NIS America announced today that the PC version of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana received a major update bringing tons of improvements such as to graphics/performance, input/UI, and stability to the title. There’s also an experimental local co-op feature unique to the PC version. The updated version is now available to play on GOG and Steam. For those that already own the title, the update can be downloaded immediately.
Ys VIII is currently half price on Steam right now to coincide with the massive update. You can take a look at the gallery below, which compares the previous graphics to the updated ones. It’s quite the contrast, especially in terms of attention to detail:
The last port, which was for Nintendo Switch, received a handful of special items and costumes available on the Switch cartridge. This included items and costumes for the characters that were previously purchasable for the PS4 and PS Vita versions of the game. It should be mentioned that some of the DLC included on the Switch version were exclusive to the PS4 or PS Vita version.
Both the Switch and PC versions featured an updated localization. The re-localization project began when players pointed out mistakes that NISA had made in Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana’s English localization for the PS4/PS Vita versions. In October, NISA apologized for their mistake and decided to re-localize every line of text as well as record new audio with the original voice actors.
You can read our review for the original PS4 version of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana here. Check out the full changelog below to see all of the improvement made:
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 (Experimental)
- 2-Player local co-op mode has been added
About coop mode:
- Need to supply two Xinput controllers
- You must have two 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
The post Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana on PC Receives Major Update, Half Off on Steam by Allisa James appeared first on DualShockers.