The GWJ JRPG Club - Q4 2021 - Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

Same here. It really felt like defensive stats mattered very little in this game. Offensive output mattered, and dodging / guarding ability mattered, and that seemed like about it.

Chapter 5 in the books. Felt like a bit of slog but maybe due to spending time cleaning up a lot of chests and maxing out skills. Certainly lots of exciting stuff happened. In terms of the story, in another timeline the game could have wrapped up somewhat satisfyingly at the point you defeat...

Spoiler:

Okeanus and presumably sail away happily ever after.

But, after the exposition early in Ch 6, I'm excited to see where it goes. Having Dana as basically a second main character really helps me get invested in the story.

Now trying to get the 3rd piece of fermented sap, where is it?!

Mr GT Chris wrote:

Chapter 5 in the books. Felt like a bit of slog but maybe due to spending time cleaning up a lot of chests and maxing out skills. Certainly lots of exciting stuff happened. In terms of the story, in another timeline the game could have wrapped up somewhat satisfyingly at the point you defeat...

Spoiler:

Okeanus and presumably sail away happily ever after.

But, after the exposition early in Ch 6, I'm excited to see where it goes. Having Dana as basically a second main character really helps me get invested in the story.

Now trying to get the 3rd piece of fermented sap, where is it?!

You can't get the third piece of fermented sap for a little while into Chapter 6. It's at the top of a tree in the swamp.

I'm probably about halfway into Chapter 6 now. I am also interested to see where things are going to go with Chapter 6 but I'm bracing myself for the game to pull a "Ni No Kuni". Nothing spoilery for those playing that game but there comes a point where it feels like a natural ending to the story like in Ys 8 when you

Spoiler:

defeat the Oceanus

. And then Ni No Kuni keeps going far longer than I thought it needed to for the last section that just felt bolted on for length. I'm hoping for a more satisfying resolution to Ys 8 (along with watching the Ni No Kuni thread to see how those players feel about that story).

The problem with the fermented sap was that I was going to where the spot was marked on the map but I was on the swamp level. So I was poking around above, then swimming around on the bottom looking for a tree stump while being harassed by monsters left and right. Didn't even occur to me that the spot was on the top of the tree (the spots are way far apart on the main map). Eventually googled it :).

Spent some time fishing, getting and maxing the skills, and now down to 2 chests. Also, got everyone recruited, the last one was a bit of a surprise (recurring character from Celceta).

Got all the chests and did the endless raids. Only 2 I couldn't get s-rank on but it doesn't seem important. Also, completed a quest for Dana and got this pretty awesome necklace for extra damage to ancient beasts. That one's a keeper. I was browsing reputation and there are 3 characters who aren't at max - 2 that I might have missed something on I guess:

Spoiler:

The sailer and the doctor. Griselda is a late recruit so I presume her quests will come later.

Time to finish off the story!

For approval, all the NPCs have a quest and an item you give them. If you have already done quests for a character, try searching around for items that would be considered "gifts"

If you want a hint for one of the people you mentioned:

Spoiler:

I ended up having to look this up. Katthew (the sailor) was one of the last people I got because his gift is not obvious. The Lombardia was very important to him, think about where you have seen something related to it.

I'm missing one chest, 1.4% of the map in one area (the underwater dungeon with the whirlpools) and I just got Dana's quest last night before I went to bed so getting close. At this point, I'll try to get all of the reputation but I missed one recipe, missing three fish, and I can't figure out how to get back to Dana's time to give the deer whatever it wanted so not going to 100% in several areas but I'm at the point where I just want to plow through to the end.

The gift for the

Spoiler:

sailor was easy to miss. I went back to that area to pick up some percentage of the map that I missed and happened to stumble across it.

If you look at your map, there should be red save crystals on there. Each of those links to a certain moment in Dana's time. If you teleport there then interact with them you will have the option to travel to that time again.

Yeah I did have to google two of Dana’s past quests. The other ones I ran across randomly. I didn’t realize that you could revisit different time periods depending on which stone you used!

Hmm, probably I’m just missing the two gifts then. Interesting, I might still have a chance to max out reputation! I haven’t been paying much attention but the bronze trophies have been popping fast and furiously!

Ok, approval maxed for everyone but one. I was reminded that the 100% rating for the map can be misleading. Two recent cases, one where the map was completely filled in but I hadn’t actually managed to navigate to a little alcove which had the gift item. Another was where the tiniest part of the map hadn’t been filled in and that’s exactly where the last missing treasure chest was. Had to compare to a map online to find that one.

I got max approval last night and have only Dana's quest and one more left over. Last night, I finished the quest

Spoiler:

at night to recover the egg. That was nuts! The amount of enemies on the screen was insane!

I seem to be right at the end but thought I better call it a night in case the final boss turns into a slog. Finished off the map, opened all the treasure chests, maxed reputation. I browsed the trophy list but might not platinum this one. Apart from playing it through again on higher difficulty, you need to control each character for at least 5 hours to pop those trophies. So I'm missing that for 3 of the characters (probably close on Hummel though).

walterqchocobo wrote:

I got max approval last night and have only Dana's quest and one more left over. Last night, I finished the quest

Spoiler:

at night to recover the egg. That was nuts! The amount of enemies on the screen was insane!

I remember that one.

Spoiler:

I was on the Switch, and the framerate darn near dropped into the single digits with the dozens of dinosaurs chasing me at the end. I don't think things were fixed until the following cutscene was over and it flipped back to day; like, the voices and the graphics in the cutscene were completely out of sync. Good times.

Mr GT Chris wrote:

I seem to be right at the end but thought I better call it a night in case the final boss turns into a slog. Finished off the map, opened all the treasure chests, maxed reputation. I browsed the trophy list but might not platinum this one. Apart from playing it through again on higher difficulty, you need to control each character for at least 5 hours to pop those trophies. So I'm missing that for 3 of the characters (probably close on Hummel though).

Are you at the end of the main story, or at the "after" part?

Spoiler:

The Octus Overlook is, I believe, the end of the main story.

As I recall, the final boss of the main story isn't too bad, but the final boss of the epilogue was a big, big slog, as was grinding up levels and revival items to survive it. You can't go back to cook more items, or brew more potions, after the end of the main story, but there are a bunch of enemies in the epilogue that drop Dragon Tree Treasures.

Just the end of the main story. But, from reading online, I'm a bit confused as to whether the extra dungeon in the PS4 version (and Switch?) is the "after" part, so therefore not on Vita, or if it's a separate dungeon from the epilogue. Anyway, I'll probably find out later today!

I think the extra dungeon in the PS4 version is the one with floors like "Chamber of Stone" -- the one that unlocks for Dana as she does sidequests. I thought I recalled reading that wasn't in the original release. I'm not 100% sure. But if you have no idea what I'm talking about ...

And maybe the epilogue is also additional. We'll hear soon, I guess!

Nope, Epilogue was as you said. Fairly short and, on Normal difficulty, I felt kind of bad for the end boss. At one point, they were stunned and I took off nearly 2 of their 3 health bars. Ouch!

So, Ys VIII in the books. The trophies left are:
- completion on Nightmare or Inferno difficulty
- control a particular party member for 5+ hours (Laxia, Sahad, Hummel)
- complete monster compendium (3 or so missing here)
- complete item compendium (not sure, haven't checked)

Follow up post coming.

Very enjoyable game in the end that wrapped up fairly nicely. Easily the best Ys game I've played by some margin. The first to really connect to me on a story level and make me care about the world building. The soundtrack in Ys 1&2 is still iconic but VIII has some banging tunes.

Ending spoilers:

Spoiler:

The way Dana ascends as goddess makes sense and ties up the loose ends of having potentially 5 immortals running around. On the other hand, I wouldn't have minded a simpler ending where Dana and Adol go off into the sunset, adventuring buddies. Dana, who has always lived for others gets a chance to live a normal(-ish) life for herself.

Main party final stats:
IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/D8ZY32P/2022-02-04-123457.jpg)
Equipped items:

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/nwrwr5x/2022-02-04-123723.jpg)
IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/jMPZr0c/2022-02-04-123727.jpg)
IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/JC5R5J4/2022-02-04-123730.jpg)
IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/PG3JBHz/2022-02-04-123736.jpg)
IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/Nr6K8fT/2022-02-04-123734.jpg)
IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/rcdY4tc/2022-02-04-123737.jpg)

Some of the late game items you get are off the chain.

Has anyone looked at Inferno mode? (higher than Nightmare)

level 1
AnarZul
·
2 yr. ago
Play Inferno if you want to limit yourself on healing items. At the start, everything's gonna be 2-shotting you. Towards the middle, you'll be getting 3-shot, and near the end, 5-shot

The biggest difference between the two is that on inferno your empty bottles just break, so you can't make new medicine. You can still farm all the fruit you want if you want to cheese it

What, you lose your bottles when they break?! OMG

Anyway, you need to beat Nightmare mode to access it so it's not a consideration for me at the moment. I'm about midway through Ch 2 on a Nightmare play through but I think it will be a slow burn if I finish it again at all.

A bit of a regret not having the PS4 extra features. Primarily there is the extra dungeon and collecting 10 spirits as Dana, allowing for additional character customisability.

I looked it up while I was playing, and saw that about the bottles. That's crazy! I can't imagine wanting to try it.

I did play on Nightmare, mostly because I could tell pretty early that I was interested in 100%ing the game, and I thought it would bug me if I did that and didn't get the trophy. Plus I knew I could turn Nightmare off but I couldn't turn it on midway. In other words, my stubbornness made me self-sabotage my enjoyment. I did turn it off, after beating the game, to clear the optional dungeons & I'm glad I did.

For the most part it was not too bad so long as I kept up with upgrades and sidequests, though I sometimes got frustrated with monster damage output. And a few bosses were terrible -- like the serial killer, and the dragon-head bullet hell thing. And then the final boss of the Epilogue. That was such a slog; I needed to grind levels and recovery items, and the fight involved so much of me reviving my characters that it was not fun.

The extra dungeon definitely was fun! And the backstory was interesting:

Spoiler:

Basically by fighting her way through and descending to the bottom of this dungeon, Dana was able to learn the truth about the Great Tree right after the meteor hit, and before she went to sleep and forgot everything. I think the dungeon was set up by the first Maiden as a way to warn others of the truth.

Plus once you cleared it as Dana, you could return there as Adol & co. It served as an endgame challenge dungeon. There was only a crystal at the beginning, the dungeon was full of all the game's toughest monsters (and lots of them), and if you left all the bosses would reset.

I have to be near the end of the game since I have

Spoiler:

freed the psyche and grew the big tree in the garden

. The biggest frustration with this game has to be something that I have mentioned previously which is the uneven difficulty level.

The fourth boss in the tree section was level 70 something but was really easy along with the level 70 "endless sea battle" raid. Last night, I did the hunt in that narrow section in front of

Spoiler:

Valley of Kings

which had level 60 recommended (my characters are around level 70) and had to revive at least two characters to get through it. I cannot imagine playing on Nightmare difficulty where I would never know if my level 70 character will survive an encounter with a level 10 sand crab.

Are the other Ys games like this as well? I am enjoying my time with this game even with this little annoyance.

And done--enjoyable game overall with strangely varied difficulty levels.

Spoiler:

The final boss had one phase where it changed colors suggesting that one of the weapon types was stronger so I thought it would have been like when Dana had to swap fairy helper types in the past but I saw hardly any difference in the battle based on who was fighting. The end boss was very easy but the last last area boss (the one before you see Dana again) was considerably harder. The ending story beats were nice so good wrap-up.

It's sounding like everyone got the "true ending", makes me wonder what the other ending actually is.

Spoiler:

I assume you just don't get the epilogue and everyone is sad Dana is not with them. Maybe one day I will do NG+ and try to get the non true ending just to see. Or better idea, just look it up on YouTube.

The way I play games is usually trying to do almost everything so I don't think I was ever in danger of not getting the true ending. I didn't read too deeply about it but I think there's some margin of error so you wouldn't necessarily need a guide or anything.

LastSurprise wrote:

I did play on Nightmare, mostly because I could tell pretty early that I was interested in 100%ing the game, and I thought it would bug me if I did that and didn't get the trophy.

I had a crack on Nightmare but broke pretty early on. It was the Chameleon boss, in Chapter 2, after about 5 tries, I figured I didn't want to be doing this for every boss. Normal was a little easy but not really to the point of impacting my enjoyment. I was rarely in danger but I couldn't be totally careless. Normal only was an issue towards the end where completing the Endless Raids gave everyone an extra 10 levels. That made the rest of the game (and bosses) a pushover.

Malkroth wrote:

It's sounding like everyone got the "true ending", makes me wonder what the other ending actually is.

Spoiler:

I assume you just don't get the epilogue and everyone is sad Dana is not with them. Maybe one day I will do NG+ and try to get the non true ending just to see. Or better idea, just look it up on YouTube.

I think I had read that it was based around Adol’s reputation, so if you do most of the side quests you’ll get it. Like the rest of you, I think, skipping the side quests was never really on the table for me.

walterqchocobo wrote:

And done--enjoyable game overall with strangely varied difficulty levels.

Spoiler:

The final boss had one phase where it changed colors suggesting that one of the weapon types was stronger so I thought it would have been like when Dana had to swap fairy helper types in the past but I saw hardly any difference in the battle based on who was fighting. The end boss was very easy but the last last area boss (the one before you see Dana again) was considerably harder. The ending story beats were nice so good wrap-up.

Congratulations!