Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana came to PC in April 2018, but despite a multi-month delay leading up to that release it was in rough shape when it arrived. Several quick patches followed to smooth out the worst of the problems, tapering off in June of that year, and the "mostly positive" user reviews on Steam suggests that the worst of the issues have been addressed.

Today a major new update went live, courtesy of Peter "Durante" Thoman, and this one promises to go a lot farther than the others, with improvements to graphics, performance, and overall stability, plus the addition of an experimental two-player co-op mode. It sounds a little limited—there must be two or more characters in the party in order for the second player to join, spirit points are shared, the second player will not benefit from "AI cheats" like AI-controlled characters do, and there will only be limited support for troubleshooting because none of this is officially supported—but it's a way to enjoy the game with a bud that we didn't have previously.

The new Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana update is live now. It's also on sale on Steam for half price—$30/£22.50/€27.50—until January 20. The full changelog is below.

Graphics/Performance:

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/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

Co-op 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

(Image credit: NIS America)

(Image credit: NIS America)

(Image credit: NIS America)