Posted on: April 17, 2018

kkriegan

Games: 356 Reviews: 2

Poorly optimized an bad port overall

Ys VIII is finally here! After more than a year of waiting and multiple delays, PC users all around the world finally recieved the game they've been waiting for. And what we recieved... was unplayable broken mess. Let me say it straight - my laptop SHOULD run it. It runs games with a lot higher requirements and doesn't have a slightest bit of problem with them. And my config IS within at least minimum requirements stated on this very page. But no. What I get is 3 frames per second. Actually, I didn't even notice any difference when I changed my graphics settings. And if that wasn't enough, when I launched the game for the first time, it appeared in 720p window and any attempts to change the resolution to my native or at least to put it in the fullscreen crashed the game. Actually, it seems to crash for any reason it can come up with. It happens really often. Overall, I really would like to recommend this game, but at least right now I can't. It is a very bad port of a good game. And if anyone from Nihon Farcom reads it (highly unlikely, but still), don't deal with NIS America ever again. Stick to XSEED, their port of Xanadu Next was amazing. Don't support the bad publisher who doesn't care about the consumers. Don't buy this game. At least for now.

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Posted on: March 22, 2025

Draugusto

Verified owner

Games: 484 Reviews: 208

The ending is baaad

The game is fun to play, the fast paced combat is pretty damn good. I love the setting, exploring a deserted island gives the progression a nice pace, there's a little bit of grind to do, but is not terrible, it even includes a little fishing minigame to take a break fro the frantic combat if you want. Unfortunately the music is not good, the village music is good to set the relaxed mood on the beach, but the overworld is just a single riff driven rock tarck that doesn't let down, so taking a stroll down a pleasant looking forest while the soundtrack is losing its mind like if you were in a boss battle. The worst part of the game is the ending, I don't wanna spoil it, but is very anticlimatic, it singlehandedly managed to take down the game from a 4/5 to a 3/5 for me, it's just not a worthwhile payofff for 60 hours of gameplay. But alas, no Ys game is perfect , and I shall in my adventures, following my favorite dog, Adol, who keeps spreading children left and right through the world, but they can't show that since this is a family friendly game. (you don't get 25 people stranded for months in an island withouth some of them getting busy, including the MC)

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Posted on: June 11, 2022

amirdizdarevic

Games: 478 Reviews: 8

Mediocre, but hard to put down

Played it on Vita, later tested GOG version. Haven't bought it on GOG. Ys VIII is a fast-paced, hack'n slash action RPG, where you slash through swathes of enemies with ease and a lot of anime FX. Sadly, a lot of the aspects fall short making the games feel mediocre. It has a nice story structure. Adol is stranded on a mysterious island, trying to save as many of the shipwrecked as possible, but also slowly finding out about the weirdness of the island. Several nice mysteries and twists come up, and that's the great part of the story. Sadly, once the titular character Dana appears, the shipwrecked sort of take a backseat and are more of a side quest thing. Same goes for playable characters like Laxia. The banters between Adol and Laxia in the beginning are quite entertaining -- you get to either be a sexist douche towards her or respect her boundaries and what she brings to the team. But those character dynamics just disappear once Dana is there, which is rather sad. You're rewarded with a story that continues into a more epic and twisting direction, however, it's never special or new. The Castaways have skills like weapon smith or seamstress. Fitting the theme, you barter rather than buy stuff -- a lot of cool immersive details like that. The RPG elements are small enough that you'll never miss the action. Same goes for the side quests, nothing overstays its welcome. Tower defense minigames spice it up. With the 4K textures, it looks like a remastered PS3 game and is buttery smooth. The bad translation is also fixed and new sections with Dana have been added compared to the first release. But if you read past reviews here, you'll find that this took a very long time. Some of the bugs and slow downs were surprising, being that the Vita version was solid. Add to that the fact that the game costs 50+ EUR and more than 20 when it's on sale and I have to settle on 3 stars. Solid action RPG, addictive gameplay, but always falling a bit too short to call it great.

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Posted on: July 19, 2022

Reimu4224

Verified owner

Games: 78 Reviews: 1

i wish it had a better second half

slight spoilers of enemy types ahead the story is fantastic let me say that first if i were to just rate the quality of the story it would be a 5 but sadly it has a game attached to it where all of the fault lies. firstly the primordial enemies shout attack shouldnt be in the game it instantly stuns you and its impossible to avoid forcing you to take damage when otherwise you could have dodged it. second, the dodge is awful it barely has any immunity frames if you dont get the dodge counter which has some really akward timings. third, the story will sometimes force you to use adol solo which doesnt sound like too much of an issue and wont be if you use him throughout the game but if you chose to use the other character of that damage type you're pretty much screwed with under leveled gear & character. the game does passively level background characters so its not the biggest issue but it is annoying to force players to use a character that is severly under par for where the player should be. another issue i noticed with the dodge is that you cant dodge out of skills which ends up making you take a ton of damage as the enemies start attacking faster and more frequently while stunning far less often overall my opinion of the game is it gets way less fun as you keep playing it due to the difficulty being more frustrating instead of fun and some mechanics just not being all that great the story is fantastic and carries the game through all these issues but the gameplay has a ton of small issues that build up to make it pretty frustrating in the later half (after you kill the giant squid i forgot its name)

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Posted on: April 29, 2018

Alice3173

Verified owner

Games: 356 Reviews: 2

Fantastic game, trash port

TL;DR: Do yourself a favor and buy it on a console if you can. The game itself is a wonderful entry to a fantastic franchise. Easily one of the best in a series of awesome games. Great characters, intriguing story, and great gameplay. But the port not only doesn't come close to doing this game justice but completely defecates all over the franchise. Despite having delayed the game for seven months at the last moment, the port is riddled with all sorts of problems. Performance issues, plenty of random crashes (one of which involved me having to redo the entire final battle and half the rest of the cutscenes afterwards even while using a workaround to prevent crashes), somehow the Gog release had a ton of corrupt shaders, some of which still haven't been fixed and cause severe flickering issues in places, the script is riddled with typos, missing words, and duplicate lines despite having redone the entire thing because it was such an awful first attempt. NISA doesn't deserve to get any money for their utter lack of effort on this port and customers should show Falcom that they don't want that garbage company anywhere near this franchise. (On that note: Onto my blacklist NISA goes for their handling of this.)

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