Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana received a major update on PC, introducing a lot of improvements, as well as a new feature that is not available in the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo, Switch releases.
The new update introduces some major visual enhancements as well as improved animations, support for high-refresh monitors, HBAO+ support, a high-quality texture pack and much more.
- Arbitrary main rendering resolution enabled
- Improved frame-pacing and animation sync accuracy at all framerates
- Improved menu opening/closing behavior
- Character and enemy animations now correctly timed at 100+ FPS
- Support for high-refresh monitors and >60 Hz V-sync
- Replaced ineffective anti-aliasing blur filter with high-quality screenspace AA
- Bloom, refraction, and glare post-processing effects now scale with resolution
- Minimap rendering resolution now adapts to rendering resolution, preventing pixelated map at high resolution
- Greatly improved quality of menu backgrounds (replacing low-res screen capture)
- Improved standard shadow filtering without performance loss, plus two new, higher quality filter options
- Added option for rendering additional environment shadows
- Added supersampling/subsampling option (which also affects secondary 3D rendering)
- Improved shadow rendering performance by preventing unnecessary memory traffic
- Fixed animation speed of HUD elements at >30 FPS (e.g. full health bar)
- Improved the quality of volumetric lighting
- Implemented HBAO+ ambient occlusion as alternative higher-quality SSAO option
- Added a draw distance setting which applies to grass/clutter, monsters and NPCs
- Implemented anisotropic filtering setting
- Added high-quality texture pack (generated from original sources, partially with AI upsampling, and full mipmaps)
- Character poses in the equip menu now update at >30 FPS
Input, stability and more have also been improved by the new Ys VIII update.
INPUT/UI
- Improved camera mouse controls, replacing joystick emulation with direct 1:1 control
- Movement keys are now individually bindable
- Added keybinding for walking (slow movement) with keyboard/mouse controls
- Changed default bindings to fit common usage by PC gamers
STABILITY
- Fixed multiple video memory leaks
- Fixed potential crash when switching between languages
- Switched to 64-bit build to prevent address space fragmentation issues in long sessions
- Improved render thread synchronization to prevent specific types of race condition crashes
- Removed superfluous asset encryption
MISCELLANEOUS
- Fixed unlocking of some achievements when playing with mouse/keyboard controls
- Fixed several typos and dialogue/text issues throughout the game
- Fixed slightly-too-low cloud save limit when using a very large number of saves
The new update also introduces local co-op multiplayer to Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. This will not make the game any easier, as all player-controlled characters do not benefit from the halved damage AI-controlled character get in single-player mode.
- Need to supply two Xinput controllers
- You must have 2 or more characters in the party in order for the second player to join the game.
- SP is shared
- Second player does not receive the “AI cheats” (ie. AI controlled characters only take half damage, whereas second player in co-op mode will take the full amount of damage.)
- Not officially supported and limited support will be available for troubleshooting
To enable co-op mode:
- Open Steam libraries through the Steam client
- Right-click on Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA, and click “Properties”
- Click “Set Launch Options”
- Input “--coop” into the parameter and click “OK.”
- Launch the game
- Press “Start” on the second controller to enable second player
Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana was released in an extremely bad state, but with the latest update, it has become the definitive version of the game.
Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana is now available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch worldwide.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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