Adventure, Excitement – an Adventurer craves these things. You are sure to get all this and more as you enter a world of classic action role-playing. You step into the shoes of Adol Christin on his journey into the unknown. Our game starts with the hero serving as a sailor on a passenger ship. They are at sea and heading in the direction of a cursed island that most captains would stay away from. As things progress the ship draws closer to the island so he can see it up close, however, all goes quickly awry as a giant tentacle wraps its arm around the ship. This is where the fun begins as we review YS VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana on PC.
Developed by Nihon Falcom and Published by NIS America, the same companies that brought us The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II, bring us another game with a long history of sequels behind it. This Japanese Role-Playing Game brings all the fun of an anime and a hack and slash game together onto a new platform – the PC. The PC port has been anything but smooth at this time, with the game releasing recently to Steam. There have been a few major bugs causing issues with the game. At certain points, players have reported crashing while doing tutorials, such as fishing, and personally, this writer had a hard time even getting the game to load up for a couple of days. The company has been working their hardest to fix all of the issues and there have been several patches and quick fixes made so far which helped to put the game in a playable state.
After finally getting into the game and setting off into this new world we find ourselves on a basically deserted island called Seiren. Deep within the Gaete Sea, this island has many stories surrounding it, the biggest of which is that this place is cursed. Any ship that sails by it, or even comes close to it, is suddenly sunk without warning. As referenced above, we discover that there is an unknown sea beast that uses large tentacles to wrap up the ships and sink them as it sees fit. You and your colleagues are quickly thrown into the water, never to be seen again. Well thankfully you are seen again, otherwise, that was a real short trip.
You wake up on the island, even though you are not aware that it is the cursed one, and you find your saving grace at this point of the game, a rusty sword. You are thrust into the heat of battle as beasts start attacking you, and so your adventure begins as you begin to hack and slash your enemies into dust. It isn’t too long before you find the first survivor from the Lombardia, the ship you were on before the wreck, and it is a female traveler. I won’t get too much more into the story for you guys as it is something you should try for yourselves, because their first meeting is a pretty good one.
Ys VIII had its initial issues for me but has won my attention after those were fixed. The gameplay battles, the cut-scenes, the classic story, everything leads me to want to play without putting the game down. Take that for what it is – an excellent action JRPG. It is available now on Steam for the price of $59.99, and has been on PS4 for some time, with a Switch version later this summer. Will you help discover the mystery behind the Isle of Seiren?
