Vagrant Story

Squaresoft and Yasumi Matsuno's second collaboration spawned the painstakingly crafted Vagrant Story, a hyper-intricate and hyper-mystifying gem, perhaps the culmination of the former's acrobatic presentation and the latter's disquieting writing. Alongside the visuals, what immediately stands out are the main cutscenes: A minimal and reckless form of storytelling, packed with refined - almost cryptic language and portrait-worthy shots in which characters enter, ponder and exit with (seemingly) little to no regard for identity nor coherence, only to slowly decode a tragic plot and cast as it proceeds. The best moments - in particular, emit an immersive yet disorienting atmosphere that reminds one of the more abstract, ghostly experiences of Xenogears' second disc, while others are boss fight intros rendered in creative and dramatic ways. Its structure, both narratively and functionally, had little in common with JRPGs; largely indifferent to the hero's journey and to the village-to-dungeon format (basically a gradually-unraveling dungeon-crawler that disposed of the hub, shops, friendly NPCs, currency, etc.), which becomes an attraction in itself.

Equally original is the gameplay, ostensibly a mix of action-adventure, platforming and ARPG whose combat combines free movement with menu-selection pauses (reminiscent of Parasite Eve minus the ATB gauge) and damage-able limbs a la Front Mission. But in reality, it's the systems that tower over the rest; dense and overwhelming in a vein similar to Ogre Battle (another Matsuno-led project). The most striking aspect is probably how one's equipment factors into hit/damage calculations, utilizing not one but three sets of resistances + weaknesses (affinity, class and type, i.e. elements, species and weapon blades, respectively), and partly governed by mutating stat levels (e.g. Fire, Undead, Piercing) tied to both gear and enemies. At the same time, mechanics such as Break Arts (weapon-exclusive supers unlocked via use-based mastery), Chain Abilities (that evolves SMRPG via quasi-unlimited, unlockable offensive/defensive follow-ups), and especially the aptly-named RISK (a secondary meter that trades accuracy and defense for crit-rate and healing power as chains accumulate) add even more rules and layers to this peculiar brand of strategic-action. This game's most trivial system would be a main feature on other RPGs.

Other - but no less vital mechanics complement the more distinguished ones, ranging from crafting, weapon mods, equipment tiers, durability, proficiency, etc. Altogether, these ideas form a convoluted web of interactions that turns each encounter into a flexible customization challenge, where bosses can either last for 20 minutes or fall to a single chain combo. Not even its many drawbacks (the overdemanding and sometimes hopeless early-game situations, the constant menu setup and the input-bloat) could spoil this multifaceted type-matching approach. By the end, the player has gathered and honed a virtual toolbox of equipment, magic and augments to construct specialized builds for any battle scenario.

A veritable alien JRPG encyclopedia, elegant and puzzling, theatrical but never awkward nor melodramatic, complicated yet intriguing, Vagrant Story absorbs and weaves together concepts from all sorts of past games without belonging to any of them.

This is a really strange JRPG, but I came to grow a lot of love for it. It was directed and written of Yasumi Matsuno, who previously made some pretty famous TRPGs in Tactics Ogre: LUCT and Final Fantasy Tactics. I haven't played either of those games, but they seem like pretty complex games with deep systems, so it is unsurprising to see that this game has a certain degree of complexity in its gameplay. This isn't a Tactical RPG though obviously, and it appears to be a sort of hybrid between turn-based and real-time gameplay at first glance. This style of gameplay is referred to as "Pausable Real-Time," in which the whole game is pretty much real-time up until the point when you press the action button to attack an enemy, which is where time pauses and you are able to hit your enemy within the range of your weapon. Ever played Parasite Eve? Well this basically takes the gameplay from that game, except it refines and expands upon it to the point that it makes Parasite Eve look absolutely bare-bones and rudimentary in comparison. It is more refined in the sense that you are able to target the enemies limbs in order to maximize your damage potential, and you're also able to chain combos together if your timing is good enough and are able to hit the attack buttons at the exact moment your weapon connects with your enemy. There are similar defensive abilities, in which you are able to counter some of the attacks your enemies inflict on you if you press the attack buttons at the same moment their weapons connect with your body. The bosses in this game tended to be pretty awesome in this game, and I had a fun time figuring out the various strategies to best each one. It's a game that's hard to get into at first, but once you know what you're doing it's a blast.

The story is incredibly mature for a JRPG. It is unrelentingly dark and harrowing in tone, as there's a constant impending sense of dread throughout. It features prominent political themes that involve a state's parliament corrupted by a religious authority figure, which consequently shapes the rest of the game's events, and also touches on the limits of perception, memory, and our ability to trust the words of others. The characters are largely well-written, and it features one of the more memorable antagonists I've ever encountered in a game. I haven't played the other games Matsuno has made, but this game definitely makes me wanna try them!

Now for some complaints that I have. There's quite a bit of puzzle-platforming in this game, which I prefer to not see in my JRPGs but don't mind it too much as long as it doesn't become a hassle. Well for the first parts of the game it's fine, but towards the end they got absolutely horrific for me. Some jumps are stupidly difficult to make and the dumb block puzzle rooms towards the end took forever for me to figure out, and they're necessary to leave certain dungeons. So that became incredibly tedious and frustrating to me, but that's not the worst of it. The worst thing about this game? Menus. There is no item shop or currency in the game, so to upgrade your weapons and armor you have to combine them or craft them in the game's various workshops, and that means going through a lot of menus. It is cool to craft a weapon that you're satisfied with, but you're going to have to spend absolutely forever in the menus making them! I don't know exactly how much time I spent in the menus just to craft my weapons and armor, but it felt like maybe 5 hours or more, which is pretty darn brutal if you ask me. So yeah if you decide to play this, brace yourself for hours upon hours upon hours of MENUS.

Therefore this game is pretty tough to rate for me, but I'll stick with a 4.0 and consider it a flawed/borderline masterpiece. The positives of this game are incredible, while the drawbacks are horrible and suck a considerable amount of the greatness out of this game for me. JRPG fans with a taste for dark, intense stories and deep combat systems (for the genre) will probably love it, if you can manage to stomach spending hours in menus and tedious puzzle-platforming.

This game took me something like 3 months to beat and not really because it was bad or uninterested me, it just seemed overly complicated at first, seemed like it had complex combat and map design, and boss fights would take super long before I figured the trick out. The thing about Vagrant story is its a solid game buried under the illusion of complexity and the game throws so much at you and doesn't do a good job explaining a lot. The thing about Vagrant Story is you need to use different types of weapons on different enemies and some enemies are weak to certain kinds of weapons and that is what damages them, where other weapons only do chip damage and make the game frustrating and feel like its impossible. Once you learn this trick and get some good magic and have a good variety of different weapon types, the game is a bit more enjoyable, even if there is still tedium and the awkward map design.

This game is basically a dungeon crawler and most of the game you'll be in dark places with non-linear design, and full of enemies and loot. The bosses in this game can occasionally be frustrating but aren't really a problem except for the final boss who is just so cheap and frustrating and takes too long to defeat. The chain system is cool where you can chain attacks by timing right but the combat still feels awkward and leaves a lot to be desired. The story is pretty solid but it sort of is sparse until near the end. Its just Vagrant Story is a game that is made worse by the complexity and tedium, there is so much you need to memorize, what gems to put on what weapons, dismantling weapons, creating weapons, what armor and weapon types are best for what kind of monster or human. It just gets tedious having to swap out weapons for different fights. The game does have a little variety and has box puzzles occasionally which can be fun and actually provide some challenge, but at the same time they are pretty sparse and most of the game is wandering around in dungeons fighting generic enemies and occasional bosses. Maybe its just me too but the graphics haven't aged well, I know this is a later PS1 game and it is one of the best looking Square games considering FF VII, VIII, and IX looked like crap graphically, but this kind of serious game just feels like it needed less pixelated graphics which wasn't possible on PS1. Overall this is a solid game if you can deal with the tedious and repetitive gameplay and has a somewhat decent story, it has puzzles, and interesting characters, but it just gets drowned out in the gameplay and this game does end up feeling dragged out and longer than in needs to be due to the gameplay. I get what Square was trying and this game probably didn't get the attention it deserved when it first released, but I just feel the company gave us better and more balanced games before and even after this. The game just didn't keep me hooked enough with the gameplay that a game that should have taken me a week to beat tops ended up dragging to about 3 months.