Yasumi Matsuno's masterful storytelling is advanced through one of the most unique combat systems found in any game.
Players are thrown right into the role of the Riskbreaker Ashley Riot right from the impressive opening sequence. Riskbreakers are a type of special agent in this medieval fantasy world that specializes in bringing the most wanted villains to justice. Ashley's target is Sydney Losstarot, a leader of a religious cult who was rather unholy and powerful abilities. Also hunting down Sydney is Romeo Guildenstern and his Crimson Blades, but this church-controlled group seems to have little interest in helping Ashley out in the process. After an impressive intro in a noble's manor sets the story up and reveals the extent of the power that Sydney wields, the whole game essentially takes place in Lea Monde. This island city now lies in ruins, as a great earthquake a couple decades earlier essentially wiped out the entire population. However, there are many unusual properties about Lea Monde, and as the story unfolds it is revealed that the city itself plays no minor role in the story. The story itself is a masterpiece that fans of Matsuno's work come to expect - a complex tale where the boundaries between what is good and what is evil are very blurred, and you are always left wondering who exactly is the friend and who is the foe, what is the truth and what is a lie, and even if what you are doing is in fact the right thing to do.
The game itself is a rather linear crawl through the dungeons of Lea Monde, with the bulk of your time spend moving between small rooms below the surface of the city. Though there are frequently forks in the path, choosing the "wrong" path will quickly lead to a locked door to halt your progress. While most rooms consist of just killing the enemies and moving on, others have other challenges in navigation. In spurts you will encounter some puzzles involving moving crates around to reach the next door. These puzzles are far from obvious and require some real thought, and likely a few attempts, to pass. While some may be turned off by the puzzles due to their difficulty, others will appreciate what is becoming increasinly rare in games of this genre - a puzzle where the solution is not immediately obvious as soon as you look at it. Some rooms contain a bit of platforming between ledges and moving blocks, but the implementation seems more of an afterthought for the few areas that require it than anything else. The jumping controls are a little hard to get used to, but manage to get by with its situational uses.
The combat system is certainly an element that will leave quite an impression on those that play the game, and the impressions can vary greatly. When you hit the attack button, the game pauses and gives a list of all the targets within range, and selecting them starts the attack. What's so unique is that each enemy usually has multiple targets, like the head, body, arms, and legs. Said targets usually have different potential damage and hit percentage values - some appendages give a low chance of scoring some big damage, a high chance of lower damage, and even be weaker against different types of weapons (be it blunt, edged, or piercing). Also, damaging one area enough will help disable it, resulting in penalties like slower movement if you damage the legs. Of course the enemies can do the same to you, but due to the amount that you use the basic cure spell to heal your HP, your body parts are usually kept well above the point you suffer penalties without really paying attention.
To make things more than a simple game of telling your character which target to attack, there is a rhythm game to assist you in unleashing a long string of combos. If you push one of three buttons right as your sword hits an enemy, Ashley will slash again for some smaller damage, and so on until you mistime the attack or the enemy dies. While getting in a potential of a lot of attacks while your enemy is frozen helpless or activating a defensive ability that could reduce significant damage may seem very unbalanced, the Risk meter ads a penalty for relying too much on a chain of combos. Each combo adds more risk to your meter, and the higher it is not only does your critical percentage increase, but your accuracy decreases and you are susceptible to increased damage. Combine with the fact that some enemies deflect chained attacks fairly well, and it's up to the player to figure out if long combos or quick single strikes are the best options in any given situation.
The most important factor in Vagrant Story is the equipment, and especially the weapons. As you use weapons against certain types of enemies of certain elemental weaknesses, its affinity towards those traits increases. Thus, the more you use one sword against a human, the stronger it gets against the upcoming humans. However, this will also cause your affinity towards other creature types and elementals decreases. This certainly encourages the player to swap between multiple weapons based on what enemy is being fought. Up against a human? Get the sword that you've been using to attack other humans. Undead? Break out the rapier with the light affinity. Dragon in the way? A polearm will help take care of that. The entire combat system revolves around building up a few weapons carefully so that you can take advantage of their traits. Against some boss fights, if you do not have a weapon that increases the damage to the boss itself, you'll likely be in for a very rough ride. If you do, however, it can just as quickly give you an incredible upper hand against the enemy.
But right there lies one of the biggest design issue with Vagrant Story - the lack of quickly swapping weapons. If you're using your polearm against lizardmen and then walk into a room full of undead, then you'll need to navigate through a number of menu screens to equip that weapon. This in itself isn't much of a problem until you consider that the enemy types can rapidly change, even in the same room, so you'll need to do an awful lot of weapon swapping. The fact that the affinities of the weapons you worked on may decrease if you use it too often on the "wrong" enemies almost forces you to change your weapon from the heavily-layered menus. The ability to quickly cycle through your weapons from the push of a single button on the controller would have had a great impact on the game, as the lack of such a feature adds far too much time of menu surfing throughout the game. Thankfully, enemies of the same type often appear in groups, letting you move through a few rooms before having to switch weaposn yet again. Another issue is that at some points late in the game, you need to backtrack to a previously locked door. While the ability to transport between save points later in the game eases things, remembering such doors hours after you pass them can be quite difficult. Luckily, the mapping feature should help things a lot with just a little bit of browsing.
The challenge in the game certainly varies a lot. The first part of the game can be quite a handful as the weapon customization options are far more complex than was touched upon earlier, nor are they accurately explained in tutorials. However, once you build up your weapons, they tend to mow down enemies quickly. Certain bosses can be easily overmatched due to the power of your equipment and a few spells. However, a few bosses with unusual weaknesses can be quite a handful and take a good bit of time to defeat. These few bosses give the player a clear reminder that working on your weapons is all but essential in Vagrant Story. A few rooms with certain annoying common enemies can often provide more of a challenge than some bosses, as they can really dish out a lot of damage quickly. This certainly makes the dungeon crawl more interesting, as you must always keep on your toes in case a powerful combination of enemies await in the next room.
The graphics are simply spectacular. Sadly, so much of the rooms are just brown-toned underground rooms that can blend together as you move through the game. However, everything is done in full 3D, and the textures and polygon counts are rather spectacular for a PS1 game, making even some of the more generic locations very detailed and as life-like as the PS1 is capable of. The sheer beauty of the environment also jumps out when you're not frolicking in the abandoned mines, as the city streets are vibrantly colored and designed well. The character models certainly steal the show. They contain so much detail that they can actually convey emotion from their facial expressions themselves. The animations of the characters are also very detailed and fluid, even with Ashley swinging different weapons in different ways. And most importantly, the cinematic flair to the cutscenes with these great characters really drives home the story.
The audio quality of the game is also on par with the visuals. Hitoshi Sakimoto delivers on yet another very strong soundtrack. While the very early dungeons can use ambient noise alone a little too often, the rest of the game often prominently features the soundtrack. Each and every track seems to go perfectly with what is being conveyed, from a gloomy mine to an epic battle and an enigmatic character. Many of the upbeat boss battle tracks are simply amazing, and the music used throughout the entire final dungeon was essentially perfect. Most of all, the audio quality of the tracks is of high quality. While other Squaresoft titles of the era rested on rather synthetic-sounding music, including the Final Fantasy series, the Vagrant Story soundtrack sounds as if it was actually being played with the actual instruments and this quality shows in the presentation. The sound effects are just as great, especially with all the different sounds of all the varying types of weapons hitting the enemies. The one thing that Vagrant Story lacks is voice acting, which is probably a blessing in disguise. The characters speak in a very medieval dialect throughout the game, which undoubtedly would have resulted in a few actors doing way over-the-top performances.
The game itself will clock in at about 30 hours on an initial playthrough with no guide, or about 24 hours with one. However, combining pieces of equipment or weapons that you find along the way to make better equipment can lead to hours of experimentation. Also, you can only go through 83% of the map on the first playthrough. On the second, you can open up an expert's dungeon that should prove more difficult than anything encountered in the required playthrough. This dungeon will be a big welcome to those that enjoyed the combat system of Vagrant Story, but there is probably not much reason to play it through for a third time.
Vagrant Story is such an interesting beast. On the one hand, the total package of the unique combat system, the wonderful story, the spectacular visuals, and the very strong soundtrack will provide a very memorable experience. However, a few little design flaws are magnified and make some things a little more difficult than they have to be, and will likely turn a few off from the game. The sheer complexity of the battle system and the poor explanation of many of the essential advanced topics in the game certainly puts Vagrant Story on a pedestal out of reach of the common casual gamer. But for those in a mood to try a totally unique battle system and experience a wonderful cinematic story that will leave you pondering the story itself for a fair amount of time afterwards, this game should certainly be given a try. Vagrant Story, even with its little nagging flaws thanks to bucking the trend and trying something totally new, remains one of the best titles of its generation.