Vagrant Story

This is the best game ever made for the PlayStation system, and arguably the best game ever made--period. The people at Squaresoft squeezed every ounce of graphic quality they could from the aging PS One to provide incredibly detailed and deep characters and a world as real as ours. The music is without par and provides an extra dimension that elevates and subdues the soul. From the beginning, to the final moments, this game delivers on every level. And, even after it's done, there are so many questions left unanswered that the game retains its playability value and draws one in over and over, trying to sort all its mysteries out. Why a sequel was never made is a paradox.

This game failed commercially, much to the surprise of many RPG gamers out there who praised it heavily for it's aesthetic values. Excuse me, but this game failed simply because it wasn't fun to play.

Yes, the graphics were very good. Yes, the cinema scenes were awesome and extremely well done (The opening sequence in particular.) Yes, the character animations were extremely fluid and well done. And the music is amongst the best I've ever heard in a video game.

But the game ultimatley suffers from "Metal Gear Syndrome", wherein the process of watching the game was for focused on by producers than actual gameplay.

Okay, actually, that may not be a fair statement. Upon hearing the gameplay features, it sounds pretty spiffy: You run around in real-time throughout dungeons and so on, solve puzzles, but mostly battle enemies. When you fight an enemy, you activate a range-grid which details what enemies are in range of your weapon, and target specific body parts. In addition, you can perform timed moves which add to your repertoire, both defensively and offensively. And of course, there's magic spells, and customizable weapons. Sounds great on paper, right?

Oh, noooooo. While the programmers were adding all these bells and whistles, they forgot to make it actually FUN. Rather, the combat which engrosses 90% of actual gameplay is slow, tedious, and one of the most acute pains in the ass I've ever had. Basically, it's real-time button mashing without the fun and satisfaction of fast action and smashing s*** up, and menu combat with the annoying factor of having to button mash to make sure you get a move in before the enemy does. Oh, and also there's the plague of unnecissarily slow spell and item sequences that you just sit around for for about seven seconds each. And on top of it, the game makes you switch weapons and armor every damn time you encounter a new kind of enemy.

It's also ironic that a game which such great cinema scenes has such a bad camera system during gameplay. It's hard to see everything around you, and the first part of the game is too damn dark to see half the things you need to. Great way to start off.

So, use caution when approaching this game: love it for the cinema and music, hate for the crap gameplay, and question the fashion sense of hero Ashley and villain Sydney, who both dress like male prostitutes. In the end, I'm not going to suffer through crap gameplay just to see the next pretty cinema sequence.

Almost everything about Vagrant Story is par excel-lance. The story, the script, the characters, the graphics, the soundtrack... The English translation is especially spectacular, due to its masterful coloring with "Olde English" which adds so much to the tone and atmosphere. This is one of the ultra rare cases where the English translation is arguable far superior to the original Japanese script. Unfortunately, all of these shining examples of fine craft and "video game design as true art" is all for naught because of one single fatal flaw: The game simply isn't fun to play.

Where the game ultimately fails is in the game play. The battle system in and of itself is fine. It's an interesting hybrid cross between standard real time action combat and traditional RPG turn based combat. The problem is, at the very heart of the battle system is an abysmally UN-fun weapon and armor system. There are several (eight?) classes of enemies in the game- Beast, Human, Dragon, Undead, Phantom, etc. The enemy classes are paired off into diametric oppositions. e.g. Using your weapon against a human enemy will make it stronger against humans, but weaker against phantoms. (sic) On top of that, there are specific weakness ratings. An enemy might be weak against blunt weapons, but almost totally impervious to edged weapons or piercing weapons. And then there are the usual elementals as well- fire, ice, earth and so on. Finally, each of your weapons has its own "wear" rating. The lower the rating, the more worn out the weapon, the less damage it does. You must repair your weapons in workshops, which are few and far between in the game. Another thing you can do in workshops is disassemble your weapons and reassemble the parts to make new weapons. Whether the new weapon will be better or worse than the weapons you sacrificed to make them involves much trial and error. The end effect of all of this is that as you play the game, you are literally constantly changing weapons. Yet the creators of the game didn't bother to implement any sort of quick menu for weapon switching, a la Secret of Mana. You have no choice but to spend 45% of your game time opening the main menu, opening the weapon menu, finding the right weapon, opening the accessory menu, changing the elemental jewels on the weapon, etc. etc. etc. All they had to do was come up with some sort of quick menu for changing weapons, as Seiken Densetsu 2 did seven years earlier. As it stands, Vagrant Story is a micro-management nightmare. To call the game tedious is an understatement of epic proportions.

As is always the case, no matter how flawed something, there will be a small niche group of vocal supporters who will insist that the thing in question is the greatest creation in history, and that people who don't like it just don't "get it." Beware of misguided fanatics.

Please note that the preceding includes some ridiculous things like 'excel-lance' and 'UN-fun' because of IMDb's incredibly retarded "error checking" system. IMDb: Please get rid of that broken piece of garbage.

Vagrant Story is one of the most underrated games and at the same time one of the best games made it in years.

Why not everybody like it?, one of the reasons is having a battle system very different from other games, it´s not easy to swallow at first but after a while you get use to it.

The first thing to make clear is that VS is not fully a RPG, is more a hybrid between various genres, there´s some RPG elements but there´s also action and you can explore like in a plataform game. Saying that don´t expect to visit towns and talk to people like in a RPG.

Yasumi Matsuno, creator of this game and another gem from Square, Final Fantasy Tactics, did a marvelous job along with his staff, including the composer of the music Hitoshi Sakimoto.

The plot is unique, very original, not the tipycal hero-has-to-save-the-world-collecting-crystals-and-stopping-a-villian, the characters are also a lot more complex than many characters from other games, the battle system requires all the attention from the player, if you want to survive you have to know everything that is requirer in order to kill the enemies, avoiding traps and a lot more.

I really liked that you can create your own weapons, that makes every battle different from another, keeping it from getting repetitive, and you have to master that aspect too if you want to have good weapons.

Great game in all it´s aspects, a truly underrated masterpiece.

Vagrant Story is a great game. It is one of my favorites. Squaresoft's presentation and execution is second to none. But there is something special about Vagrant Story. It uses a fully polygonal engine, instead of the pre-rendered backgrounds of Final Fantasy fame. But that's not what makes it special. It is the cinematic presentation and captivating gameplay.

The story is interesting from the first cut-scene. (Don't forget to watch them.) Thanks to Akihiko Yoshida--character design for Vagrant Story, as well as Final Fantasy Tactics--the story never runs dry. The character are entertaining from the start.

The kicker for Vagrant Story is in it's cinematic presentation. Some might call it a Metal Gear Solid clone, but MGS does not have Vagrant Story's flair or music. I belive that games like this will pop up more and more as the years go by and graphics abilities increase. As engine become more life-like, a movie-like, cinematic game world will be the next step. Just look at games like Vagrant Story, Metal Gear, the Soul Reaver Series, Half-Life and Max Payne. Games mixing a story as well written and executed as Vagrant Story's and an engine like DOOM III are the future.