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Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana |OT| Two Systems, Two Heroes, One BIG HOLE

For people who don't like the OST, just go listen to Demetori, one of the lead composer's doujin side project. The ramped up chiptunes direction is intentional, for better or worse.
Masaru Teramae (Demetori) has never composed music for a Falcom game or official production; he plays guitar on some tracks in Ys VIII, though he (and the other players) didn't get specific credits. All composition and arrangement's the product of Hayato Sonoda, Takahiro Unisuga, and Mitsuo Singa. You can find more info about Ys VIII and other Falcom music criedts at VGMDb.

Also, in what world could you say this music has "chiptunes direction"? Chiptune's not even a genre, but a category based on audio chip-synthesized production. Sound Team jdk uses modern sequencers and virtual instruments.

I just got my fourth party members and I was wondering, do reserve party members gain xp?
They should, just at a reduced rate like in Seven and Celceta. Try equipping an EXP-boost accessory or more on reserve members once you can get them.
 

Blue-kun

Member
Enjoying the game so far love that classic RPG feel.

Btw does this game have a max level or something?

I'm fairly sure it caps at 99, but... good luck getting there. I've got like 80+ hours on Vita and my main characters are like L81 or so, and you gain experience so, soooo slowly. There's no point in capping either, lol.

Though I think there were some level up glitches found out later? But I don't know if they work for late game leveling.
 
I'm really enjoying the exploration in this game. It reminds me of Xenoblade. I loved exploring in that game just for the sake of it.
 

Loudninja

Member
I'm fairly sure it caps at 99, but... good luck getting there. I've got like 80+ hours on Vita and my main characters are like L81 or so, and you gain experience so, soooo slowly. There's no point in capping either, lol.

Though I think there were some level up glitches found out later? But I don't know if they work for late game leveling.
Thanks :)
 

MechaX

Member
I can't wait to replace Sahad. He's literally useless to me.

Even when I played the demo, I thought there was something off with that dude. He brought the damage, but unless the enemy was stunned or just OHKO'd, he was always going to take some damage in return.
 

Mr.Jeff

Member
Sahad has some very fast skills so the above posts surprise me. I think with his launcher skill, anchor aoe, and STR, he has the fastest damage output in the game.
Most of the time, you'll be looking for the fastest skills from a character anyway. A lot of skills become unfeasible simply due to the time it takes to use them. Find one you can spam quickly and stick with it.
 

sloppyjoe_gamer

Gold Member
Seems to be a limited physical release? My closest Gamestop didnt have it, but one close by did where i went to get my copy and the one i bought was the only one they got in.
 

preta

Member
Yea, I'm with you there. He's so open to attacks after skills and the initial windup for them sucks too.

You can use Flash Guard while recovering from skill use.

Masaru Teramae (Demetori) has never composed music for a Falcom game or official production; he plays guitar on some tracks in Ys VIII, though he (and the other players) didn't get specific credits. All composition and arrangement's the product of Hayato Sonoda, Takahiro Unisuga, and Mitsuo Singa. You can find more info about Ys VIII and other Falcom music criedts at VGMDb.

Also, in what world could you say this music has "chiptunes direction"? Chiptune's not even a genre, but a category based on audio chip-synthesized production. Sound Team jdk uses modern sequencers and virtual instruments.

Teramae doesn't actually even perform in Ys VIII either - the guitarists are just Akihiro Goto and Terukazu Inoue.
 
Seems to be a limited physical release? My closest Gamestop didnt have it, but one close by did where i went to get my copy and the one i bought was the only one they got in.
Probably not limited as much as it's a super niche title, doubt they'd order much beyond preorders

Best Buy didn't even have the actual release date on their site until like....the day before. I have GCU but it didn't ship until monday (actually received today though so I'm looking forward to digging in)
 
Gonna be picking this up tomorrow. How are people finding their chosen difficulty? Not sure if I should start on nightmare or hard. Leaning towards nightmare since I love a good challenge but not sure if this is the kind of game where harder just means you have to grind more rather than being more skilled/strategic.
 

preta

Member
Gonna be picking this up tomorrow. How are people finding their chosen difficulty? Not sure if I should start on nightmare or hard. Leaning towards nightmare since I love a good challenge but not sure if this is the kind of game where harder just means you have to grind more rather than being more skilled/strategic.

I'd recommend starting on Nightmare. I did just fine in it on my first playthrough, and did very little grinding. You can change difficulty after starting anyway, as long as you don't start on Inferno, because it's the only difficulty that introduces mechanical changes on top of increasing enemy damage and HP. I'd probably not recommend it for a first playthrough unless you feel daring.
 

Infest

Member
Does anybody know how many chapters the game has or tell me how close I'm to the end?
I've just
finished the ghost ship part.
 

Alucrid

Banned
My most died to boss in the game! 281 attempts on that git.

If you're using Adol, I recommend using the sideways slash. It has good range and can take down the adds and boss.
First phase is mostly just dodging its stomps. If you're worried about its poison splash, back off a bit when you see it begin to do it. If you stay close to it, it mostly does swipes and smashes which are okay enough to dodge.

Second phase is a pain in the ass. You can't stay too near like before or you'll get poisoned. Aim to attack when it does its swipes or frontal smashes. Kill adds the same way as previous.

When it does its suck in attack, keep pulling to the side and you should manage to get out just before it goes off.
For its beam, try and stay to the side of it when possible. If not some good jumping skills.
For its charge attack, learn to recognise the build up and roll under it's legs and behind it so it misses you. Watch out for a poison spray afterwards.

Hope this helps.

I'm gonna spoil the whole answer because why not.

If you're using food, there's a good one (I don't remember the name now, been months since I played it) that basically heals you and grants you immunity against status effects. Definitely worth taking some against it, as its poison is most likely what will be making you die more often than not, the damage really, really adds up after a while.

Other than that, I dunno. I think it's a pretty straightforward boss, you just need to get used to its patterns.

Oh, but there's something else too. If you don't mind, use Hummel. Hummel's EX is INSANELY POWERFUL, lol. You use it and it basically does ALL THE DAMAGE. It's kinda broken against some bosses, even...

thanks again for these, managed to beat the boss the first time coming back to it after a destiny break
 
Any recommendations for tweaking the controls... I hate the default scheme.

I've been changing mine a lot and I think I have finally settled on a pretty good setup.

X - jump
Square - Attack
Circle - lock on
Triangle - switch characters

L1 - Dash (I keep this off face buttons so I can still move the camera)
R1 - Skills
L2 - Evade
R2 - Flash guard

I like having the flash guard and evade controls on the triggers, makes defensive maneuvers easy. Since skills are on R1, you can set extra skills to L1 and it won't interfere with dash.

The rest, which is mostly map and menu stuff, is up to you. I put all the map functions on the d-pad. Left touch pad press opens journal, right touch pad press for items. Camp screen can't be changed from the options button, otherwise I would have put it on the right touch pad. I mapped switch ally action to touch pad swipe up and use status restorative to touch pad swipe down, because i doubt I will use those much if at all.

Hopefully this will at least be a decent starting point, you can always alter it a little to fit your preferences but I find these button and trigger layouts work best for the way I play. For example, if jump is anything but X I always get confused.
 

Quonny

Member
That first time you hear the field music.

swedish_chef.jpg
 

preta

Member
Does anybody know how many chapters the game has or tell me how close I'm to the end?
I've just
finished the ghost ship part.

6
chapters.

By the way, this should really be added to the OP: Do side quests early and often. Getting the true ending requires 150 reputation on Vita and 200 on PS4, and doing side quests will help immensely with this. I think it's technically impossible to lock yourself out of being able to get it, but it certainly would be a pain to cram all of that stuff right at the end of the game rather than doing it over the course of the whole game.

All composition and arrangement's the product of Hayato Sonoda, Takahiro Unisuga, and Mitsuo Singa.

Also don't forget Yukihiro Jindo, presumably as an arranger for tracks like the opening theme, Next Step Toward the Unknown and the ending theme.
 

Derkon

Member
Put in a few hours just now and this is pretty fun. First Ys game so I wasn't too sure what to expect but really liking everything so far.
 
How exactly does skill learning work?
I fought some dead soldier that i fished out and he gave me two skills simultaneously, then he proceeded to one shot my party.
Never tried that fight again but I haven't learned anything in the last hour and a half, not even the skills i learned before dying to him.

Also can someone far enough let me know if more giant monsters start roaming around in later parts of the game? This game reminds me of xenoblade so much.
 

Blue-kun

Member
How exactly does skill learning work?
I fought some dead soldier that i fished out and he gave me two skills simultaneously, then he proceeded to one shot my party.
Never tried that fight again but I haven't learned anything in the last hour and a half, not even the skills i learned before dying to him.

Also can someone far enough let me know if more giant monsters start roaming around in later parts of the game? This game reminds me of xenoblade so much.

You learn skills by fighting, basically. It triggers more often, if I recall, when you're fighting 'powerful' enemies, stuff that's much higher level than you or bosses and what not. So, basically, the dead soldier was actually much higher leveled than you and that's why you got them. I think after you reach a certain level the game also makes it so that the skill will be learned at higher rates so you don't end up not ever getting them for whatever reasons. Anyway, don't sweat it, you'll have all the skills as long as you fight with the characters in any sort of regular fashion.

As for the 2nd question
yes, they do. To put it simply, lol.
 

CaLe

Member
Thanks !!

I've been changing mine a lot and I think I have finally settled on a pretty good setup.

X - jump
Square - Attack
Circle - lock on
Triangle - switch characters

L1 - Dash (I keep this off face buttons so I can still move the camera)
R1 - Skills
L2 - Evade
R2 - Flash guard

I like having the flash guard and evade controls on the triggers, makes defensive maneuvers easy. Since skills are on R1, you can set extra skills to L1 and it won't interfere with dash.

The rest, which is mostly map and menu stuff, is up to you. I put all the map functions on the d-pad. Left touch pad press opens journal, right touch pad press for items. Camp screen can't be changed from the options button, otherwise I would have put it on the right touch pad. I mapped switch ally action to touch pad swipe up and use status restorative to touch pad swipe down, because i doubt I will use those much if at all.

Hopefully this will at least be a decent starting point, you can always alter it a little to fit your preferences but I find these button and trigger layouts work best for the way I play. For example, if jump is anything but X I always get confused.
 

preta

Member
End of Chapter 2.

You've still got a lot ahead of both the game and the soundtrack ahead of you, but... come on, you really don't like tracks like the opening theme, Sunshine Coastline, A Footprint in the Wet Sand, Eroded Valley, Crimson Fighter or Ricordo, to name a few? I (and many others) certainly found VIII's soundtrack to have a lot of strong and memorable melodies. Maybe listening to them on their own, outside of the game, will help them sink in?
 

orborborb

Member
Gave up on Ys 7 and Memories of Celceta but I'm enjoying this one a lot more (physical cart on Vita), maybe even more than Ys 6.

I recommend turning down the sound effects and voices a couple notches to enjoy the music more, and don't listen on the crappy Vita speakers. I just wish the music volume wouldn't lower when people spoke, same thing bothering me in Destiny 2.
 
Not really going to have much time to dig in until the weekend, but I'm enjoying it a lot so far. Haven't really played a good ARPG in a while.
 
Played an hour on Vita and I'm pleasantly surprised by how fresh this feels, not just for the series, but from Falcom themselves. I gawped at the dash ability's physics. This nuanced stuff is *cool*.

---

As an aside, the importers last year who claimed it was native resolution on Vita ended up disappointing me. I knew it was too good to be true, and I noticed it wasn't native the moment you're handed control of Adel. However, Falcom's implementation is the best possible scenario for the hardware and the impressively polished visuals:

-It's dynamic resolution
-Spends most of its time around what appears like 408p in gameplay
-Can go higher, though I haven't seen it hit native 544p in gameplay, even when rotating the camera to the ground or sky.
-Lowest I've seen appears to be 360p when there are lots of models on-screen.

Framerate is also a tad disappointing, though since I've only played the first hour maybe it does get more consistent. It hasn't been a stable 30fps yet, and feels more like 20-28fps (25-30fps at its best) when you're moving around. It hasn't stopped me from playing the game but it is distracting if you're used to stable framerates.
 

LegendOfAB

Neo Member
I've been changing mine a lot and I think I have finally settled on a pretty good setup.

X - jump
Square - Attack
Circle - lock on
Triangle - switch characters

L1 - Dash (I keep this off face buttons so I can still move the camera)
R1 - Skills
L2 - Evade
R2 - Flash guard

Ayyyy, i paused last night after the hype and redid my controls. Mine are exactly the same except Dash & Evade, and Lock-on & Switch are swapped.

You know what they say about great minds...


Now then, does anyone know if KO'd party members receive EXP from bosses? No idea if i am wasting time and resources by reviving them right before a boss goes down.
 
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