As you might recall, the western version of the Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana was supposed to launch simultaneously on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and PC. Unfortunately, just a day before release, NIS America announced that the PC version would be delayed indefinitely. Its status has remained that way since then but a new announcement has offered to put
Early this morning, NISA released a new statement about the PC version, offering a release window, as well as revealing a new addition to the development team: Peter “Durante” Thoman. To those unfamiliar with Durante, he is the creator of the PC downsampling tool GeDoSaTo and is the modder behind Dark Soul’s DSfix and Deadly Premonition’s DPfix.
The statement regarding the PC version of Ys VIII reads in part:
“After we delayed the release of Ys VIII on Steam, we reached out to Peter “Durante” Thoman for his expertise, and we are happy to report that he could share some of his hours with our developers these past few weeks. We asked Durante for his help with the following for this title: GPU performance improvements, CPU performance improvements, and developing a system for improving and regulating framerate. We also received feedback from Durante about a shadow rendering issue that we are looking into.”
“The above work has resulted in significant improvements in performance. However, due to the fact that we are receiving such an overwhelming number of system issues from both our internal QA Team and our Beta testers, these issues will take considerable time to repair. As previously stated in our last announcement, fixes in one area can lead to something breaking in another, so we have to be methodical in our application of fixes and improvements. In addition to improvements in the game’s system, we are also updating, fixing, and improving the game text across the Japanese, English, and French versions. This also requires a significant amount of time, due to the size of the game and our commitment to localizing the text to both English and French.”
Considering Durante’s credentials, it’s a safe bet that the PC version’s quality upon release will meet the standards of PC gamers. In addition, thanks to a recent announcement concerning the game’s localization, we also know that the translation is being edited and will be updated via a patch. As such, gamers on the PC can look forward to Ys VIII debuting on Steam in a complete version with little fear of any graphical or textual errors.
Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana launched for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita in North America on Sept. 12 and in Europe on Sept. 15. The PC version is estimated to arrive around mid-December.
