Does the story of Ys VIII get any more interesting later on?

[Deleted member 17627]

I do want to preface this by saying I did make a similar topic for Tokyo Xanadu and have stated my opinions on this game here on Era before.

That being said. I decided to go back to it this week and I'm kind of loving it now? The fishing, the combat, the dungeon exploration, the music, and the art, it's all so great. Heck, I'm even enjoying the raids that I heard so many people criticize.

However, the story and characters, after playing for 10 hours, are just not interesting to me. I think I have about 20 hours left in the game, but I don't know if I want to continue given how bored I am with these components, which I value a lot in an RPG.

Does it get any better? I'm having fun, but I can definitely see my interest waning soon, especially with how repetitive it feels at times.

 

[selfnoise]

Nope.

 

[Deleted member 41651]

Story and characters were great to me, like the good ol days of Skies of Arcadia etc, but if they're not clicking with you at 10 hours then that's basically it unfortunately. :/

 

[Kaivan]

No. It has good ol' Falcom combat and that's it.

 

[steviestar3]

No but there's less of it later which is nice. The actual gameplay loop is really fun.

 

[Viale]

ish? there some interesting story beats related to Dana iirc. However, it's still very distinctly not something you play for the story haha.

 

[Stairmaster_]

It stays relatively simple but gets more and more ridiculous lore-wise

Still had a lot of fun with it through the end

 

[Raza]

Shrug. Everyone values story differently and everyone has different takes on what is a good story. I can say this is one of the Ys series' best realized stories, in my opinion, and I was engaged from the start to the finish. So again shrug. Keep playing if you are having fun and stop when you aren't.

 

[Open Wound]

My replay of it has given me a better opinion of the story than I had previously, but it's still not something super remarkable, even if I ended up quite invested. And the ending is still a complete disaster, that didn't change.

There is a somewhat crazy plot with twists and huge stakes, but in true Falcom fashion is build upped slowly and mostly focused on the last couple of chapters. However, I would say the low key moments of exploring the island when everything is still completely unknown is the best part of the narrative in my opinion.

 

[afreaknamedpete]

I thought the story was great, once the main plot starts with Dana. Everything before you get playable Dana feels almost like a prologue. It's not as in-your-face swarm you with reams of text storytelling like the Legend of Heroes series but the Dana chapters are really great at setting the mood and have great emotional scenes. Really Dana is the main character of this game and the story suffers for it until she, you know, actually shows up.

 

[hydro94530]

I thought it was dreadfully boring. Stopped halfway through.

 

[Bomblord]

I think 10 hours in if you've played as Dana more than once all but a few major plot points have been laid out all that is in it for you is to find out the secrets behind them. At that point in the story I think I had plenty of "oh that's awesome" moments especially with the stuff between Dana and Adol and there are plenty more to come but if you're not feeling it don't stick in it for the story as it doesn't seem to be up your alley (although it definitely was up mine).

 

[Alric]

I didn't like the Dana parts at first, but towards the end of the game I really came to appreciate them and the story.

 

[The Third Heat]

Maybe? I finished the game, but right now, I can barely remember what happens. I do know I rushed to the end at a certain point because it all stopped being as intriguing as the set-up.

 

[Desma]

No

 

[Rodrigues solitaire]

It does. It goes peak JRPG once you slowly uncover the mystery of the island. I loved it.

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

Can Falcom please either put effort into stories for Ys or just go back to how it was pre-Seven

 

[SmokedSalmon]

I think it does. It's one of my favorite Ys narratives.

 

[Mattakuevan]

The story is almost completely weighted towards the last 5 hours, and there's plenty of it.

'Better' is subjective, but up until that point the player doesn't have much to go on so its a considerable improvement.

 

[Chaosblade]

Granted I haven't actually played Ys VIII yet, but I've played nearly every other Ys game and it's not a series I'd recommend to someone looking for a compelling story.

Can Falcom please either put effort into stories for Ys or just go back to how it was pre-Seven

Click to shrink...

This is what I'd prefer. Ys peaked with the Napishtim engine games. Excellent gameplay, fairly simple stories, rocking soundtracks, and they were fairly short and didn't overstay their welcome. Falcom has Trails for their big story focused series, trying to blend those Trails/Kiseki traits into Ys has just made Ys weaker in my opinion. And I say that as someone who mostly likes Trails.

 

[BassForever]

Ys games suffer from an inverse, the more story they have the worst the story is.

 

[Open Wound]

This is what I'd prefer. Ys peaked with the Napishtim engine games. Falcom has Trails for their big story focused series, trying to blend those Trails/Kiseki traits into Ys has just made Ys weaker in my opinion. And I say that as someone who mostly likes Trails.

Click to shrink...

I don't agree with this. The gameplay loop in Ys VIII is the strongest in the franchise in my opinion, with a heavy emphasis in exploration that's fantastically executed. Ys just needs better stories, not return to the simplicity of the older games.

 

[TheLastOne]

I thought the story, characters and world were extremely engaging.

Different things for different people I guess.

 

[Deleted member 17627]

I don't agree with this. The gameplay loop in Ys VIII is the strongest in the franchise in my opinion, with a heavy emphasis in exploration that's fantastically executed. Ys just needs better stories, not return to the simplicity of the older games.

Click to shrink...

This post captures my thoughts entirely.

 

[sredgrin]

Ys isnt a series to play for the story. There's some character stuff that's enjoyable (like the moment in my avatar), but I would struggle to tell you what the story was for VIII already outside of "go explore an island and get off of it"

 

[iamandy]

I'm at the final dungeon and I really liked. I like all the chars and the mystery grabbed my attention. Can't wait to see the ending.

 

[Kubricks]

I kinda like the end game with Dana but that's it, Ys story is serviceable at best in general and 8 is already very good compared with the past games.
To me the game is always about the combat and exploration, which are quite well done in this entry.

 

[Morrigan]

Not even a little bit. Turn your brain off and just enjoy the combat and music.

 

[zswordsman]

I kinda feel you OP been having a hard time just enjoying this compared to Memories of Celceta but for me changing the difficulty to easy has fixed the pacing issues. Idk i just don't want to grind at the moment and playing on easy let's me skip that. Story does pick up once Dana becomes a bigger part of it

 

[Barn]

Nope, certainly not structurally. Narrative-wise, the strengths of the game lie in its charming characters and adventurous, swashbuckling vibe. The plot isn't anything great, and doesn't get great.

I fact, my only complaint about Ys VIII (aside from the shitty Switch port) is that the story gets actively worse toward the end. I liked the characters and refreshingly lighthearted tone and was perfectly happy to just enjoy the whole castaways thing, but all the spiritual/religious stuff with Dana is boring to begin with and eventually devolves into the sloppy, incomprehensible metaphysical goop that's very typical of anime and JRPGs.

 

[minimalism]

I loved the story of VIII to death. I needed more of it by the time the game ended.

 

[Maffis]

I liked the mystery of the world of Dana. So I'd say yes.

 

[guru-guru]

Enjoy 20+ hours of cutscenes where characters explain stuff that happened 5 minutes prior.

 

[Imitatio]

Well, I found the Dana story parts interesting enough, though I think of them to be more or less lore / background noise that leads to the main story progressing further.
Liked the chars a lot as well. They're somewhat stereotypical for the most part, though.

If you've played 10h already, it won't really get all that much different 20h in. If the gameplay loop, which is Ys VIII's star imo, isn't enough to keep you engaged, you might wanna spend your time with something else.

 

[Deleted member 40102]

It doesn't like almost 90% of jrpg stories.

Best thing about jrpg not their stories for sure.

 

[MaverickHunterAsh]

I think it does, yes. I actually loved the story, but I do recall that it took awhile to get going. Once it does, though, it's great. Things get more interesting very soon after Dana comes into the picture. It's nothing mind-blowing, mind you — it does rely on some standard JRPG tropes — but not as many as you'd think and I found the major story beats really intriguing once Dana came into focus.

 

[Joe2187]

I think i had to fight and kill Jesus Christ in Celceta

 

[Bebpo]

Nope. Incredibly bloated game. Combat isn't even that good anymore and the story & cutscenes are bad, frequent and annoying in an action game where you just wanna explore and slash stuff.

A lot of people seemed to love it, but as a big Ys fan that'd been getting sadder and sadder on the series since 7 it was the final straw and I'm skipping 9.

 

[Mechaplum]

For me the characters are just an excuse for the gameplay and music. There are some good moments but nothing memorable.

 

[Lightning Lord]

The beginning portions of the game story-wise is just a bunch of filler fluff that could easily have been cut out. An actual story does emerge later on but the game likes to take its sweet time with it.

 

[Augemitbutter]

i always liked short Ys stories that gave characters just the right time for development. The story is more bloated now but still very far from trails levels. The gameplay is still ace so i don't mind more story.

 

[Deleted member 17627]

Not even a little bit. Turn your brain off and just enjoy the combat and music.

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To be honest, this is how it was for me playing Celceta, but this game being 35+ hours long compared to Celceta's barely 20 hours really makes it hard to have this mentality.

 

[Deleted member 17627]

ish? there some interesting story beats related to Dana iirc. However, it's still very distinctly not something you play for the story haha.

Click to shrink...

I kinda like the end game with Dana but that's it, Ys story is serviceable at best in general and 8 is already very good compared with the past games.
To me the game is always about the combat and exploration, which are quite well done in this entry.

Click to shrink...

I liked the mystery of the world of Dana. So I'd say yes.

Click to shrink...

I kinda feel you OP been having a hard time just enjoying this compared to Memories of Celceta but for me changing the difficulty to easy has fixed the pacing issues. Idk i just don't want to grind at the moment and playing on easy let's me skip that. Story does pick up once Dana becomes a bigger part of it

Click to shrink...

The Dana stuff has all been great, but it feels like the other half (finding castaways, taking care of the village) is just so boring. It feels like these elements would be good if the NPCs were unique and well written, but most come off as just generic.

I feel like if they had the Dana content early on and integrated the castaway stuff into it, rather than the first half of the game being mainly the latter and the second half the former, the game would interest me so much more and it would be shorter.

But after playing Tokyo Xanadu and hearing some of the few criticisms of Cold Steel III and IV, that this seems to be an issue with current Falcom games altogether: with their games being twice as long as they need to be, or even longer.