izigame.me

TLDR version at bottom
I've played 4 Y's game to completion (I&II,7 and now VIII) and I've got to say it's going to be hard to top VIII. A few things to note about the Y's series, you don't have to play any of the other games in the series to enjoy VIII and besides Origin they all star Adol Christin aka red hair Link and most of the time his friend that he rescued in Y's I, Dogi. Another thing to note is that Adol almost ALLWAYS washes up on a beach, sometimes with amnesia and sometimes no amnesia. And that the series always has 2 things in them, stop and wait regenerative health and AWESOME Music. Now let's get into what makes Y's VIII special.
The first thing different is that you get voice acting which for a long game as this one (70+ hours) is a good thing. A minus point however is that sometimes there will be voice acting then all of the sudden you have to read the text then later on without warning there is voice acting again. I heard when the game first came out it's translation was bad, like so bad they had to recall the voice actors and redo the both the voice acting and text translation bad. Moving on another thing different is that the game takes place on a mostly deserted island filled with beasts called Primordials (aka dinosaurs in world) that supposed to be extinct (like in our world). You and a bunch of other people get shipwrecked and it's your job to find the missing crew and passengers while trying to find a way to get off the island. Sounds simple right? Enter the Lacrimosa (which means "The Sadness" basically) of Dana part. Dana without spoiling too much of the game is a playable character in the game and is effectually the second protagonist of the game and is what I would call equal to Adol. She does have amnesia and the closer to the ending of the game you get the more sadness you feel for her. I have only cried tears of sadness for 3 video games in my life (Xenoblade 3 Chapter 5 Mia, the baby Metroid in Super Metroid and Mother 3's ending) and now add Dana and what she goes through. For the love of what you believe in get the true ending because reading the normal and bad endings I thought about almost hurting myself irl.
As for gameplay if you played Y's 7 or Kingdom Hearts it's like that mostly. Real time action RPG but you can play as any of the 6 playable party members and switch on the fly. Use your skills enough and you lvl them up making them stronger. Upgrade your weapons and gear using items you find around and from defeating enemies and trading up or down at the "store". Dodge or parry at the right time and you get short but powerful boost in power. Very simple which is both a benfeit and a con.
It's a benefit because you don't have to over think much about what you're doing but for a long game it wears out it's welcome around the 48th hour of the game which is where I stopped at on the Switch version of the game. However it's those last 20+ hours where the game truly shines. The story kicks into high gear and gets a bit challaging with it's bosses on normal difficulty. God help ya some of those on Nightmare difficulty! OH THAT'S RIGHT I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THE BOSSES! Silly old ADD me :)
Ok there are over 42 (!) bosses in this game and I'm not including the dungon you unlock after beating the game from a continue save file or new game+. Now you're proballby gonna ask how many of those bosses are retreads or just a pallate swap. Not many actually. I would say at min it was 7 so that's 35 unique ones at least. I actually had more trouble with certain class of "normal" enemies then the bosses but their where at least 6 that gave me some mild anger issues.
It's really hard to put into words of what makes Y's VIII special. Maybe it's the little simple things like it's setting and combat system or maybe it's the big things like it's characters and music that only sound simple when you first hear them but sound both sad and happy after getting the true ending.
TLDR I had fun even if it is maybe a bit too long for a mid 30's man with a life now but all I know is this now features one of the most underrated soundtracks in video games (Falcom games in general) and if anything were to happen to Dana I'd kill everyone on Steam then myself. Dana Forever