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xyzzysqrlBehold, folks: What might be my new favorite Action-JRPG. If it isn't, it's at least top-three material.
My fondness for the Ys series is documented but I've really got to repeat: I don't think major game companies MAKE games like this anymore. This is a deliberately modern throwback, a relic of a time and place where games simply gave you all the space in the game-world to roam around in and threw up a few arbitrary blocks here and there to stop you, and then let you play.
The beginning was a bit rails-y as the premise of "Adol got shipwrecked. Again." is set up and then it's off to the races as every avenue of exploration you leave behind remains valid throughout. If you find new gear or new means of movement, you're allowed to come back and maybe climb a wall, maybe go underwater, maybe break through a barrier and see what's new back there. It's almost always something worth having.
As I always do lately, I streamed this game hard (as the inaugural part of my Marathon Mweekend series, where video length is not an issue, although in practice we always seem to go about six hours before I quit out) and the chat and I had a lot of fun guessing the plot twists and being absolutely shocked that we were all correct. (There was one part where I -totally forgot one plot element existed- and it returned to blindside me). The plot of this thing escalates in ways I barely believed. There was a lot of "wait, WHAT?" Nobody is tossing this kind of madness salad but Falcom these days.
So yeah, maybe there are weaknesses in here. Maybe the plot takes a while to spin up and get going. Maybe there's a lot of legging it around the island. Fact remains, I beat this game as close to 100% as I possibly could and then I ran the post-game superboss level-99 dungeon challenge. I don't do that often anymore, something has to really hook me in and make me want to engage on that level, and Ys VIII delighted me to the point where I did not want to stop playing it. That means a lot to me.
As always, the playlist is on Youtube. It's huge though, I get why you won't watch it.
My fondness for the Ys series is documented but I've really got to repeat: I don't think major game companies MAKE games like this anymore. This is a deliberately modern throwback, a relic of a time and place where games simply gave you all the space in the game-world to roam around in and threw up a few arbitrary blocks here and there to stop you, and then let you play.
The beginning was a bit rails-y as the premise of "Adol got shipwrecked. Again." is set up and then it's off to the races as every avenue of exploration you leave behind remains valid throughout. If you find new gear or new means of movement, you're allowed to come back and maybe climb a wall, maybe go underwater, maybe break through a barrier and see what's new back there. It's almost always something worth having.
As I always do lately, I streamed this game hard (as the inaugural part of my Marathon Mweekend series, where video length is not an issue, although in practice we always seem to go about six hours before I quit out) and the chat and I had a lot of fun guessing the plot twists and being absolutely shocked that we were all correct. (There was one part where I -totally forgot one plot element existed- and it returned to blindside me). The plot of this thing escalates in ways I barely believed. There was a lot of "wait, WHAT?" Nobody is tossing this kind of madness salad but Falcom these days.
So yeah, maybe there are weaknesses in here. Maybe the plot takes a while to spin up and get going. Maybe there's a lot of legging it around the island. Fact remains, I beat this game as close to 100% as I possibly could and then I ran the post-game superboss level-99 dungeon challenge. I don't do that often anymore, something has to really hook me in and make me want to engage on that level, and Ys VIII delighted me to the point where I did not want to stop playing it. That means a lot to me.
As always, the playlist is on Youtube. It's huge though, I get why you won't watch it.
no subject
Date: 2023-02-18 04:17 am (UTC)