Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana for PC receives numerous performance updates, High Res Texture pack, and Experimental Local Co-op

During NIS America's PAX South 'Publishing: From Console to PC' panel, the publisher announced that the PC version of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana has been updated with many performance enhancements from improved animations to shadows to bloom and more. A high-resolution texture pack is also available to download separately.

The PC port has also been updated with a local co-operative mode, where a second player can join in on the adventure. This new feature is being touted as an experimental mode, where support for troubleshooting may be limited.

You can find the full changelog on Steam or posted down below.

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New improvements have been made to graphics, performance/stability, and input/UI. In addition, an experimental local co-op feature has been added to the game.

Check out all the exciting quality-of-life changes that are included in the available game update patch:

Full Changelog

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 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
    Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana PC Update