YS VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana(Playstation 5) Review

There was an initial hesitance towards me playing YS VIII since I'm not overly aquainted with JRPGs. I've played a few over the years but not enough for me to consider myself to be "genre savy". Over the years, there are some games I recall liking and others not so much then there were those that I invested hours into but never got to the end of. I did however enjoy my time with YS VIII.

The story or at least the premise of it is where the intrigue comes from. 98% of the game takes place on a far away remote island where everyone is shipwrecked on. The only part that isn't on the Island is during the opening prologue. A title that is around seemingly 30-50 hours on this one location sounds like it could lose steam quickly but YS VIII manages to maintain it. Mainly due to multiple aspects of it's gameplay. The first being your home base "Castaway Village". The second is how many of the chapters is spent exploring and finding new facets of the island. The third is how the game slowly abeit a little too slowly explains the mysteries involving the island Adol and the group are on.

As a result, a lot of RPG tropes taken for granted, like currency, armor, weapons, accessories and so on can only be obtained through getting materials rather than buying them outright. Weapon upgrades can only be obtained through beating bosses. Materials can only be gained by trading other materials or finding them scattered throughout the island so in a sense due to the removal of currency, it's not about how much money is obtained, you will just find the items needed and getting upgrades just by exploring the island and playing the game. Healing potions also aren't easily be able to come by but you do have lots of fruits, cooked meals and health refills for those who don't need to super amazing at combat to get by the game.

Gaining levels don't take too long to happen but not quickly either hitting the right sweet spot of feeling like you are getting stat increases then comes along a new special attack for a character to use.

That's where much of the strength of the game lies. Building Castaway Village whether it'd be upgrading yourself, your party, the village defenses, doing various hunts, gifting npcs on the island and doing side quests. In order to get the game's true ending you need to get a reputation of 200 or above on any version outside of the PS Vita. This may sound like a daunting task but it all works in tandem slowly building a bond between the player and castaway village. I started to get a little teary eyed when I got to the true ending of the game considering, the amount of time spent forming the bond with this group of stranded survivors.

The story and characters themselves are also decent with Sahad being my favorite for goofy and fun loving he is. Adol is admittedly a dull character since he borderline enters into the realm silent protagonist where you choose his responses...but he also has actual voice lines from time to time. Laxia Von Roswell is a strange one considering her very character introduction is an anime trope that is scoffed by almost if not everyone familiar with it including myself. She also starts off very rude if not outright condescending. Luckily she does start to grow and becomes less smug and has her backstory revealed too which gives more insight as to why she acts the way she does. Dana is a character that is a little bizarre at first but I respected her determination and integrity even with her impulsively thought process behind her actions.

The combat of YS VIII is interesting in that it's basically not too dissimilar from everything the first Kingdom Hearts established back in 2002. One attack button for swinging your weapon, a full 3D zoomed out camera where you see behind your character model and turn left and right but not over the shoulder and a heavy emphasis on lock on to reliably attack enemies. There also two party memember assisting you. Two big difference are the special skills, an "ultimate move", a variation of Bayonetta's Witch Time with Flash Evade and also a perfect parry with Flash Guard and bosses having a stagger guage.

With this style of combat and with the camera especially, when the odds favor the player, it's perfectly enjoyable if a little mindless. When it doesn't, like having the lock on tracking fast moving or flying enemies or having bosses being so large or having large limbs that it takes up the screen, the camera becomes nauseating and dodging out of the way gets harder to do since the lock on and the camera makes it harder to reliably make precise evasions and guards.

The thing that prevents this from being infuriating that there are 3 challenging main story bosses which are Giasburn, Mephorash, and Origin of Life. All 3 have have issues of whay I described. The last two I had enough healing items to tank hits to beat them.

Overall, YS VIII is quite the adventure which was the genre is supposed to entail and it did it's job very well.