Vagrant Story

I play PSX games with an emulator, and I like to use downsampling with a CRT filter while I play. This does make games look significantly nicer, but I know some people prefer the original look. The images in this review all feature a slider to let you see both the downsampled look (sans CRT filter) and the original look.

Summary

Crawl through some dungeons while chaining attacks over and over to one-shot all the enemies... after spending two minutes in menus before each fight. Vagrant Story is a SquareSoft dungeon-crawling RPG with an interesting, compelling story, perhaps the best graphics on the PlayStation, and great gameplay.

Story

You play as Ashley Riot, Valendia Knights of the Peace Riskbreaker, investigating a cult known as Müllenkamp and its leader, Sydney Losstarot. If that sounds like a lot of information to process all at once, prepare yourself; this game thrusts you deep into a story without any preamble. You will learn all you need to know through conversations between characters, revealing the factions, players, and relationships at work in the story.

Ultimately, multiple factions end up at the ruined city of Leá Monde, headquarters of Müllenkamp, in pursuit, seemingly, of Sydney. Once inside the city, however, the characters' interpersonal relationships take the spotlight. We witness a character story set in a city full of darkness that infuses itself in the city's inhabitants. As characters' motivations come to light, you can't help but wonder if they were corrupted by darkness or if the darkness only laid bare their base desires.

Either way, the story is full of surprises, and every cutscene is a delight to behold. Similar to Final Fantasy XII, the English localisation was done in a more archaic style, further pushing the story to feel almost like a play. The characters all feel realistic; no one acts in an inconsistent manner when you understand their motivations. Keeping up with who's who and what they want, however, can be a challenge. I can't imagine anyone who played this as a kid really came away understanding the story.

Gameplay

Vagrant Story's gameplay is certainly unique and engaging. The core of the gameplay is running around Leá Monde and dispatching any enemies in your way. The way that you dispatch enemies, though, is the most interesting part. The game presents you with a fair amount of weapon types: swords, axes, polearms, maces, two-handed maces, greatswords, greataxes, staves, and crossbows. Each weapon is made of a "blade" and a grip, and both parts have their own stats and affinities.

All equipment has the capacity to have affinity biases. If a sword has an affinity biased toward fire, for example, it will be strong against enemies with a water affinity. In addition to elemental affinities, there are class affinities (such as human, beast, or dragon), and there are damage type affinities: blunt, edged, and piercing. Every blade component specifies if it's one- or two-handed and if it will create a blunt, edged, or piercing weapon, so finding a grip with an affinity for that damage type is important. Keep in mind that both components also have normal stats like strength.

Lastly, there are gems, which can be slotted into weapons and shields. Gems provide various effects: they can, for example, change affinity, increase chance to hit, or increase chance to evade. Gems can be swapped in and out of weapons and shields at any time, even in combat, and doing so will make up a big portion of preparing for boss fights later in the game.

This only begins to scratch the surface of the nuance and depth of the systems in the game, and if it sounds complicated, that's because it is. Be warned that the game will not hold your hand for any of this. None of this will be explained to you naturally, and, in fact, the first moment you can control Ashley, you will be in a fight with no tutorials whatsoever. Either read the physical manual or press triangle to open the menu to read the in-game manual, but read something!

Now, after all that, the combat boils down to using spells and attacks. You can set up chain attacks and chain defences, which can be used after successfully initiating an attack or after getting hit, respectively. Pressing circle while in battle mode opens a targeting sphere around Ashley, and you can select which body part on any enemy within that sphere that you would like to attack. If you successfully hit that body part, an exclamation mark will flash on the screen at some point in the attack animation; this is your indication of when to chain another attack.

By pressing triangle, circle, or square at the appropriate time, you can execute whichever chain attack you've bound to that button. You can change these at any time by holding L2 for the quick menu and swapping the binds, which can even be done in combat. In theory, you can chain attacks infinitely so long as you get the timing right. Doing so, however, increases your risk meter. As risk goes up, your chance to hit decreases and your damage taken increases. Balancing risk, managing weapon and shield affinities, chaining attacks, and upgrading all your equipment are the core systems you will engage with in Vagrant Story.

With all that said, and acknowledging that I personally enjoyed the hell out of this combat system, I do have some gripes. Firstly, this game has a lot of menuing to manage affinities. The menu animations are fairly slow, and you need to move through several submenus before (or at the start of) nearly all boss fights and even several normal encounters in order to set up your gear. If you neglect doing this, your chance to hit will be very low, sometimes 0%, and your damage will also be very low. Later bosses have HP in the high hundreds, so it can make fights very tedious without preparation.

The menuing itself, though, is also tedious. In the back half of the game, every time I found myself setting up my gear, I was thinking about what it would look like if this game found itself getting the Ivalice Chronicles treatment that Final Fantasy Tactics got. Perhaps you would press a button in combat to open a submenu displaying both your weapon and shield as well as the gems they have. You could swap them right there, and you could even slot in gems that are currently equipped on other items without having to unslot them first. The inventory could be made unlimited so you don't have to putz around with the item box and having to save, which is very slow in this game, after every item box interaction.

Between the menuing and the very slow spell and ability animations (and you will be casting many spells nearly every combat to buff/debuff), I had to knock this game's gameplay score down. I nearly stopped playing the game when I unlocked teleporting between save points but realised that it cost MP based on distance, meaning I would need to chart a course between point A and B, wait for my MP to regenerate after each leg of the journey, and also potentially clear out the enemies at each stop, as well. Fortunately, I did a little reverse engineering and made a patch for the game to set teleport costs to zero, which renewed my interest and led me to complete the game.

Speaking of patches, I would also recommend anyone looking to play this game use the wonderful patch that inverts the first-person camera Y-axis controls as well as the shoulder camera buttons. Inverting them makes the game's controls as expected for a modern player. Both the camera patch and the teleport cost patch are compatible with each other and can be applied in any order.

My last gripe is with the layout and direction in the back half of the game. Now, it is possible that I am just dumb, but soon after you unlock the ability to teleport, it starts to become very unclear where you are supposed to be going to advance the story. I ended up having to pull out 'ol reliable, GameFAQs, to get me where I needed to go throughout the third act of the game. If you figure out where you're supposed to go, the pacing is actually pretty good, but the lack of direction ended up drawing out the later portions as I struggled to find the next story trigger.

Despite my issues with the game, though, I still think the gameplay is very fun, and it remains satisfying to get done with all the menuing before a boss so you can walk up to it and one-chain it to death.

Graphics

Now, the graphics in Vagrant Story are much easier to talk about: they are excellent. They are, perhaps, the best graphics that were actually published on the PlayStation. There were several moments in the game where I felt awe both for the beautiful scenes and the technical accomplishment of the scenes. The character models are fantastic and detailed, and I'm not sure that any PlayStation game can match the facial expressions displayed in Vagrant Story. The environments are rich and detailed, as well, and they can be beautiful or haunting.

The character models have very expressive faces that can change expression and even bleed, and I was frequently blown away by how good everyone in this game looks. Things that I had assumed were mistakes or platform limitations turned out to be intentional, though I can't say more than that without it being a spoiler. The only minor nitpicks I have are that there are some depth issues where shadows may clip into characters and a few small holes in certain models, but I'm not really sure how noticeable those would have been at the time this game released.

The art style has a strong direction and works very well with the story and setting. The ruined city feels appropriately ruined, but there are some really pretty locations left to find. The haunting undercity feels oppressive, as well, though that feeling may also come from the amazing audio design.

Audio

Last, but certainly not least, it's time to discuss Vagrant Story's audio. One of my favourite video game composers, Hitoshi Sakimoto, composed the soundtrack for this game, and it's a banger, as one might expect from one of his works. You can really feel his style in this game; certain tracks evoke memories of Final Fantasy Tactics or Final Fantasy XII, which does make the retconning of the setting feel more natural.

While Vagrant Story was directed and produced by Yasumi Matsuno, creator of Ivalice, he intended that any references to Ivalice in Vagrant Story be fan service. After his departure from the company, it was later retconned that Vagrant Story actually takes place in Ivalice.

The soundtrack is much more understated than games like Tactics or XII, however. Many of the tracks you'll hear in-game blend into the background and act almost entirely as ambiance. Many areas feature no music at all besides birds chirping or water rushing. The stand-out tracks heard during some cutscenes or important battles are excellent and feel right at home with Sakimoto's other works, but the more subdued tracks fit well and are just as important in setting the tone and providing the appropriate atmosphere in the game. The use of sparing and often subdued tracks makes moments where the music is highlighted even more memorable.

As for the sound effects and UI sounds, they are all satisfying and adequately perform their functions. Everything sounds nice and as expected, and the only gripe I had with sound during the game is a particular dark-affinity attack that makes a piercing screech sound. That sound sucks, but I suppose having one annoying sound in a sea of okay or great sounds is acceptable.

Conclusion

Vagrant Story is a game that deserves more love than it got. Play it. Don't be afraid to look up a walkthrough or FAQ about some of the more complicated systems. Enjoy the great soundtrack, exciting and interesting character drama of a story, and of course, the feeling of beating a boss in ten seconds with no recourse. That last one never stops feeling good.

Extra screenshots gallery

I think this game looks great, and I took a lot of screenshots, so here are a couple extras I didn't find a place for in the main content of the guide.