YMMV / Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

• Accidental Innuendo: The initial English localization translated "Crevice of the Archeozoic Era" (displayed as English in the Japanese version) to "Archeozoic Big Hole". This itself is pretty bad, but this area is constantly referred to as "Big Hole" whenever it's brought up in a conversation, which sounds comically raunchy. The revised translation changed it to "Archeozoic Chasm".
• Broken Base: Localization-issues aside, there are some things in Ys VIII players cannot come to agree on.
  • Should there have been more party members aside from the six or is there enough as it is, like Ys SEVEN and Ys: Memories of Celceta? That every castaway is pitching in their share of help in beast raids and beast hunts, though off-screen, feels like Falcom didn't make an effort in expanding a playable cast, especially when it comes to characters like Dogi and Thanatos. This becomes particularly strange as the former had been a significant party member in Ys SEVEN and is easily the most prominent recurring character in the series.
  • Putting in the murder-mystery at the tail-end of Chapter 2: a welcome change of pace in the narrative or a sub-plot shoehorned in for Rule of Drama?
  • The original localization itself has a minor case; some fans who had been with the series since the early days didn't mind it, though even they usually note that they grew up in a time when bad translations were the norm for JRPGs, while the standards had changed since then. That said, everyone commends the new translation effort, with this particular group simply looking at the new translation as an excuse to play the game again.
• Demonic Spiders: The "Bullfroodons" inside the Eroded Valley - these giant frogs blocking certain paths in the caverns are Beef Gates with more Hit Points than previous dungeon bosses at that point in the game, can spew poison to inflict the status effect, will cause rocks to fall from the ceiling, and are capable of swallowing party members whole (on "Nightmare" difficulty, it's a guaranteed One-Hit Kill), are this trope in Nightmare difficulty. The team will even give a What the Hell, Hero? to whomever aggravates one the first time a Bullfroodon is engaged in battle if the party is at low Character Levels to have a reasonable chance of defeating it (unless players are able to pull off successful "Flash Guard" and "Flash Move" maneuvers).
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: Despite being referenced in Ys SEVEN, Earth Goddess Maia revealed in the ending of the game (normal and Golden Ending) and turning into what amounts as a psuedo-Deus ex Machina didn't sit well with some players. That this character effectively changes the subtle lore/mythology of the franchise, alongside pulling a Retgone of all that has happened on the Isle of Seiren makes any future installment going forward less significant when there's a Top God over-looking the background. This is before mentioning whether or not the Retgone affects any previous Ys installments upon going forward with the story post-Ys SEVEN.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The humble "Gale Feather" Adventuring Gear, acquired upon mapping out 50% of the island, upgrades the party's dash mechanic. It doesn't sound like much, but jumping forward while in a sprint vastly increases the distance of jumps, allowing players to engage in some minor Sequence Breaking, such as grabbing a "Saint Ring" in the Great Stone Vents, an accessory that halves the cost of SP for attack skills, long before players are able to craft one at Castaway Village.
  • "Dynastic Water" is a medicine which completely re-fills the "EXTRA" gauge used for triggering a character's Limit Break. By stocking up on this item and triggering stagger on a boss, players can unload an EXTRA skill, one after another, into it without pause, since using EXTRA skills stops all enemy movement, except the active party, who will keep whittling at the helpless boss, making most fights at any difficulty a cakewalk.
  • Of all the attack skills in the game, two in Ricotta's set stand above the rest: "Mighty Orbit" and "Dino Toss" - the former is the only attack skill (upon reaching maximum level) in the game ranked SS, ensuring it causes stagger by building up an enemy's Break Meter the fastest; most enemies will enter stagger after one Mighty Orbit, while bosses in as little as three uses. Although using Mighty Orbit will cause Ricotta to become dizzy and vulnerable, it's possible to trigger a dodge Cancel once the skill is maxed. Meanwhile, Dino Toss not only has a wide attack range, but is still effective at long distances (moreso than Hummel's sniper-based attack skills), making this perfect for beast raids and hunts. Despite its high SP cost, simply give Ricotta an accessory like the aforementioned Saint Ring and have her keep hurling the giant projectile at enemies from a distance.
  • Save Scumming will reset all enemies on the map, which is normally a hindrance. However, when dealing with powerful sleeping enemies or when powerful enemies in general chase the party, saving and reloading can temporarily shake them off the party's trail.
• Genius Bonus: Several Primordial enemies are based off of extinct prehistoric animals in real life, including some from the lesser-known Cenozoic and Paleozoic eras. While some Artistic License – Paleontology is applied here since it is a fantasy RPG, paleontologists and people knowledgeable on Prehistoric Life will still be able to pick up the inspirations behind the Primordials by looking at their overall designs.
• Heartwarming Moments: Late in the game, Quina and Shoebill are seen in the village together. When interacting with them, it appears the two are having a staredown only for Quina to speak up and say, "Got it! After we leave, I'll look after Ricotta in your place!" showing they'd been trying to communicate and succeeded.
• Iron Woobie: Dana. Having the ability to see visions of the future since a young age, she had it sealed as a child with a special ring so she could enjoy a normal life, but she loses her mother to a fire that she could have been able to prevent if it wasn't for her visions being sealed. Then she becomes the Maiden of the Great Tree and sees visions of her kingdom's doom and, despite her best efforts, is unable to prevent that future from coming to pass and must watch the few survivors slowly die out from the fallout of the disaster, many of whom blamed her for everything. On top of that, she learns that the culprit behind the disaster was the very tree her people have been taught to worship, one of her Childhood Friends knew the truth the whole time, had in fact been replaced by someone from a prior race, and had her selected to be a "Warden of Evolution" to oversee the same process be carried out in the future. Throughout it all she still never gives in to grief and continues trying to find a way to save the next race from suffering the same fate as the Eternians. The closest she comes to admitting just how badly things have gotten to her is when she confesses to Adol that she probably would have been broken by everything if it wasn't for her bond with him alleviating some of her loneliness and allowing her to see hope in the future.
• Love to Hate: There's hardly anything redeeming about Sir Carlan - Jerkassery to the extreme about being stranded on Seiren, forcing every castaway to bend to his every whim and doesn't even lift a finger to help. It comes as no surprise when he's the first castaway to say "Screw This, I'm Outta Here" once the Nameless Ripper attempts to pick off the castaways one-by-one, stealing Dogi's dinghy and rowing out to sea to leave, without giving any forethought there's still a giant sea creature lurking around Seiren to contend with - the very same beast that caused the castaways to be stranded in the first place. Carlan getting his Laser-Guided Karma is effectively cathartic, until it's revealed he survived.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Sahad - the Mighty Glacier of the party, he's able to deliver slow, but hard-hitting attacks and his beefier Hit Point count makes up for his lack of attack speed, but in a game that puts a lot of focus on fast-paced combat, this unfortunately makes him stick out like a sore thumb in regards to game-play. Sahad mostly sees real use during the first-third to first-half of the game when there are only three party members, making him essential at dealing strike damage against enemies weak to that type. Aside from Giant Enemy Crabs, most enemies with that weakness don't put up much of a challenge early on, making him effective, but limited. Once Ricotta joins the party during Chapter 3 she trivializes Sahad's usefulness by being a faster version of his damage type. Not only are Ricotta's attacks quicker to pull off, they're just as hard-hitting and she's able to consistently maintain the offensive momentum, whereas Sahad struggles in that field because of his slower attack animations. The only caveat with Ricotta is that she's a Glass Cannon who can't afford to take many hits, but she can easily block and evade attacks from her more generous timing windows for Flash Guard and Flash Move, respectively, giving her another advantage. Considering how many late-game enemies (especially Primordials) are Lightning Bruisers with attacks that require fast reaction times, there isn't much incentive to play as Sahad once Ricotta tags along, not helped also by his general movement speed being the slowest out of the party.
  • For the Fishing Minigame, Laxia - unlike the rest of the party, her throwing arcs when casting the fishing line are a lot more unpredictable and have a higher chance of missing the fishing targets entirely, requiring some restarts. While this is justified because of Laxia's inexperience with fishing, it doesn't change the fact that fishing with her becomes a Luck-Based Mission.
• Memetic Mutation: "Archeozoic Big Hole"^Explanation One of the locations in the game, it's often used as the perfect example of how much of an utter disaster the initial NIS America localization was. The re-translated version would change the name to the much less goofy-sounding "Archeozoic Chasm".
• Moment of Awesome: The castaways rallying together to defeat the Oceanus and drive it to its lair in order for Adol's team to finish it off. Unlike the beast raids, it's the only time players get to see them actively participate in a battle. Extra points for Dogi and Thanatos for their You Shall Not Pass! moment in holding back a line of Primodials so the rest can still focus their assault on the Oceanus.
• Polished Port:
  • The PlayStation 4 release expanded on more game-play mechanics not available in the initial Vita version - AI characters can be told to avoid attacking rather than engage enemies, Dana gets additional abilities and a multi-part dungeon during her segments that occur in the past, while the Eternian Sidequests are explicitly marked on the map, something the Vita version neglected. Beast Hunts, Night Missions, and an expanded Fishing Minigame have all been added to the port. Finally, completing the Bonus Dungeon (Dana's multi-part dungeon in the present) opens the option to adjust the size of the party, while providing accessories that changes a character's weapon type (for example, Adol's sword can deal piercing or striking attributes in favor of his default slashing trait). Furthermore, this version also runs at 60 frames per second, while the Vita version runs at 30 frames per second.
  • The PC port eventually became this when a rebuild of its application code was released on January 2020, fixing most, if not all, of the issues the port had and even introduced an experimental 2-player co-op mode^note It's not available in some parts of the game, notably within the first few minutes, and it only supports two controllers (no keyboard and mouse). Note that the rebuild was done by PH3 GmbH, the company Peter "Durante" Thoman founded after his contract with X Seed Games ended. Also, a new HQ Texture Pack dramatically improves textures in the game including higher resolution textures and mipmaps that are compressed to improve texturing quality and performance, though this DLC had a bug that crashed the game which has since been fixed.
• Porting Disaster:
  • NIS America initially had Entertainment Support, Inc., a sister company to NIS America since both are owned by Nippon Ichi Software, do the initial PC port. This ort was one of these - Steam users immediately reported problems such as undetected gamepads, random freezing, game crashes, audio glitches and graphical slowdown^note Turning off visual options dropped the frame-rate below 20, which wouldn't truly solve crashes. Curiously, the best frame-rates were when the graphical settings were set on high. Furthermore, V-sync was non-existent (despite a menu option for it), but players stated there's obvious screen-tearing no matter what setting it was on. Another problem was that many Steam achievements didn't work unless a gamepad was used instead of mouse and keyboard. Fortunately, a replacement of the game's port released in January 2020 finally fixed the issues of the old port and even added an experimental 2-player co-op mode^note Post-backlash, NIS America specifically contacted PH3 GmbH, the company co-founded by Durante after his contract with XSeed Games ended, to redo the port. This would cement PH3 as the go-to company for porting future Falcom games with NIS.
  • NIS America had Entertainment Support, Inc. port Ys VIII to the Switch, running at a lower 30 frames per second, thus game mechanics such as Flash Guard and Flash Move, critical for defensive maneuvers, are much more difficult to execute as they require timing in the space of frames to pull off successfully; contrast this to the PlayStation 4 and PC versions, which run at 60 frames per second. Note that 30 frames per second is the same frame rate as the Vita version, thus it's not entirely a Porting Disaster for those who initially bought and got used to the latter. Although the Switch version launched with some graphical bumps and text issues, NIS America laid out a patch plan for the weeks following the port's release.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: The party-based Ys games usually use a more zoomed-out top-down camera angle, but Ys VIII uses a third-person camera angle that focuses more on viewing the space in front of the lead party character rather than the space around them. This change makes it more difficult to deal with being surrounded and requires better depth perception to guard and dodge incoming projectiles. Thankfully, Ys VIII also adds Anti-Frustration Features: Flash Guard gives more benefits than in previous games, Flash Guard/Move effect durations are shown on the screen, SP gain from charged attacks is increased, and the SP gauge can be upgraded past its maximum.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Ys: Memories of Celceta is often considered among the weakest installments in the series due to frustrating, unpolished game-play mechanics like the Cartography Sidequest and the Item Crafting. Despite Falcom being all-hands in for this Video Game Remake, the story was deemed a misfire as it ends abruptly after the climax with no real resolution. By comparison, Ys VIII is seen as a vast improvement and among the franchise's best. The third-person camera can now be fully controlled by the player, the Isle of Seiren takes cues from the Wide-Open Sandbox genre and offers a greater degree of Sidequests and optional content, the Cartography Sidequest and Item Crafting has all the little frustrations from Celceta shaved off, and the narrative told is more grandiose and complete with an emotional climax and epilogue.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: With more than twenty castaways and Ys VIII introducing Tower Defense elements via Beast Raids and Beast Hunts, it's a waste the castaways except Adol's party only provide passive Status Buffs towards the party, status ailments against enemies, or occasional attacks, all whose frequency rely on good player performance rather than continuously participating in these events on-screen.

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