What I've Been Playing Vol. 51

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (PS5) 

Explore a mysterious and deadly island.

 Continuing my dive into the Ys series, I've been playing Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana after hearing many good things about it. This time, renowned adventurer Adol Christin finds himself shipwrecked on the cursed Seiren Island, after an underwater monster destroyed his ship. Alone on an uninhabited island, he must search for fellow castaways and find a way out. That's not all as Adol is greeted by dreams of Dana, a mysterious girl from a bygone era. Who is she and what's her relation to Adol? That gets answered further in the story. Speaking of that, it was a good one with many twists and revelations that kept me invested. The characters you'll meet were equally interesting, with each having their own struggles and stories to share. Those that ended up having lasting impact for me were easily Dana, Laxia, and Sahad.

 Ys VIII is an action-RPG where you control Adol along with two other characters you explore the island, defeat enemies, level up, and rescue survivors to build a castaway village. The game's fast-paced with you quickly slashing away at enemies and switching among party members. Each has one of three attack types such as Slash, Strike, or Pierce and various enemies are weak to different attack types. The island packed lots of varied environments that made exploration fun and they're packed with often challenging bosses to beat. New to Ys VIII are raids, in which you must occasionally defend the village from monsters and fortify its defences. There's also hunts were you venture into enemy lairs and destroy their nests as quickly as possible. Both of which offered worthwhile bonus items as well as being a quick way to level up.

 It's a long adventure taking around 41 hours to beat, so there's a bunch of content in store. Despite its PS Vita initial release, Ys VIII looks decent on PS5 with colorful character models and catchy, albeit flat backgrounds and textures. The voicework was nice as it's paired with a great soundtrack, packing many cool tracks. All in all, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana was an awesome Ys game that I'm happy to have finally experienced. I'm even more excited to play more of the series now with the older games looking pretty interesting.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst (PS5)

The battle reaches its climax!

 I've been nearing the end of Naruto Shippuden recently and couldn't wait to get into playing Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, which adapts the latter part of the anime where Naruto and the entire ninja world must fight against Madara Uchiha's deadly forces. The game packs more characters, stages, and action over its predecessors. It's an arena fighter where you pick your character --along with two other supports-- and duke it out with others either online or offline using all kinds of ninja abilities. Each character has their own fighting style along with special finishers, so there's a decent amount of variety with over 80 characters this time around. The likes of Naruto, Madara, Minato, Itachi, and Kakashi ended up being standouts for me.

 Ninja Storm 3 retained the QTE segments of Storm 2's during battles while introducing new features as well. At certain parts of story mode, you have the option of choosing between "Hero" or "Legend" routes. Choosing either route won't heavily alter the story, rather serves as a difficulty setting as the former packs more easier fights while the latter is harder due to handicaps. Mob fights pit you against multiple enemies simultaneously at certain points, which were nice diversions from the main fights. The best part had to be the bosses, which were amazing. Without spoiling much, they have you fighting in large-scale arenas against tough enemies and while some can be cheap, they were rewarding when you finally beat them.

 Ninja Storm 3 has aged gracefully ever since its 2013 release, thanks to its cel-shaded graphics. The characters, backgrounds, and effects are adapted faithfully from the anime and look vibrant in the cinematics (and there's a lot of them). The "Full Burst" edition offered improved visuals, along with new missions and extra character over the original, so it's the best version to play. It ran well on PS5 with no performance issues and having both Japanese/English languages for the audio was great as well. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 was a fantastic time for Naruto fans and it's easily my favorite of the Storm games so far.

Immortals Fenyx Rising (PS5)

Take to the skies in an ancient Greek world.

 Immortals Fenyx Rising is an open-world adventure game that comes to us from Ubisoft. While I haven't been a fan of their games for years now, I have to admit that Immortals caught my eye when it released. It's basically Assassin's Creed Odyssey meets The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in an ancient Greek setting-- which really caught my interest now that it's on PS+ Extra. Playing as the fledgling hero Fenyx, you must restore the Greek gods back to their former glory and stop Typhon's forces. 

 Zeus and Prometheus both narrate the story and act as unreliable narrators, often exaggerating story events for comedic effect. In fact, the writing was entertaining as well, packing lots of facetious humor with sly jokes that had me double-checking the age rating. Granted, not all jokes landed well as some were unfunny. The game throws you in the Golden Isles (the game's giant map) and lets you freely choose which gods to free from the start. Of course the open-world style, shrine puzzles, and stamina meter initially draw inspiration from Zelda, much of the game like the combat and world activities take from Ubisoft's games. As such, enemies can be spongy at times taking forever to beat and the game wears out its welcome with how repetitive killing stronger enemy types get. 

 Still, I found Immortals Fenyx Rising to be a fun time when I was following the story and doing small bits of the side-content to unlock new gear and health/stamina increases. It also helps that I had an interest in Greek mythology as otherwise I would've been bored with the game. The cartoony graphics were neat, the voicework was decent, and it ran smoothly on performance mode. Immortals Fenyx Rising was a good time if you're interested in Greek mythology with an open-world setting.