I never thought I would finish a game like Ys VIII. After playing several Tales games, Trials of Mana, and games that are "similar" to Ys, I figured I would mess around with it for a few hours and then quit. But I beat the entire game and got the "good" ending to boot. That's a testament to how much fun this game is to the very end.
The reason that this game has so much staying power, even after 50-60 hours of gameplay, is that it keeps adding new features deep into the story. Like a Metroid game, you will eventually get the power to breathe underwater, or double jump, or walk through quick sand. But these are spread out over a lengthy game, and every time you get a new ability, new parts of the world you already explored open up. I love that feature in a game, and I got excited every time I revisited an area to discover a new treasure chest up on a previously inaccessible ledge.
The story and characters are also fairly memorable. You are stranded on a desert island and you have to find the other stranded passengers from your crashed boat. Once you get most of them together, they provide an actual service, like medicine or crafting weapons and armor or making clothes. It feels like all of them serve an actual purpose (for the most part, there are a few throwaways) in the camp. I really enjoyed being able to grow my little settlement over the course of the game, and most of the characters were really interesting. There's even a weird, random murder mystery segment thrown into the game which mixes it up nicely. However, I will note that I took off an ENTIRE point from this game because of the ridiculous JRPG trope of dressing the female main character like an underage prostitute. I cannot for the life of me understand why games are still doing this. My wife walked in at one point and almost certainly thought I was watching some sort of weird anime porno. There was even an option to change her clothes, which I was so thankful for, but the outfit they changed it to was somehow even worse. It's really creepy to me that grown men make games full of mostly nude, lingerie-clad schoolgirls as their protagonists. There's no way that's comfortable and no one is fighting battles in that. Rant over.
The battle system is also fun throughout. You can play as any character and switch between them at any time. But the game does a good job of mixing up the gameplay. Sometimes you're platforming to reach a quest, sometimes you're fighting waves of small enemies, sometimes just one big one, and sometimes you're going on a hunt to fight an optional boss. There are even times your base is attacked and you have a whole different unique set of options in defending your base. Everything is upgradable, from weapons and armor to clothes and the defenses in your base. It's very rewarding to spend time upgrading everyone to the fullest. Because of this variety, the battle system didn't feel old and stale like other games in the genre.
The soundtrack was...fine. Not especially memorable, but serviceable at least. I eventually turned off the sound and listened to other music while I played through.
The fact that this game made me want to play all the way through it is quite a feat, considering how easily I tire of fighting hordes of enemies to fight a boss to go to another area where I do the same thing, over and over, rinse and repeat. There was enough variety through to the end to keep me highly entertained. While the ending to the story was extremely underwhelming, the rest of the game was great and I recommend for any RPG lover.
8.5/10