Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana – adventuring at the end of the world

Yes, I know I’m a bit late, given that I covered the rest of the Ys series just before Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana first released (ten years ago at the time of writing), and then promptly… did not cover Ys VIII. But here we are now.

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana first released in 2016 for PlayStation Vita, but it is better known in its slightly later and expanded versions for PlayStation 4 and 5, Nintendo Switch and Windows PC. It follows the new(ish) direction that the Ys series has taken since Seven, which is to say that it’s a lot longer than the earlier entries in the series — possibly the longest the series has ever been — and adopts a party-based structure with real-time combat rather than the old-school “bumpslash” system of the early games or the single-character isometric adventuring of Ys VI, The Oath in Felghana and Ys Origin.

It’s also really frigging good, so I should have probably played it a bit sooner. But I knew I’d get there in the end, so let’s talk a bit more about it after the jump.

Ys VIII canonically unfolds between Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand (which, to date, has seen neither a rerelease or a Memories of Celceta-style reimagining) and Ys Seven. It opens, as most Ys games do, with the series’ perpetual protagonist, Adol Christin, aboard the good ship Lombardia. Series veterans will know that this is not a good sign for anyone on that ship, and even newcomers will surely recognise that Adol’s interest in the mythical island of Seiren, which apparently no-one has ever returned from, is foreshadowing of the most potent order.

Sure enough, not long after a pleasant dinner, during which Adol had been paying his way by acting as a staff member rather than a guest, the ship encounters a terrible storm and comes under attack by a gigantic tentacled sea monster. Adol confronts the beast, but it’s too little, too late; the Lombardia gets wrecked, and Adol awakens on an unfamiliar beach. You guessed it: he’s on the Isle of Seiren, the place where no-one has ever returned from, and now has a decent understanding of exactly why that might be.

However, it doesn’t take long for Adol to start tracking down fellow survivors of the shipwreck, beginning with the noble women Laxia von Roswell, whom he inadvertently stumbles upon while she is taking a bath in a nearby river. Following an appropriately 2016-era anime-style comic misunderstanding, Laxia and Adol team up, and gradually start to come across more castaways. Before long, they’ve established a little settlement, which they imaginatively call Castaway Village, and from there they intend to figure out where they are, how they got there and how on Earth they might escape their predicament. Unsurprisingly, Adol quickly puts himself forward to play a leading role in all this, since there’s nothing our boy loves more than a good unexplored landscape filled with monsters to poke holes in.

Following the format of the Ys IV reimagining, Memories of Celceta (and its recent rerelease Revelations in Celceta), Ys VIII’s initial main structural element involves Adol exploring the Isle of Seiren and mapping it out for the benefit of the other castaways. During his mapping, he’ll automatically take note of places to gather materials and food, treasure chests, and obstacles that will require the cooperation of a number of people from the village to clear. In this way, your initial progress is sort of “gated” by the necessity to find some more survivors and build up Castaway Village somewhat.

The early hours of the game have a deliberately vague, mysterious feel about them. The castaways are in an unfamiliar place, and, aside from the giant sea monster, they don’t know whether or not this island is harbouring a secret that would cause a greater-than-average number of people in the vicinity to go missing, never to be seen again. Initially, it remains a bit of a mystery, but it’s not long before Adol and his growing band of companions — with Laxia initially backed up by the crass, flatulent fisherman, Sahad — come across one possible significant threat: fog-covered areas that appear to be populated with… dinosaurs? (Or “Primordials”, as the world of Ys refers to them, anyway.)

Your first encounter with Primordials is likely to be fairly terrifying, as when you encounter them, they are significantly higher in level that you are likely to be at the time. This means it only takes a hit or two from them to take you down, meaning they are best dealt with by running as fast as you can into the next area — particularly since it’s not until later in the game that you discover they can only be injured by using weapons made from the mythical material, orichalcum.

From some perspectives, one might look upon Ys VIII as a kind-of sort-of “open world” game in that a significant portion of it consists of exploring areas thoroughly, finding everything they have to offer and gradually “conquering” the entire map. However, it takes the distinctly Japanese approach to this sort of structure, in that you’re not simply presented with a big, open map and invited to set off in any direction. The Isle of Seiren is divided into distinct regions which can be categorised as either “dungeon” or “field” areas (with the latter allowing Adol and friends to automatically heal by standing still, as is series tradition), and each region is further subdivided into discrete zones.

The game being constructed in this way is likely down to it being a Vita game initially and thus having to be relatively economical with how much “stuff” it had loaded into memory at a time, but it works well. Each individual zone is open enough to feel like you’re meaningfully exploring rather than following a linear path, but also constructed in such a way that you never feel like you’re wandering aimlessly. There are also plenty of teasers along the way, where on your first visit to an area you might see something interesting like a treasure chest, but be unable to reach it until later for one reason or another: usually either the requirement to have enough castaways to clear a path to it, or a specific item of Adventuring Gear to perform the special action required to access it.

Ys VIII -Lacrimosa of DANA-_20260830231446

Yes, as you progress, Adol will gradually gain access to various items of Adventuring Gear that provide him with helpful abilities. These include a pair of gloves that allow him to climb up and across vines, a pair of boots that allows him to run across the surface of swampy mud, a pendant that glows in the dark and allows him to see in dark caverns, a jewel that allows him to breathe underwater and an artifact that allows him to double-jump. Supplementing these items of “traversal” gear are a few other items that are simply helpful in certain circumstances, such as an orb that allows him to map the area in a larger radius around him, a feather that lets him run faster (and damage enemies he passes by while dashing) and a cape that increases his automatic healing abilities while out in the open.

Initially, only one piece of Adventuring Gear can be equipped at a time, but swapping it out is a simple case of hitting one of the triggers to quickly access the relevant menu. As you progress, though, you’ll accumulate a number of key items (usually positioned as some sort of “survival guide”) that allows you to equip more items simultaneously, up to an eventual maximum of five. This means you can keep the most useful items equipped permanently and just swap others out occasionally as and when you need them.

These early hours of Ys VIII are very enjoyable. There’s a real sense of going on an actual adventure, uncovering the map and discovering the secrets of the island as you go. The game makes a big deal of you discovering “Location Points”, which are particularly memorable scenery elements, and the game’s engine is good enough that even though the actual gameplay is split into relatively small zones, you can always see a long way into the distance. Notably, in these early hours, you can draw a certain degree of comfort from the fact that you can pretty much always see the smoke rising from Castaway Village’s central fire pit, wherever you are.

It is a lovely looking game, in other words, even with being built on Vita-era tech, and proof if proof were needed that a solid, good-looking art style will always trump the pursuit of photorealism and AI-powered yassification filters.

At various points throughout the game, your exploration will be punctuated by special almost arcade-style battles to either defend Castaway Village from incoming monsters (“Raid” battles) or preemptively strike monster nests in an area that could become troublesome for the village (“Hunt” battles). These are a lot of fun, and make use of the game’s core mechanics in an interesting and entertaining way, plus also help to emphasise how the members of Castaway Village are quite literally fighting for survival. Although you still control Adol’s party, the other, non-playable members of Castaway Village all contribute to these battles in their own way with special effects that occur at regular intervals as you fight.

On top of that, most of the castaways have their own little quest they want you to do, as well as a gift item you can give them, and in the process you can get to know all of them quite well — with some characters undergoing quite significant changes as part of this process. My favourite in this regard is, without a doubt, Sister Nia the nun. If you know, you know.

Once you’ve explored a significant part of the island’s southern half, what I would describe as “Big Plot” starts to get underway. However, there’s a curiously out-of-place feeling interlude between the initial exploration-centric section and the latter, plot-heavy half. During this part of the game, Castaway Village is threatened by the discovery that someone on board the Lombardia is actually a serial killer, causing everyone to mistrust everyone else… for a little while, at least, because said serial killer reveals themselves disappointingly quickly, causes a bit of tragedy and then gets eaten by a dinosaur. The whole episode is over almost as soon as it began, and it very much feels like it was sort of slotted in at the last minute to build a bit of excitement. It wasn’t really necessary; I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was bad, as it is responsible for some worthwhile dramatic and emotional moments, but it does feel just… out of place.

The rough halfway point of the game is marked by Adol and company, now joined by the spunky but frighteningly intelligent, articulate and strong child Ricotta, who has been living on the island for as long as she could remember, and the mysterious “transporter” Hummel, ascending Gendarme, the mountain that divides the island’s northern and southern halves. Once atop the mountain they discover several surprising things about the northern half: one, that it’s absolutely frigging full of Primordials, and two, that there was evidently once a huge, prosperous civilisation that lived here.

This side of things has been gradually teased up until this point by Adol experiencing strange dreams. Initially, these are just vague images of events that seemingly occurred long ago, but as the game progresses, Adol’s involvement in these dreams grows, until it reaches a point where his consciousness appears to be jumping back in time to witness the antics of the eponymous Dana, a young woman from a civilisation optimistically known as Eternia, and the supposed “Maiden of the Great Tree”.

It’s not immediately clear what Dana’s involvement in all this is, but as the game progresses, it starts to become apparent that not only is Adol able to experience Dana’s memories, but the Dana of the past is also aware of Adol in the future. She then starts to leave things in her time that will benefit Adol in the future — eventually culminating in her leaving herself locked in stasis, waiting to be awoken by Adol and his party when they finally make it to the ruins of the Eternian civilisation.

Dana’s sequences are more than just flashbacks, too; while the first couple of her sequences are little more than story, from thereon she starts getting more substantial things to do, including a series of her own sidequests and a large, multi-level, puzzle-centric dungeon that gradually unlocks new areas as you progress through the story. She also learns a total of three different fighting styles, which helps to make up for the fact she always fights solo in the flashback sequences; these include her default, speedy, water-themed style, a wood-themed style where she is slow but hits hard with a huge hammer that can break shields and armour; and a light-themed style where she moves at lightning speed and attacks with weak but rapid pokes. The latter also allows her to see enemies that are otherwise invisible.

The story is a slow burn, but it’s consistently intriguing and satisfying. One of the things Ys has always done well is position Adol’s “adventurer” profession as something a little more than just someone who hacks and slashes his way through monsters for some quick coin; he’s genuinely interested in learning about the world, including the source of its various myths and legends. In many respects, he’s something of an archaeologist, and his curious connection with Dana represents a heretofore unprecedented opportunity to learn about a previously unknown civilisation that existed many, many years ago. Of course he’s going to tug at that thread until it unravels fully… and unravel, of course, it does.

Through his interactions with Dana, and his attempts to help her recover her memories in the present, Adol discovers that the Eternian civilisation was wiped out in a cataclysmic event known as the “Lacrimosa”. Not only that, it becomes apparent that humanity is staring down the beginnings of a Lacrimosa of its own; the appearance of the Primordials, and their growing numbers, is a signal that humanity’s time is coming to an end, and it is the Primordials which will be the medium through which human civilisation is wiped out.

Naturally, Adol is not standing for this, and neither is Dana; Dana has already lived through one Lacrimosa and has no desire to see it happen again, so the pair of them decide to team up and figure out a way to prevent it occurring again, once and for all.

The whole “Lacrimosa” storyline feels curiously poignant in today’s age. While contemplating that we might be at the “end of the world” is (probably) alarmist nonsense, it’s hard not to look around at things like global warming, the colossal waste of time, money and resources that is generative AI and the unstable political situation in many regions around the world as being at least a little worrisome. We are, it’s probably fair to say, in a position where the next few years of collective decisions we make as a species are going to be critical in determining what life is like for future generations. And there’s a growing risk that we will make some very poor choices indeed.

Ys VIII posits that there comes a point in every dominant species’ evolution where it is time for them to step aside, die out and let another form of life take the limelight. This prevents any one species from becoming too powerful in their lifespan, and allows the planet time to adapt and recover from what each being has done to it — or, indeed, for the new dominant species to prove themselves by being appropriately adapted to the environment the planet is presently experiencing or developing.

Naturally, there is always some objection to the Lacrimosa every time it comes around, and thus it transpires that a single representative from each species that has experienced one — the “brightest soul” from the soon-to-die people — is selected as a “Warden”. This individual will both witness the end of their own people and all the despair that involves, and from thereon assist in shepherding the world’s subsequent evolution towards the next Lacrimosa, at which point the cycle will repeat, perpetually.

However, what all this didn’t account for is two incredibly stubborn people: Dana, who unsurprisingly was selected to be the Warden for the Eternians, and Adol, who finds himself selected as the Warden for humanity. Neither of them have any wish to see this cycle continue, and thus the latter portion of the game concerns them attempting to uncover the secrets of the Great Tree of Origins and the source of the Lacrimosa, then deal with it, hopefully once and for all.

This is, of course, peak human arrogance, but given the setting of Ys mirrors our own world’s development from a century or two ago from a somewhat idealised perspective, one could argue that humanity, which hasn’t even fully explored its own world at this point, has not yet reached a point where it can truly be considered a threat to the planet.

It’s also posited that humanity is, collectively, a species that is unwilling to just roll over and let the end come to them as a result of someone else’s decision. Moreover, the microcosm of society that is Castaway Village shows that although humanity has developed its own internal divisions — many of which are unjust — it absolutely is possible for the species to work together for a common good, particularly once everyone has found a particular little niche for themselves to fit into where they can excel.

And so it is that Adol, Dana and friends find themselves eventually confronting the very concept of evolution, and discovering the complete truth behind the whole situation. In keeping with much of the rest of the series, the blame can be laid firmly at the feet of capricious deities tinkering with the world as they see fit, seemingly unwilling to contemplate that their whims might not exactly marry up with the desires of an entire world full of sapient, self-aware people with their own hopes and dreams for the future.

Ys VIII’s narrative is ambitious and epic in scope, then, and the way it builds from the relatively humble beginnings to the literally earth-shattering revelations in its later hours feels like a natural progression. My only personal stumbling block was the aforementioned “serial killer” section, which just didn’t feel like it fit with the rest of the game’s vibe at all, but on the whole, I found Ys VIII a very satisfying narrative to be part of.

On the gameplay front, Ys VIII is a further refinement of the formula established in Ys Seven and built upon in Memories of Celceta. Party members each have their own attack type — Adol slashes, Laxia and Hummel pierce, Sahad and Ricotta bash — and some (though not all) enemies have a particular weakness. If you encounter one of these enemies, using the appropriate damage type will eventually “break” them, allowing all characters to deal full damage; prior to that, only the correct damage type will have a meaningful impact on the baddy in question.

The enemies that are assigned these damage types all make thematic sense. Those weak to slashes tend to be things like plant-like enemies or squishy things; those weak to piercing tend to be flying foes; those weak to bashes tend to be armoured. Many of the other enemies in the game have no particular damage type, which means you can choose whichever character you most enjoy fighting with.

Characters are able to unleash a basic combo with an attack button, and this does a reasonable amount of damage, but its primary function is generating skill points to use on skills. These are significantly more powerful attacks that typically have a much wider area of effect, and many of them are specialised in dealing heavy damage, building up an enemies “stun” meter or inflicting status effects. Skills also have the benefit of reducing incoming damage if you are hit while performing one, so using them as much as possible is generally advisable. When you first start playing the game, it might initially feel tempting to under-use your skills, but before long you will realise that combat is intended to be primarily skill based, with the basic combo mainly used to power up.

Each character learns a wide variety of skills as you progress through the game, and up to four can be equipped on each character at once. The characters you’re not directly controlling will automatically use all of the skills they’ve learned at the same time you use one, and each skill can level up twice through repeated use. The skills encompass a variety of attack types: some are good for focusing your attention on a single foe; some are good for precisely hitting weak points; some are good for hitting foes over a wide area. Since you can freely switch out skills at any point, you’ll doubtless find your own loadout that works well and stick with it for the majority of the game; later-learned skills aren’t necessarily better, they just provide alternative options according to how you prefer to fight. The only real incentive to level them all up is a trophy or achievement on platforms that support them; otherwise, there’s no need to grind skills you don’t find especially useful or enjoyable to use.

A set of mechanics well worth mastering during your time with Ys VIII involves precisely dodging or blocking incoming enemy attacks. Known as Flash Move and Flash Guard respectively, these allow you to avoid damage and enjoy various benefits. Performing a Flash Move by dodging out of the way at the last second slows down time for everyone but you for a moment, allowing you some effectively “free” hits, while performing a Flash Guard by blocking just before something hits you negates the incoming damage and makes you temporarily invincible for a short period. Both moves also build up your skill points, providing you with the opportunity to unleash your powerful moves without fear of reprisal.

The party also shares an “Extra” meter, which, when built up fully, allows a character to use their ultimate attack. These are strong, cinematic attacks that freeze the action while they are unfolding, and can deal heavy damage if used wisely. They are by no means a “win button”, though; you still have to aim them, and if you’re using the wrong damage type on an enemy with some sort of resistance, you won’t deal out much punishment at all.

As you fight your way through the various areas, you’ll be showered with loot from both enemies and gathering points. These items are all used back at Castaway Village in place of currency; since no-one on the island has any use for money, there is no currency system in the game at all. Instead, everything is acquired through finding the appropriate materials and delivering to a castaway who can provide the items you need. Deliver herbs to the doctor and he can make potions and medicines; deliver ores and crystals to the blacksmith, and she can upgrade your weapons and armour; deliver various bits and pieces to the merchant manning the storehouse, and she will gladly exchange them for specific other materials, helpful items and even some special gifts from her stock as you ned them.

While some people will doubtless baulk at what is essentially an extremely lightweight gathering and crafting system, at no point in Ys VIII will you be short of materials. The most resistance you’ll run into with this “barter” system comes with some of the late-game weapons, but by the end of the game even the rarest materials become so abundant that it’s pretty easy to ensure everyone is fully equipped well before the final encounter. It makes thematic sense for the game to completely lack a conventional currency system; indeed, at one point, one questline concludes with a character giving you a bag of what would, in certain circumstances, be unimaginable riches, though it’s little more than a keepsake while everyone is stuck on the Isle of Seiren.

Anyway, that’s a lot of words to say that I had a really great time with Ys VIII. I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about Ys games being 50+ hours long (this one took me about 52 hours on Normal difficulty) as I do love the bite-sized nature of the earlier games in the series, particularly with their replayability in mind. But I will say that Ys VIII successfully kept both the gameplay and the narrative interesting enough over the duration to keep me entertained and involved, and I think the overall length helps to sell the “stuck on a deserted island” fantasy somewhat. By the time it comes to say goodbye to everyone during the ending, it really does feel like you’ve been through a lot with these people, and that your time together on the Isle of Seiren will always be special.

Now I guess I better start thinking about getting caught up on the two more Ys games that released in the intervening years, huh…? Maybe a bit of a break and a palate cleanser first, though…

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More about Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana
More about the Ys series

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