which is what made me interested in playing this game in the first place. When the Falcom Sound Team is firing on all cylinders there's no word to describe to the results but magical. So I'd be interested in playing another Ys game, even if only for the soundtrack. But I do think it would take a Ys game that's a giant improvement over this one to really get me to care about the franchise.

Criminally slept on ARPG. The story isn't exactly anything to write home about, but the characters are very endearing and I found myself missing them as I completed the game.

The combat is flashy and responsive if a touch mashy. It's kinda like hack and slash Monster Hunter but with a dodge and guard that actually work. Switching between party members for different effects is fast and fluid, and they each have varied but fun movesets.

There is a wealth of content as well, with a great post game super dungeon.

The soundtrack is absolute fucking flames.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU4am8acLR0&list=PLzFTGYa_evXi6iVzAPRg4_kkNphkGXG7c

Многие отечественные игроки, считающие себя поклонниками jRPG, практически не имели близкого знакомства с творчеством студии Nihon Falcom. На территории постсоветского пространства хорошо знают и любят Final Fantasy, Tales of… и Persona, но про Ys знают лишь считанные единицы, в их числе и я.
И это обидно – данная серия игр имеет долгую и славную историю и держит марку качества на протяжении многих лет. #YsVIIILacrimosaOfDana - это превосходный шанс исправить эту оплошность, а по совместительству ещё и замечательная Action/RPG, которую не стоит пропускать как старым поклонникам, так и новичкам, впервые услышавшим про #Ys. Мне её посоветовали, когда я находился в поиске чего-то напоминающего Tokyo Xanadu (о ней я уже рассказывал). У данной части Ys очень лёгкий порог вхождения, так как является и приквелом и сиквелом одновременно. Так как с серией не знаком, обойдусь без рассказа сюжета, спойлеров и сравнений с другими играми Ys.
Несмотря на простой и жизненный фундамент истории, приключения дарят невероятное ощущение исследования и прогресса. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA. Находя выживших, собирая ресурсы и укрепляя поселение, мы всё дальше и дальше пробираемся вглубь острова, познавая его тайны, загадки и встречаясь с опасными врагами. Эту линию периодически прерывает побочная история о Дане – синеволосой деве, которая проникает во сне к Адолу (протагонисту) и чья связь с главным героем является предметом ещё одной загадки. Но показывает себя #YsVIII лучше всего даже не в повествовании, а во время сражений с многочисленными врагами – о её гибкой, интуитивно понятной и оригинальной боёвке можно рассказывать часами. В отличие от классических jRPG, игра предлагает более экшеновый подход – в бою, проходящем в режиме реального времени, принимает участие Адол и два активных напарника, причём сменить действующее лицо можно в считанное мгновение нажатием одной кнопки. Например, Адол лучше всего рубит простых врагов мечом, в то время как Сахад легко крушит бронированных врагов якорем, а Лаксия и Хуммель хорошо работают по летающим и дальним целям. Как же я не люблю пошаговые бои, вы бы знали!!! Учитывая то, что игра поощряет дополнительным опытом интересные комбинации и всё время жонглирует разными типами врагов, сражения в #Ys8 действительно не на шутку увлекают и умудряются удивлять вплоть до самого финала, а потрясающий бодрый саундтрек можно смело назвать чуть ли не лучшим в серии, которая и без этого славится отменной музыкой.
Помимо побочных квестов «принеси-подай» и крафта оружия/брони (это норма для игр РПГ жанра), здесь есть и то, что может отвлечь от игрового процесса и дать отдохнуть - это рыбалка и готовка, а так же можно приносить Реджу семена и наблюдать как преображается сад-огород в поселении, и следить как Доги с остальными возводят новые постройки, благодаря принесённым героем материалам. А какие тут пейзажи и архитектура, бэкграунд и дизайн уровней - просто загляденье.
Да и персонажи не картонки, у каждого своя очень хорошо прописанная история, характер и чувства. За юмор отдельная благодарность авторам!
Неприятный момент с Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA, которые зачастую высказывают «знающие толк» игроки, вытекает из технических особенностей PlayStation Vita, для которой изначально разработана игра. Но, по мне, так всё просто - никто не мешает приобрести игру для PS4/PS5 или Nintendo Switch, с подтянутой графикой. На Вите, несмотря на симпатичные модели, подтянутые эффекты и текстуры, Ys 8 выглядит на уровне средней руки игр для Playstation 3, что для того времени более чем круто. Фанатам не привыкать к визуальной скромности игр подобного толка, но в 2016 году им хотелось бы получить ещё одну красивую игру подобного жанра, кроме Final Fantasy XV. Но не на Виту же, ребята! Вы чего? Она и так в Ys выжимает из себя всё на что способна.
Как бы я хотел рассказать вам развязку истории, но не могу себе позволить лишь вас удовольствия прочувствовать это самим. По итогу : это превосходная Action/RPG, которая прекрасно зайдёт как давнишним поклонникам творчества Nihon Falcom, так и тем, кто ещё с ним не знаком.

Sure it has the best and most polished gameplay (playing by release date). But holy fuck the first few chapters suck so much ass. I can't believe Dogi got replaced by old alcoholic fart that isn't fun to play as and mostly talks about pissing his pants in cutscenes. Other cast members aren't much better. Imagine being a newcomer to Ys series and the first 5 hours of cutscenes Laxia behaves like a spoiled brat and talks about how "there are a lot of different folks in this world". Other 2 characters are actually fun to use aside from the fact that Hammel leaves the party for a long time for no fucking reason. Hot take: this game only needed Adol and Dana as party members. What is the actual point of having cheer leading squad of characters with 0 substance?
Pacing of this game is absolutely fucked: 10 corridor dungeons in a row, a mandatory fucking raid (fuck this minigame), a filler arc just as story is about to get interesting, turned off fast travel makes you run for 10 minutes through old areas.
My opinion on the story started to improve near the end, but Kondo pulled the most Kiseki bullshit Deus Ex Machina for the ending. I can't believe the true ending is worse then the bad ending. (BTW multiple endings for the first time in the series. Didn't do sidequests? Fuck you, go replay 70 hours game haha.)
Anyway the verdict is the same as for ys seven:
if this game was twice shorter it would be great. I really hope that Kiseki desease stops at 9, amen 🙏🙏🙏

This probably is/was a great game at the time it came out on Vita, but once I got a couple of chapters in I realized this is not for me right now. Totally see the appeal, but the combat, budget visuals, and even the music was not clicking for me. After hearing so much praise I think my expectations exceeded what this offers unfortunately.

No score as that wouldn't be fair, but in a JRPG market currently where we're looking at GranBlue Fantasy Relink, P3 Reload, FF7 Rebirth, and more coming out, this is not going to be a must play for me anytime soon.

While not a perfect experience, I had a lot of fun with this game. As my first Ys game, it was very easy to hop into, since the story barely connects with other entries. My biggest gripe was the pacing, in both gameplay and story. The game is very heavy in the last act of the game, pumped full of filler content of both types. I wasn't a big fan of that. But the combat was a lot of fun! It felt really satisfying switching between all of the playable characters here, and trying out all of their different moves they unlock over time. I liked it a lot!

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, Uma aula de construção de mundo... A mais bonita pérola escondida no poço mais profundo de uma última ilha...

E aqui estamos nós, novamente escrevendo sobre um JRpg, dessa vez a série Ys foi me recomendando pelo @Gaimm_ e reafirmado pelo @Bertolomeu .... E eu agradeço muito pela recomendação deles...

De fato, não pretendo jogar a série inteira por agora, talvez eu o faça quando YS X: Nordics sair no ocidente, por enquanto me aventurei em dois títulos da série esse aqui YS VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, e o YS IX: Monster Nox, que eu tô me aventurando por enquanto aqui e ali...

Mas antes de falar do jogo em si, eu queria falar sobre a desenvolvedora que tem trabalhado nos jogos da série até então a Nihon Falcon... E eu pretendo começar, impressionantemente, com uma crítica, em partes negativa, mas nada ruim de fato... No lançamento de YS X: Nordics alguns fãs lá do oriente estavam um pouco chateados pelo fato de que esse jogo, mesmo sendo facilmente o mais bonito dá série, não parecia chegar próximo do poder gráfico que poderia ser de fato alcançado, principalmente quando comparado com jogos como Tales of Arise e o ainda não lançado GranBlue Fantasy Relink... O Ceo do estúdio então veio a público e disse que a atual forma como eles trabalham não os permite trabalhar tanto a qualidade gráfica de seus jogos, pois eles são um estúdio de 68 pessoas, que por vezes entregam mais de três s RPGs em dois anos, e que nenhum outro estúdio de fato o fazia... Também disse que por conta disso, eles buscavam caprichar o máximo em sua direção de arte, para assim compensar a falta de qualidade gráfica...

Sinceramente eu entendo ambos os lados nessa história, começando pelo estúdio em si, e notório que se manter na indústria é algo de fato extremamente complicado, e que eles utilizam dessa estratégia para conseguir continuar fazendo jogos... Porém eu devo dizer que acharia mais interessante se eles conseguissem aumentar a quantidade de pessoas em seu estúdio, e aumentassem um pouco mais o tempo de lançamento entre os jogos... Isso permitiriam eles construírem seus jogos ainda mais primazia, já que eles já são maravilhosos, enquanto mantém as belas direções de arte... Dito tudo isso....

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana é pérola com mais brilho no mar...

No sentido de que, talvez ele seja o melhor daqueles tipos de jogos que são pérolas escondidas... Eu mesmo nunca tinha ouvido falar dessa saga até a recomendação desse jogo... E cara, que jogo fantástico, principalmente quando se trata de narrativa e construção de mundo....

Ys é um jogo que tem um estilo de história que me agrada muito... No jogo controlamos Adol, porém estamos na verdade vivenciando uma história dele, pois Adol é um lendário aventureiro, que registrou todas as suas histórias em seu diário, e cada história são, na verdade, um jogo diferente, é por esse motivo que os jogos não necessariamente tem ligação entre si... Além do fato de que são histórias do Adol é claro... E isso abre um leque de possibilidades de criar história sem conexão mas que se passam no mesmo universo...

Eu amo esse conceito de escrita, pois torna possível apresentações como a de Ys e a de O Nome do Vento, livro do escritor Patrick Rothfuss, que conta uma história também muito bem escrita e interesse, embora o escritor tenha cometido erros, no último ano, que eu abomino, sua história é de fato muito bem escrita.

Esse tipo de apresentação também permite a contratação de um universo único, para diversos jogos diferentes, o que diverge da ideia de Final Fantasy, que também é maravilhosa, por exemplo... Já que lá cada jogo contém um universo completamente diferentes, são duas ideias boas, mas eu tendo a preferir a de Ys.

E é isso que eu gosto em Lacrimosa of Dana, além da direção de arte, que de fato é maravilhosa, sua narrativa, construção de personagens em geral, e sua história são maravilhosas, lindas na forma como são aplicadas... Também gostei combate do jogo, que mesmo que seja diferente de todos os outros JRPGs que joguei, ele ainda é extremamente bem aplicado e também divertido, ao menos para mim foi...

Eu queria falar dos personagens desse jogo, cara, eu realmente amei cada um deles, me apaguei a eles, e foi uma montanha russa acompanhar a história deles nesse jogo... Foi uma experiência e isso é fato, e eu também devo dizer que Lacrimosa também tem muitos outros pontos positivos que poderiam ser citados a trilha sonora.... A trilha sonora... É uma barbaridade de tão boa, simplesmente maravilhosa, e pelo o que vi, a Nihon Falcon nunca erra quando se trata de trilha sonora...

Sinceramente falando, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana foi uma experiência maravilhosa, e eu agradeço muito pela recomendação... Uma conquista enorme nessa saga pouco conhecida, e uma obra que deveria ser mais conhecida... Para esse cara aqui, um belo 9.7/10 ou um 5/5...

Obs: Eu não... Fui...Não fui capaz de tirar The Banner Saga 2 do topo dos melhores jogos de 2016... São duas experiências que me marcaram muito...

Exploration is fun, but endless cut scenes really hurt the pacing. Definitely a slow burn, but the further I got the more and more into I found myself, to the point I considered 100% the journal.

It's a really cool mix of exploration and collectibles, with some of the Dana sections serving like Zelda sequel dungeons, with a really cool class switching system.

Got the medium ending but by chance saved before the point of no return so went back to get the best ending.

Pros

Had the best combat out of every YS game.

Story was also better than the others but I still couldnt give a
fuck. It felt very dragged after the first half.

Cons

PC port has mouse control issues that ruin the gameplay.

Spongy enemies.

Even though I think this is the best ys game, I have to give it a
8/10 like I gave rest of them because the technical issues.

I am confused on why this game is so praised on this site. Thats not to say that its bad but it not amazing either. It mostly just feels like a shell of better games like DMC, kingdom hearts and souls. The combat is not as refined, the bosses aren't nearly as interesting, the ost is good but not as good as the previously named games. On top of the fact that this game came out really buggy. I actually played DMC 5 again just because of this game, and when I came back, I tried to do Nero air combos forgetting that I'm not playing the better game.

But to get into what I don't like about particularly in this game, I'll first talk about the combat. It is not the worst thing ever, but it certainly has its issues. Adol is so god damn fast, like too fast for most enemies to keep up with. I barely ever needed to dodge or parry because you can get in and out of combat so fast. Bosses and enemies need to be sped up or having Elden Ring tracking to really do anything. There's also aerial combat. It's not good. You have launchers and stuff but nothing to really stay in air with besides your basic mash combo. Most things also can't be launched so it's a really irrelevant part of combat. The game has this weapon triangle system where you have to use certain characters to do any real damage to monsters. Unsurprisingly, I don't like this feature either. I hate being forced to use the characters i don't enjoy using. For example, Sahad is big and slow and I think he sucks fat ass, but a lot of enemies need a smash type character to do damage to them. Imagine DMC but Dante sometimes has to use the guitar, and then he has to use the fists. Just let me use the character I want, this adds unnecessary mechanics into the game that take away from the experience. In my opinion, its better to be inclusive rather than exclusive, and in this case, its preventing me from enjoying the game as much. The bosses range from standard to below average but never anything too frustrating. Most bosses are big monster things, and as we know, the best bosses in action games are always the humanoid ones. Which saddens me because there's few in this game.

I won't say too much about the story as I don't want to go into spoiler territory. I will say though, that chapters 1 and 2 are so fucking boring. Nothing interesting happens at all until the very end of chapter 2, until then just skip all the cutscenes. The game spends way too long talking about the most boring shit possible in an attempt to set up the events of the game. Chapters 1 and 2 are filters for a good chunk of players, which almost included me. Chapter 3 is where the game starts to actually get good and do its thing.

The ost bangs, kinda. A lot of the songs are great, but some are just boring to listen too. In a way, it's like FF7 where most the songs are great and then some songs are just droning and irritating. I will never say that these ys games have a bad soundtrack, ys 1 had a crazy ost that did not fit at all but was still great.

Overall though, I just feel like I'm playing a shadow of better games. Given, I know Nihon Falcom aren't rolling in the dough enough to make their games like square and capcom do. Nevertheless though, I still don't enjoy this game nearly as much as most other actions games or rpgs that I have played. Also the frame drops on the vita version is fucking wild, game drops from 30 to 24 and back constantly and sometimes to like 10 frames.