Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana is a masterpiece with satisfying combat, lovable characters, criminally good music, and an evocative story unlike any other. I borrowed it from a friend at the beginning of February at his request, and a month later, I have seen it through and watched it become one of my favorite games of all time. Allow me to elaborate.

If the Backloggd tag wasn’t enough of a warning, there will be spoilers. If you haven’t played this game yet, I highly recommend you play it with little to no information going in.

Ys VIII follows series protagonist Adol Christin, who along with his longtime companion, Dogi, is caught up in a shipwreck that strands the ship’s passengers on the Isle of Seiren, an island that no human has ever managed to leave alive. I will talk about the story in more detail near the end of this review, because I have a fair amount to say, but at the game’s outset, this is a survival game about you exploring the island, rescuing other castaways, and trying to find a means of escape.

When it comes to outside-of-combat mechanics, I was really fond of the systems within castaway village (basically your home base). The lack of any conventional towns means that you don’t need currency to buy things. Instead, you craft nearly every item with materials that you use. Material scarcity is handled masterfully, ensuring you have enough materials to get what you need with a bit of elbow grease, but you never have so much of any given material that you can craft a massive surplus and render crafting obsolete.

Cooking is also handled really well. You don’t have a hunger meter or anything, as while this is a game about survival, it’s an action RPG at the end of the day. However, meals serve as potent restoratives that heal the party for sizable chunks of HP that may be smaller than the more scarce heal potions, but are markedly better than the fruit that you can find around the island (for when you unlock them, some of these recipes fall off in the late game). In addition, they give decent buffs. However, you can’t rely on them as your only restorative, as you can’t have another meal while you have a buff applied (there’s items that reset buffs, but they cost a lot of materials). Also as a side note, fishing is really fun in Ys 8, possibly my favorite implementation of fishing in an RPG ever.

Combat seems like a typical hack and slash on the surface. Some enemies have a specific weakness to a specific weapon type though, so each one of your three party members should use one of the three weapon types (this also makes Adol nigh irreplaceable for the first two thirds of the game if you want to pursue perfect coverage). You have skills, which you access by hitting the right bumper and a face button. They’re great, but not revolutionary. The SaGa idea of sparking skills is used for some reason, and it’s a bit strange to see. Each character has an Extra Skill, used by hitting both bumpers to do a devastating attack. However, you have to wait a good while to use it again, though some resources can expedite the process. The bosses are also well designed, even if I found a couple annoying. I rarely hated fighting a boss, and none of the forty or so felt the same.

The best part about combat though is what I call the flash system. If you dodge roll out of the way of an enemy attack, you do a flash move. A flash move makes you briefly move faster and slows down the enemy in question. If you hit the right bumper right before an enemy attacks, you do a flash guard, which turns all of your attacks into critical hits. Pro tip: Extra Skills and some multi-hit skills pause the flash guard timer (same with flash move, but why would you), so use those if you really want to max out your damage. Both the flash move and flash guard make you briefly invulnerable, though certain things like extra skills can suck up the invulnerability because it doesn’t last the length of the flash move/guard, but its intended length. I love the flash system because it feels so tactile, and when used effectively, you can get an upper hand on neutralizing even the biggest threats.

The characters are vibrant, varied, and memorable. I loved all of them to certain degrees, even the elitist Sir Carlan, who gets some character development/a redemption arc of sorts in the game’s final hours. My favorite character has probably got to be either Sahad Nautilus or Hummel Trabaldo. Sahad’s this boisterous and somewhat dumb man with a heart of gold. Even though some of his lines can be really goofy, he has his moments where he talks about his family, and they tugged at my heart strings. Hummel is kind of the opposite. When you first meet him, he seems like this overly serious, aloof-to-the-point-of-trying-to-look-edgy guy. However, as the game goes on and you have more interactions with him, his professionalism starts to manifest in more goofy ways, which combines with his soft spot for kids that made him really endearing to me. Some characters are definitely more fleshed out than others. The party members (which include Sahad and Hummel) are much more fleshed out than some of the optional castaways. However, I’d say everyone is compelling.

The music is amazing, which from what I’ve heard is normal for a Ys game (I should probably mention that this is the first Ys game I got into. I have played 1 and 2, but in the worst way possible). It’s varied, catchy, and covers so many emotions. It’s not my favorite soundtrack of all time, but this is top tier stuff. Some of the slower, more somber songs gave me legitimate chills (partially because the notation present in more melancholy music makes my brain all fuzzy).

At the end of the say, what is going to stick with me most about Ys VIII (aside from my favorite tracks) is the story. This is going to sound bold, but Ys 8 might have the best story I’ve ever experienced in a video game. It starts off very slow, as a long portion of the early game is built around getting your bearings, learning the unwritten rules of the island, and setting up castaway village’s facilities. I found that entertaining, but I completely understand the people that thought the game’s start was too slow.

When the story really kicks off after you cross Mt. Gendarme, it takes the themes of life and survival and kicks them up to 11. What was once only a story of trying to find a way off this deserted island becomes one that still has that same end goal, but a sweeping narrative of what happened to a long-lost civilization, with you playing as the game’s deuteragonist, Dana, in its final days.

The segments where you play as Dana in the past have to be some of my favorite, as it is both surreal and depressing, especially as the game goes on and the flashback segments get worse and worse for the Eternians, to see this doomed civilization start out on a day like any other, just to be thrown into despair. The final sequence in Castaway Village right before you fight Theos de Endogram in particular was so dark, and it gave me chills seeing Dana all alone.

One thing I’ve noticed about Ys’ world is that it takes loosely from the real world, and it helps make the characters and their actions more grounded than in a super high fantasy setting. Supernatural stuff still happens. Don’t get me wrong. It just feels more impactful as it’s clearer than other games that it is very abnormal, even without dialog. This is helped by the fact that most of the game’s bestiary is native flora and fauna. While their attack patterns may make them unrealistic, they feel like a part of the world, like nature is trying to reabsorb our heroes into the ground from which it came, people trying to defy fate and that have already broken nature’s bonds. As I typed that, I realized how much it echoed the Lacrimosa.

Speaking of the Lacrimosa, it brings up one of my gripes with Ys VIII’s story: The Wardens. I absolutely LOVE the idea behind them, sole survivors of bygone races, heralds of the ultimate cycle of intelligent life. However, due to a lack of time, with the Lacrimosa being introduced so late into the game and all, as well as the game expressly trying to not make them evil, they become characters that don’t get the screen time they really could use and of ill conviction, as they forgo their directive pretty quickly to enable Adol and co. to stop the Lacrimosa. However, the concept here is so unbelievably amazing. It’s a shame how underbaked they were.

Also, there were a few arcs with little to no bearing on the story, like the Nameless arc and the Ghost Ship arc. They have little to no bearing on the plot as a whole, and their short length makes me wonder why they’re even here. At least they’re short.

I have a few other gripes with this otherwise masterpiece, but they’re not major.

I’m obligated to mention the original localization being ungodly terrible. I played the game with the fixed version, and there were maybe three tiny mistakes I found in the very late game. However, I did not mind. Plus, Archeozoic Big Hole is such a terrible bastardization that I find it hilarious.

I don’t like raid battles. It’s Ys trying to play like a musou game almost, yet it doesn’t have the systems in place to play like a good one. Same with hunts, but to a lesser extent (they kind of do a good job as a musou-like).

The Epilogue makes sense, but it felt like a somewhat weak ending. All I’m saying is that all of the wardens finally dying made for a better ending in my opinion. (EDIT: I did get the good ending)

Ys VIII is a masterpiece, I cannot stress it enough. In my month with it, I enjoyed my experience fully, and through fun combat, amazing characters, godly music, and an evocative story, the game has become one of my favorites of all time.

10/10 - God tier