[Update]: Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is heading to PC and Switch on July 6, 2021. 

To say that Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA had quite a few issues when it first launched back in 2018 would be a major understatement. No matter what I tried, no matter how many patches got released, Ys VIII would simply crash after the tutorial and delete my save file. So after dozens and dozens of attempts at getting it to work, I eventually just accepted that it'll forever remain as an unplayable tease in my Steam Library.

As such, you can imagine my surprise when Ys VIII got updated out of nowhere with better visuals, an experimental co-op mode, and most importantly of all, fixes for the gamebreaking crashes! Now, instead of crashing over and over again after the tutorial section, Ys VIII runs as smooth as silk all the way through. I can't say I expected this would happen, especially not years after the original release, but I am more than pleased to finally be able to give it a proper playthrough!

When it comes to the local co-op, you can enable it by going into Steam and adding "--coop" to your launch options. You'll need two Xinput controllers for this to work, and since it's not officially supported there may be some problems, but from what I've seen the co-op mode works pretty darn well. Speaking of which, if you have friends halfway across the continent that you would like to play Ys VIII with, don't forget that Steam has recently added the Remote Play Together feature that allows you to do just that for games with local co-op!

Have fun, and if you would like to read a little bit more about this update, you can head on over to Steam.