Another one of those disparity situations between the average rating, the general praise, and my own experience for sure. There's a lot I could say about this one- I could go really nitty-gritty on it- but the core problem is just a fatal combination of bloat and bland. Whether it be through its writing, the mechanical design, or just the pacing itself, Ys 8 is at its core a game that just fundamentally doesn't respect the player's time, and spends far too long having nothing much to say and not a lot to show.
Having only played Ys 6 before this, it's impossible for me to analyze things in the context of the entire series- but as I understand through other reviews, Ys 8 is emblematic of the "new-school Ys" games, the style that continued from 7 and thereafter until the modern day. This new style really makes up a lot of the backbone of the problem here- it goes for this modern action RPG framework of open layouts, exploration, crafting, upgrading, etc- and falls victim to pretty much all the pitfalls along the way. Chief among them what seems to be a concept of "bigger/more makes better".
I've seen plenty of people praise the supposed "AAA polish" that this kind of thinking brought to this game/the series, but I really have to disagree with the assessment. What's really at play here is a repetitive gameplay loop of senseless button mashing suffocating under an absolute mountain of bells and whistles, and none of it amounts to something that feels like it's worth all that much in the end.
The level design is so scale-forward it hurts, with maps often way larger than necessary and tons of pointless transition zones between every plot important area. Monsters are just peppered everywhere without much rhyme or reason, and with little mechanical difference to make them unique. Collectible materials fall into that pothole of being so constantly recurrent with so many tiers that your eyes glaze over at how many you're constantly shoveling into your pockets, and you won't ever be aware of what you actually have until it's time to build something with them.
Things like the Raids, Hunts, Fishing, Gifting, Questing- they all feel tacked on, like they don't form one cohesive whole and are just there because a marketing exec wanted to increase the back of the box stats for "things to do for 40 hours". The game just feels like it can't decide what it wants to be- a crafting/open world survival affair, an action RPG, or something akin to an MMO or a Dynasty Warriors title. There's no core here that feels developed, just a bunch of noise scattered in a pile.
On the other side of things, the story and world are just dull. The base concept of being shipwrecked on a deserted island, having to rescue castaways, survive, and find a way to escape is honestly a really good backbone for an RPG, and I was initially very enticed by the idea- but Ys 8 somehow fails to wrench any drama or tension out of it for the entire runtime.
Instead, we're treated to what may as well be normal RPG hub town that operates under a idyllic tropical vacation vibe, with amenities and creature comforts popping out of the blackness of scene transitions, with only the insistence of dialogue and flavour text making the player aware of any evident problem. It's really impossible to care about the plight of the Lomardia's crew when they seem to be getting along just fine whenever you pop back in to restock on supplies and upgrade equipment.
All you really have after that is the "main" storyline, forming the back half of the game, which is just... not good. The entire thing reads like a sloppy jumble of stock JRPG fluff, with a really unconvincing angle of trying to frame speciation and evolution like some kind of sinister force organized by... an evil tree? For some reason? The lack of a real antagonistic figure makes a certain kind of sense, given they're clearly going for a "man vs nature" vibe, but it's clumsily handled.
The game itself barely even seems clear about what the exact nature of the problem is at most times, having to bank on a trite "screw destiny" plot about Humans being threatened with extinction for reasons that kind of amount to just "because this game needs a climax". It's kind of difficult to even say that much about the arc story here, because its just such a shoddily constructed mess. Needless to say, the latter half of the plot feels foggy at best and downright laughable at worst. Never mind the fact that if you don't spend 50 hours doing optional fluff you get a non-ending to cap it all off.
That kind of foggy, noncommittal stock plot really isn't helped by a serious lack in the writing/character department, too. Pretty well everyone on the cast is just a stock character or a very shallow collection of catchphrases and gags that feels more like a basic starting brief for a party member than a final role. This again plays into the lack of setting drama- it's hard to care much for the castaways when they barely feel like people at most times. I'm not gonna get that emotionally invested in what amounts to a bunch of walking shops and story progression interfaces.
The party themselves spend a lot of time yammering about "being a big family" but they feel more like a random collection of cardboard cutouts at most times, with no real unifying energy or camaraderie sticking them together. Ys 8 is really preoccupied with them too, despite the lack of depth- the game sometimes sticks a cutscene after damn near every screen transition and constantly batters you with meandering, pointless dialogue about nothing at all. So you're gonna be real familiar with the cardboard by the end. Sahad and Adol might be some of the best characters simply by virtue of being a fairly normal man and having less than a page of dialogue to listen to, respectively.
Dana herself, despite being lauded as a "great female character/the game's standout", is probably the worst offender here. For a character that the game is so hinged on, that's constantly being paraded around as a central figure, she's just... Nothing. I keep saying "stock" but that really is the vibe, she's just a hideously bland and uninteresting JRPG-chosen-one type that waffles about with really tepid attempts at pathos, and fumbles basically all of them. The asides to her are probably the weakest content in the entire game, and she doesn't improve much after finally joining your party.
The saving grace here is that if you're a fast reader and skip all the optional stuff, you can finish this one in about half of the 30 hour estimate you'll find online... But that's really not what you want to end up with as the stand out point of your RPG. Had the game been condensed more, and been a shorter, more linear affair, it might have been easier to deal with. The best I can really say about it is that it's a good game if you just want something to sit around and mash buttons on without thinking... But I, however, don't.
