Ys VIII: Don't be tearful Dana you look lovely tonight

Female characters with chebs everywhere and their bums out for no reason seems to be a JRPG staple, although XC1 didn't really do it (which I think is partly why XC2 was a bit jarring). Ys isn't as bad as some!

XC1 didn't as much, no - but that's at least partly because of its art style. There's no way that if XC1 had had XC2's style, Sharla wouldn't have been pure fetish fuel for The Straight Men. (Also you could choose outfits in XC1.)

Meanwhile in Ys VIII we've had:
- Luxia, previously mentioned;
- Kathleen, whose supreme cleavage wouldn't be so bad if it didn't seem not at all the sort of thing a smith would wear;
- Alison (sp?) who is fine;
- Dina who is almost fine, that seems like appropriate hot weather gear for a tropical island but why isn't everyone else sweltering;
- And now we have Dana.

Dana has actually brought up a problem, that I haven't been able to buy into the writing at all. It got briefly good when you fight Steely McWires and I wasn't expecting the game to do what it did afterwards, but then you're back to Primordials and having a hyper child in your party. The worst part is Dana and her lot, though. It reminds me of an anime I've been watching, where partway through they introduce elves and the elves are really boring and there's an entire character arc about the f*ckers. That's Dana and her people.

Still though, the battling is really good - probably better than the Xenoblades I'd say. Pulling off a successful Flash Dodge at point-blank range, then whaling on the idiot that failed to attack you, is darn satisfying. I've ramped the difficulty up to Hard and it is that! I prefer it to the "thinking man's button-mashing" overall, although there's the odd dungeon that becomes a 'mare as a result.