Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana has a story that will require patience. While the opening is quite slow, if you stick with it you’ll be rewarded.
Plot
Don’t be scared off by Ys VIII Lacrisoma of Dana if you’ve never played a Ys game in the past, like myself. There’s no required previous knowledge to fully enjoy and understand the plot. Adol, an adventurer, is working on a ship with his partner Dogi. All is going well until the ship passes the infamous ‘Island of Siren’. Once near, a kraken rises from the sea and attacks the vessel, destroying the ship. Luckily, Adol, Dogi, and other castaways make it to The Island of Siren. They band together, creating a village in which to live and start searching for other survivors on the monster infested island. But Adol can’t rest easy. It seems whenever Adol sleeps on the island of siren, he dreams of a girl named Dana who has the power to see the future. The plot here does get very interesting, but unfortunately you have to slog through a sluggish 10 hour opening before it gets to that point. During that opening you’ll mostly be rescuing other castaways, which isn’t interesting enough on its own to hold up its sizable part of the story. Once Dana becomes a bigger start of the plot is when the story really gets going.
Writing
Absolutely the strength of the writing in Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana comes from it’s characters. This game has a lot of characters, like a lot, but each one of them is memorable and likable due to their distinct and bubbly personalities. It certainly helps that I chuckled at the jokes in the writing more than once. YS VIII also does a good job of mostly not falling into the trap that so many Japanese translated games have fallen into; the writing isn’t stiff and unnatural, it flows like it was written in English from the start. I say mostly, because there are still moments that feel out of place or awkward. It can also be a little over the top with it’s anime style ‘Lets work together everyone!’ sort of feel. Thankfully though, there are still more mature and deep moments throughout the game. The writing even touches emotional issues at times, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about each character’s backstory.
Voice Acting
Most of the voice acting in Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana is in the fair to good range. It won’t be the best voice acting you’ve ever heard, but it’s also not the worst. Aside from one notable exception. One of the main characters, Sahhad, has a voice actor that goes way too over the top. It sounds much too like the voice actor is trying to do a voice, instead of it being a natural voice that the character might have. Thankfully, to balance that out, Dana has a very strong and solid voice actress.
Immersion
Let’s get it out of the way first, Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana will unfortunately not be the prettiest game you play on the Playstation 4. While the actual character models look pretty good, the island itself looks more like it belongs in a Playstation 3 game. Somehow though, the graphics don’t spoil the immersion of the island. It’s still great to see how varied a single island can be. That’s certainly helped along by the sheer scale of the island. It’s massive, and exploring is a treat– never once did I feel The Island of Siren was not a real gigantic sprawling island. That said, the real stars of the show are the monsters that inhabit the island. The quantity of different types of enemies, both big and small, is astounding. The diversity of enemies really helps to make each part of the island feel unique.
Conclusion
Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana works because of it’s bubbly characters and eventually interesting plot. I just wish it didn’t make me wait so long for the plot to get interesting.