According to their latest tweet (and facebook status), Ys VIII is finally releasing on PC this upcoming 16th, the tweet clearly mentions both GOG and Steam. The thing is, on my Ys VIII GOG library item, it says the game will be out on GOG only in June 4th, 52 days from now, with countdown included. This is downright inadmissible. Seriously. It reached a point where NISA is being completely disrespectful of their PC customers, my money is worth the same as the money of those playing the game on the PSVita, PS4 or Switch. Or even those who bought the game on Steam.

GOG may be a smaller platform, but we pay for the games just like everyone else, and this behaviour can't be tolerated anymore.

Whose mistake is this? Is NISA lying again? Was this a mistake on GOG's end? Did NISA send GOG the Switch release date instead of the PC one? Will the game be delayed on Steam as well? Way too many questions left unanswered, I've been trying to reach NISA all day on twitter and facebook but they don't answer back, the Steam Ys VIII forums are full of kids who can barely write in English and NISA fanboys who keep trolling and being defensive and apologetic... and these forums are basically dead.

There's no sugarcoating this: NISA messed this up real time, and there's no amount of apologies that will make me forgive them or buy any other game published by them (yes, this means not buying The 25th Ward: The Silver Case on GOG, which NISA also publishes, and which I have wishlisted). This has been said ever since the first delay, way back in the day, but just let XSEED handle your games, from now on, Falcom. Please. Seriously. NISA's PC division is a joke, it's what it is, they localised an Ys game not even caring about the previous Ys localisations by XSEED and did a piss poor job at making it work in English -- they revised the translation, but the new version is still far from decent, from what I've heard and read.

I guess I'll be playing XSEED's PC port of Ys: Memories of Celceta before NISA's Ys VIII...

[EDIT] I don't want to be unfair towards either NISA or GOG, but clearly one of them (or both?) really messed things up. NISA said the game will be out on April 16th, and that's the date now posted on the game's Steam store page. On GOG's store page for Ys VIII it also says April 16, but the GOG Ys VIII library item has a timer set for June 4th, and the Galaxy version, despite lacking the countdown, also says "release on June 4, 2018" right next to the 'More' options button. Hopefully this is GOG's mistake and the game will actually release this upcoming Monday... but I'm so tired of this whole thing. I paid for the game, I pre-ordered it to show NISA a vote of confidence, and to show them that selling games on GOG is a viable course of action, but I wasn't expecting this to turn into as much of a mess as it did.

Yeah, that has me concerned as well, if it comes to GOG after Steam I will be refunding it and not buying again until it's under $20.

I'll just be sad that, thanks to the release date being so close, I didn't refund when Tokyo Xanadu eX+ launched here because I thought it'd only be another week or so to get Ys instead.

Besides, the pre-order bonuses are a joke, a bunch of garbage costume DLC that was already free for pre-orders being pitched like it's some sort of olive branch for having our money over the last seven months while the game has been delayed again and again.

I brought this up in GOG's General Forum, hoping for an answer or clarification from a "blue". Though that hasn't happened yet (and probably won't), an insightful GOG user provided some sort of explanation that actually makes a lot of sense.

This is probably a date format mistake. GOG is in Poland, Europe, a non-English speaking country that tends to use the DD-MM-YY date format, instead of the MM-DD-YY one, more common in the English speaking world (namely, the US). Our guess is that someone on GOG input 04-16-18 into a DD-MM-YY database format in the Library, which translates to 4 (day) 6 (month -- since there aren't 16 months in a year, it likely auto-corrected 16 to 6, June) 2018 (year), so, June 4th, 2018.

I even got an email from GOG a few hours ago with info on soon upcoming games, and there is Ys VIII under "April 16", so this is most likely a GOG mistake, not something to do with NISA.

They can still delay it again, obviously, but, for now, everything does indicate next Monday to be the release date on both Steam and GOG.

That actually makes a lot of sense. I plan to buy the GoG version in the next day or two. Wouldn't be the end of the world for me if it doesn't release 4/16 but would rather not wait for 6/4.

Store page says april 16, same date as their last tweet. And the countdown really says 51 days and so...Seems to be more a mistake from gog than anything else. In that light, I'll wait for two days to decide what to do. Especially because that june date is closer to be the date for the nintendo switch version.
(My 0.04)

I really wanted to be hyped for this. I really did. But with so many mistakes on both NISA and GOG's parts, all I feel is tired.

Just release it, already. It's past the point of decency. I'll play it in whatever state it's in, even if it's poorly optimized for PC, even if it has bugs, even if the translation is bad (which, according to those who have been playing on Sony's consoles since September, it is -- the latest revision is slightly better, but still not nearly as good as the localisation XSEED got us used to in Falcom games). I just want to be able to play it.

If it has bad optimization and lots of bugs and crashes, I don't care. The fan community will fix and mod it. Bethesda does it all the time and gets away with it, so... just do the same, NISA. Waiting half a year for a game is inadmissible, when you got the deal from Falcom because you promised them you would do a simultaneous PC and console launch.

UPDATE:

Apparently, this has been noticed, addressed and fixed on GOG; my download page and the "Available for download" section in the store page now say April 16 instead of June 4.

Whether NISA delivers or not remains to be seen, but at least someone fixed whatever was wrong on the GOG download info.

At this point, not releasing the game would be a huge blow to what sort of credibility NISA has left regarding this entire issue, so they'll likely release it in whatever state it's in, better or worse optimized. They *need* to release it, now.

Attached a screenshot of the new timer countdown.

I'll be waiting until after it actually releases, at this point, see how it turned out.

I won't be buying a shoddy, half finished title.

And it's been released on the promised date. The real question now is how good the port is...

I just got home and I'm installing it right now, slowly downloading an 18 GB installer. I'll get back to you on how the DRM-free GOG version performs on my low-to-medium-end computer (never had any issue with any other Ys game, but those were all XSEED ports, and Tokyo Xanadu eX+ also works like a charm).

So far, from what I read on the Steam forums, people are having all sorts of trouble with the game, low framerate, crashes, audio glitches, unrecognized controllers, you name it. Hopefully the GOG port works better, but it's likely even worse.

If NISA's track record is something to go by, don't expect fixes or patches, they basically tend to abandon their games after release. Maybe this time around it will be different, since Falcom and Ys are pretty big names and PC gamers who are Ys fans comprise a lot more people than the fans of the other games NISA usually publishes, and if they fail to deliver I'm pretty sure there'll be an even bigger shitstorm than what they have been already experiencing with all the ridiculous delays.

I was watching the release stream of Ys VIII on GOG's official twitch channel (where they only play GOG versions of games) a while ago, and the GOG version is not just prone to graphical glitches.

My PC is crap, so I'm not contributing to NISA's Steam troubleshooting threads, since I'm not in the mood to post my specs and have all the "MASTER RACE" douche canoes make fun of me because I'm "poor", because I "should upgrade" or because it's my fault for wanting to run the game on a "potato/toaster". But GOG streamers have pretty beastly machines, at least most of them do, and the girl who was streaming Ys VIII (LovelustGames) is one of those who has a pretty powerful rig.

When testing the game before the stream, she had one crash to desktop just on the main menu, with nothing happening other than a main menu being shown, but she dismissed it, since some games just behave that way when running windowed and being captured in OBS. She started the stream, booted up the game, no issues. Not even the sound bug that affects so many people. The game was running relatively fine, despite some minor stuttering when talking to NPCs, it looked gorgeous, people in chat were enjoying what they were watching, she was having loads of fun playing (it was the first time she was playing an Ys game, and now she wants to play all the other Ys games available on GOG). She was having the mini-map glitch (completely blue minimap, not showing the floor shape in gray, like it's supposed to, only a blue surface and points of interest), but we all kind of overlooked it because it doesn't make the game unplayable. She fought the first boss, we watched all cutscenes, she made it to Seiren Island, met Laxia, killed some mobs, got to the cove, went in the first dungeon. Then the issues began. Appalling flickering that would send an epileptic person into shock (NISA has no epilepsy warnings for Ys VIII), major stuttering, wonky camera, delayed input response (sometimes she pressed a button and the game would only recognize the imput FORTY seconds later). She kept trying to move forward and eventually got near the end of the cave. A cutscene took place, and the game got stuck on Laxia's face. She forced the game shut, started it again, had to do the dungeon again, with the same flickering (albeit without stutter or delayed input recognition), saved right before the cutscene, to avoid having to go through the dungeon again, in case the game crashed and, well... it did. At the exact same spot. Alt+F4, repeat the process two more times until she just gives up and ends up streaming Tokyo Xanadu eX+ instead.

So, yeah, these issues are real. I can't talk much because my PC is shit, I know, I'm poor and I'm playing on a potato, I shouldn't even consider playing video games if I don't have the latest nVidia 689365448TI Turbo Texas Instruments Challenge Edition Razer Windmill with 750GB of dedicated memory and a 700-core 50 GHz CPU. My PC will have issues running the game because it's a piece of crap (even though it runs Tokyo Xanadu eX+ just fine, and that game runs on the same engine as Ys VIII), so I'm not the right demographic to troubleshoot the game with NISA. But Lovelust has a pretty beefy machine and she did encounter these issues. On stream, with people watching, and a VOD everyone can watch to see for themselves.

The game did run fine for her, for about two hours, but then the feces hit the fan, as they say, and all hell broke loose, with the game becoming downright unplayable.