Highlights of the NIS America Ys VIII Stream – Ys VIII to be Released on 9/12 in NA, 9/15 in EU

On May 25, 2017 at 8pm EST, NIS America ran a stream with an exclusive preview of Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana. The stream featured staff members Alan and Tracy as they played through the game and talked about it.

They played the recently released PlayStation 4 demo of the game to show how it played out, talked about the swag coming with the limited edition. They also took the time to answer questions about the localization and the game. Alan is familiar with the series and has played a number of the games, but Tracy has only seen the games in passing and never played them, giving a good viewpoint of both sides of the potential customer.

Very early on in the stream, not only did Alan state that they are doing all the work they can to remain consistent with XSEED’s localizations of the games, but he also gave a shoutout for the work they’ve done with getting the series known in the west. He added “I know that there is a lot of trepidation out there. All I ask is to please have faith in us.” Alan also took this time to talk about the basics of the series and its history- as well as Adol’s part in the games. There was also some work to introduce details on how Laxia and Sahad play.

After a moment of technical difficulties (thus why the stream archive is split into two parts at the end), they were able to get the stream going again. A viewer of the stream asked if NIS America is working with XSEED at all on maintaining consistency with the game, but they confirmed that the localization is being done 100% in-house. They were also asked about any voice actors being announced, but answered that as of this time, no names can be provided.

When talking about swag, both were wearing two of the new Ys VIII t-shirts that NIS America has on preorder currently, though the shirts they had were pre-production samples. Alan was wearing the Adol shirt, while Tracy was wearing the Dana shirt. They both stood up to show off the art on the front, both shirts have the Ys logo on the sleeve, and nothing on the back.

Alan talked a little bit about how Ys VIII features a dual protagonist system with Adol and Dana, and how Adol sees Dana in his dreams and you can play her during those sequences. After Alan shows Tracy more details about how skills work and how to use them, they both decided to reveal the announcement that the game will be released on all three platforms on Sept 12 in North America, and Sept 15 in Europe. Alan has also confirmed that the game will have dual audio- both an English dub and the original Japanese voices.

When asked about any DLC being added to the game, Alan stated that they are still working on that, especially as some DLC can be tricky, due to its ‘exclusive’ nature with particular shops in Japan. They will be able to let people know more in the future.

PC specs have yet to be finalized for the PC port of the game. Once this is complete, they will be posted to the page on Steam. Also regarding the PC port, Alan stated that there are no plans to sell the game on GOG.

After being asked about getting to work with Falcom, Alan talked about how excited he is to be part of this, and confirmed that Toshihiro Kondo will also be available with NIS America’s booth for AnimeExpo on July 1-4. They plan to have an event where he speaks and convention attendees will be able to have the chance to meet him. He also made a shoutout about talking to Toshihiro Kondo with Eurogamer, called Falcom vs the Fans. The game will also be available to play during E3.

During the stream, Alan has also stressed that there will be no censorship in the game. NIS America also has plans to release a demo at some point, but they have yet to decide details on it, including if it will be the Vita version, the PlayStation 4 version, or both.

On top of showing off some of the production samples they have for the Limited Edition set, they also confirmed that they plan to release some wallscrolls, which should be available on the site for preorder, soon. There will be a steelbook cover for the PlayStation 4 limited set, but the Vita version will not get this. They showed two samples from the limited edition set, including the acrylic stands, which appear to be able to be used like bookends, the cover of the codex that will be included, as well as the cloth map.

Also confirmed during the stream is that they plan to setup for preorders on Steam, however they need to finish getting through the ‘crunch time’ of their localization work. So expect to hear more on this soon.

With this information, they finished playing through the stage and had to call it a night. If you missed the stream, you can currently watch the twitch archives (as of 5/26) here: Part 1 and Part 2.