Now that I’m almost at the final boss of the main story I’ve kind of noticed something!

‘Evolution’ has a lot to do with the weakness of the dominant species, and build a new species that overcomes that weakness but has another fundamental weakness

The dominant species in Ys8 are by chronological order: fish, animals, insects, shapeshifters, dinosaurs, humans

The corridors I’m going to talk about are actually glimpses of the old world in the final dungeon, so they may be less accurate in some ways but eh!! And the weaknesses are basically analysed from the specialties of the next species

The Sea Age had fish, who could adapt to life on shore, but didn’t develop intellect until almost the end of the species where they at least became humanoid. From the corridor of the Sea Age as in Observer Hills, the environment was basically a really large ocean so it’s predictable that the species relied on the sea for food, etc.

Which means if the ocean, say, froze over, then the species is fucked! And that happens in the first Lacrimosa, where the Ice Age happened

The Ice Age had basically animals, with thick fur and so on. Given that the next age, the Insect Age was mentioned to be extreme in population(the Guide of the Insect Age literally said she had thousands of offspring), that most of the enemies in the Corridor had physical attacks, and that the Guide of the Ice Age seemed at least close to his fellows, I’d guess the Ice Age had tight-knit, small populations of animals who pride on physical force, which fundamentally gave them the weakness in terms of numbers. So when there’s a change in environment(as in the thawing of the glacial environment) it’s very hard to sustain their population

The connection between the Insect Age and the Sky Age(shape shifters) is kind of hard to clarify but let’s try…

The Insect Age, as said, had its advantage in numbers, and flourished due to it! I’m thinking that due to the Sky Age with the shapeshifters who can mold into whatever species, their weakness was that they couldn’t coexist with other species, or that their advantage was too singular!

From what the Guide of the Insect Age said, once they knew about the Lacrimosa, the entire species who were still alive literally sacrificed themselves to let the Lacrimosa happen

The Sky Age had shapeshifters who could adapt themselves into the other species by taking their form, but is kinda like a Ditto in a sense, they can take their shape, but they don’t actually have their advantages! So unless the species has a developed language that they can follow they probably can’t communicate with the species, and since the shapeshifters would spread out by the various species they shapeshift into it might be hard for them to communicate with each other, which becomes their weakness! Which leads to the Dinosaur Age!

The Dinosaur Age, as from the game, has said dinosaurs being capable of very high intelligence, and as the species developed, downright psychic abilities as seen from the Etanians! However since said psychic abilities can only be taken from Seiren Island, they’re very dependent on the Island, and dependent on their massive need for high technology, and once something disrupts their life(read: a meteorite) they fall into anarchy VERY quickly! Which means their fundamental weakness is their lack of adaptability

Which obviously, leads to the human species who just tries to adapt no matter what, but their Lacrimosa is different in that instead of creating an enviroment that can benefit the next species it just brings in the previous species: I’d suspect this to be due to the abnormal connection between Adol, a human, and Dana, someone from the Dinosaur Age…