Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

After playing through a quarter of the map, great game, with some uniqueness with the island survival and enjoyable enough. Arguably the best, but also by far the least interesting and least fun game of the franchise.

Always telling you what to do, it never completely free itself from it, losing the sense of adventure and magic, and feeling more like work, which is the biggest criticism you can give to a game with the name Ys in it.

Okay, that sounds pretty harsh, but I feel it has to be said. I will still finish the game, and also pretty interested what Monstrum Nox will do.

Ok my first Ys game and I really didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did

Y' all are missing out for those who haven't played it, that's all I'll say

Overall I thought the game was great, but the last few hours of the games was obnoxious with how many times it would stop you for story stuff. While I enjoyed the story, it got annoying how every time you took like 15 steps it would stop you for a cutscene.

There's a lot I like about this but the difficulty balancing feels pretty messed up. I can go from struggling with a boss to obliterating it with a couple tiny upgrades. Even though I'm on Hard and wasn't overleveled or anything, I killed Giasburn (which I think was supposed to be a major boss) in like 15 seconds by spamming the tornado move. It was pretty ridiculous.

great game but chapter 2 is such a slog it really makes the game seem worse than it ends up