Posted April 17, 2018
First of all, my PC is crap. Really. So crap, in fact, that I'm ashamed to list its specs. Suffice it to say it's a laptop. The OS is Windows 10 64bit. Considering all this, your mileage may vary; if you have a decent PC, let alone a gaming rig, chances are you'll be able to run the game just fine (check Erim_Keene's fixes if you encounter some trouble, it seemed to have worked for them).
With that out of the way, now that I've installed the game and played a bit with it, messing with config and .ini files, here are my list of issues:
- resolution is locked at 1800p. No matter how much you change it, it's locked and will use the same resources whether on 800x600 or 4K, so forget about playing this game if you have a mid-range GPU. This is probably my biggest issue with the game, if NISA fixed this (they probably won't), the game would run smoothly on many more machines, even most 'modest' ones.
- keyboard and mouse support are laughable. You can remap some keys, but movement is always locked to a set of predefined ones, not remappable individually. You either use WASD, arrow keys or that French keyboard setup I never bother to remember. Tough luck if you wanted to use something like IJKL (like I did). Mouse is clunky as hell and even if you turn camera inertia off it never completely goes away.
- v-sync automatically turns off if you turn on fullscreen.
- if you mess with config files in order to tweak the game, you won't be able to turn on borderless or fullscreen from the game menu.
- when I tried starting a new game with fullscreen on, the game crashed for me. The only way to start a new game was to play the game windowed. I can set it to fullscreen during the main menu or when playing the game, but it simply crashes when trying to start a new game, probably something to do with video playback.
- localization is some of the worst I've ever encountered. I only played for one hour (the game runs too badly on my PC for me to advance any more), but I still came across things like "talk to Blue-haired man", when said man's hair is clearly green -- something his dialog window also acknowledges, since he's presented as "Green-haired man" when you're talking to him. I also encountered some terms that completely ignore the translation work XSEED has been making for all these years. It's a game in the same series so, please, use the terms we're used to for years, instead of coming up with new stuff.
Other people seem to be having sound issues and crashes, I haven't encountered any of those, the "new game on fullscreen" one being the only exception.
The game has quite a few graphic options, but none of them do much to remove strain from your processors, and some of those options are even recommended to be left on, for potential risk of "destabilizing the app" (the fact they decided to call the game program an "app" is something that annoys me, but it's ultimately irrelevant, so let's leave it at that). Like I said, no matter what you turn on or off or what resolution you choose, the game render is locked at 1800p and will *always* use the same resources, so those options are more for show than anything else.
All things considered, this was a complete disaster, this port is on par with Dark Souls PC, except Fromsoftware at least had the decency to come forward and say they had no clue of what they were doing, and that they couldn't code for Windows. Let's hope that, just like with the Dark Souls PC port, the fan community fixes this Ys VIII PC port, so it becomes playable by more people. It's clear NISA doesn't have the competence to do it, if seven months later, after two delays, they release a PC port in this state.
With that out of the way, now that I've installed the game and played a bit with it, messing with config and .ini files, here are my list of issues:
- resolution is locked at 1800p. No matter how much you change it, it's locked and will use the same resources whether on 800x600 or 4K, so forget about playing this game if you have a mid-range GPU. This is probably my biggest issue with the game, if NISA fixed this (they probably won't), the game would run smoothly on many more machines, even most 'modest' ones.
- keyboard and mouse support are laughable. You can remap some keys, but movement is always locked to a set of predefined ones, not remappable individually. You either use WASD, arrow keys or that French keyboard setup I never bother to remember. Tough luck if you wanted to use something like IJKL (like I did). Mouse is clunky as hell and even if you turn camera inertia off it never completely goes away.
- v-sync automatically turns off if you turn on fullscreen.
- if you mess with config files in order to tweak the game, you won't be able to turn on borderless or fullscreen from the game menu.
- when I tried starting a new game with fullscreen on, the game crashed for me. The only way to start a new game was to play the game windowed. I can set it to fullscreen during the main menu or when playing the game, but it simply crashes when trying to start a new game, probably something to do with video playback.
- localization is some of the worst I've ever encountered. I only played for one hour (the game runs too badly on my PC for me to advance any more), but I still came across things like "talk to Blue-haired man", when said man's hair is clearly green -- something his dialog window also acknowledges, since he's presented as "Green-haired man" when you're talking to him. I also encountered some terms that completely ignore the translation work XSEED has been making for all these years. It's a game in the same series so, please, use the terms we're used to for years, instead of coming up with new stuff.
Other people seem to be having sound issues and crashes, I haven't encountered any of those, the "new game on fullscreen" one being the only exception.
The game has quite a few graphic options, but none of them do much to remove strain from your processors, and some of those options are even recommended to be left on, for potential risk of "destabilizing the app" (the fact they decided to call the game program an "app" is something that annoys me, but it's ultimately irrelevant, so let's leave it at that). Like I said, no matter what you turn on or off or what resolution you choose, the game render is locked at 1800p and will *always* use the same resources, so those options are more for show than anything else.
All things considered, this was a complete disaster, this port is on par with Dark Souls PC, except Fromsoftware at least had the decency to come forward and say they had no clue of what they were doing, and that they couldn't code for Windows. Let's hope that, just like with the Dark Souls PC port, the fan community fixes this Ys VIII PC port, so it becomes playable by more people. It's clear NISA doesn't have the competence to do it, if seven months later, after two delays, they release a PC port in this state.