Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana Nintendo Switch Review

Japanese RPG’s generally always take my fancy, especially those that have an anime style art direction. Having said that, until I picked up Ys VIII I’d never actually played a Ys game before even though the series had popped onto my radar a number of times.

Thankfully Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana turned out to be a great jumping on point for newcomers to the series despite having an 8 in it’s title. And with the game now on the Nintendo Switch it opens the gate’s for people to enjoy this island adventure RPG at home or on the go.

Lacrimosa of Dana begins with series veteran characters Adol and Dogi having a sea based disaster on board their boat the Lombardia. They, along with the rest of the crew end up washed up on the shore of a deserted island known as the Isle of Seiren.

The core goal of Ys VIII is to survive, uncover the cursed mysteries of the isle, explore the lands, rescue and recruit other survivors into your village and ultimately try and find a way off the island. You’ll spend a lot of time learning about the characters but also about the island and the mysterious blue haired girl that keeps appearing in Adol’s dreams.

The main narrative of the game does take a little while to get going with the opening hours being a bit slow on the pacing but when it eventually kick’s into gear Ys VIII becomes really fun, addicting and is hard to put down.

Each village member rescued on the island has a real day-to-day purpose in the survival of your whole party on the island. For example a blacksmith character you’ll find and rescue in the game will go on to set up shop in the main village area and provide Adol and his party access to a number of weapons and armour upgrades.

This gives you a drive and reason to explore the island, searching for other comrades to rescue to further develop your home base on the island and access better luxuries for Adol and your party.

One thing Ys VIII does incredibly well is making you want to progress and use it’s mechanics and systems in a natural way. You want to build a better party and living arrangements for yourself, you want to go out and rescue other stranded characters as you’ll need them to pass obstacles in certain quests and because of the main premise of the game you want to find a way to get off that island.

The game is exploration driven and for much of the game you’ll be uncovering and clearing out new sections of the massive map to locate new resources and treasures, which are thankfully tracked on the game map letting you know how many exist in each area of the game world and how many you’re yet to locate.

The exploration works similar to a metrodvania title. Upon first investigating area’s you’ll come across spots you can’t yet access. To gain entry you’ll need to return to the area when you have unlocked the required ‘Adventure Gear’. These are special types of gear that allow your party to do things such as double jump, walk on water and climb vines. Giving you a reason to backtrack and return to area’s you thought you may have completed but now you’ll have access to a completely new section filled with stronger enemies and better resources you’ll put to use to try and get off the island.

Ys VIII’s action RPG combat feels great and is fast paced, very reminiscent of the look and feel of the combat in another one of my favourite action RPG’s Kingdom Hearts. It’s more than just a simple hack n slash though, you can earn power up perks if you manage to dodge or block an oncoming attack at just the right time and character types will continually change up your play style.

The enemies in the game like in most RPG’s are weak to a certain type of attack. Each of the members in your party specialise in one of three different attack types meaning that during combat you’ll be quick switching between each of your playable characters to make sure you deal the most damage to each enemy you come across in the fields.

Switching between party members is done with a single button and is executed quickly enough that it doesn’t really break up the flow of Ys VIII’s fast paced action combat.

There’s plenty more to keep you entertained in Ys VIII than just exploring and fighting enemies. During the game’s 40-50 hours you’ll come across large raid style Boss battles, creature hunts and even a leisurely fun fishing mini game among other things sprinkled throughout the course of the game, helping to keep things fresh and interesting.

Unfortunately the Switch port for Ys VIII isn’t up there with the best ports I’ve played for the system. Several downgrades have been made to the game to get in running on the platform. The framerate has been reduced from 60 frames per second to 30 and during chaotic moments and large boss battles there are noticeable performance drops below that which do resolve within a second or two.

Textures on many of the game’s assets have also been downgraded, primarily in the environments to offer better performance. These sacrifices had to be made to get in running on Nintendo’s hybrid console and personally I’m glad they did. I can get over the slight performance and visual drops for the added benefit of portability especially with how addicting the gameplay loop becomes after getting past the game’s introduction.

If you’re a gamer who puts visuals above all else however, I’d recommend playing Ys VIII on either the PS4 or PC

Those interested in game audio will be glad to hear that Ys VIII on Switch includes both the English and Japanese voice track and features a great soundtrack filled with tranquil score pieces during exploration that quickly transition into upbeat metal tracks when in combat.

Final Thoughts

Ys VIII is a great action RPG with a really fun narrative premise. It’s welcoming to newcomers so don’t worry if you haven’t played the prior games in the series. While it does have some performance issues and does take a few hours to really get going I found it hard to put down once it’s core gameplay loop digs it’s claws in. It’s a very welcome addition to my Nintendo Switch and has made the Ys series something I’ll be keeping an eye on in future.

A Nintendo Switch review code was provided by Bandai Namco Australia for the purpose of this review.

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