Vagrant Story
Original Release Date: May 15, 2000
Release on PSN: March 1, 2011
Price: 5.99
Story
In Vagrant Story you play as Ashley Riot, a knight in a special order. You’re chasing down an assassin with special powers who has lead a plot against the royal family, and you need to follow him through dungeons and some really interesting (beautiful) locations. You will be spending a lot of your time underground, and the story is brought to life with comic style cut-scenes with no dialogue, but comic style dialogue bubbles. This works decent enough, but considering I couldn’t get past six hours into this game (you’ll see why in the gameplay section) I couldn’t really give a decent review of Vagrant Story’s plot. So excuse me for that, now onto gameplay!
Vagrant Story Battle Sphere
Vagrant Story Battle Sphere
Gameplay
If you played Parasite Eve you might find this title a bit familiar, the gameplay is a pausing-realtime mix, where when you attack you can choose your target in range of a big combat sphere. Unfortunately though this system works a lot better in PE, it was a fast and fun way to dispatch enemies in that game, but in this one it seems to take forever to finish off foes. A dragon for instance which is an boss most of the time becomes a huge chore to beat, because you can barely do any damage, and usually it ends up being a game of attrition instead of feeling like a badass knight. Usually these foes can take you out with one or two hits as well so you have to rely on your battle abilities to survive long enough to do much damage.
How the battle system is different is you can chain attacks together with perfect (and I mean perfect) timing, and when enemies attack you, it’s imperative that you counter their attacks with your own defense abilities so you can stop yourself from being flattened like a bug when a particularly large Dragon shows up. There are magic abilities you can also use to charm yourself or to affect enemies, or to heal yourself, and then you can construct your own weapons to damage certain types of enemies. There is also an armor equip system and you can charm or augment those with gems to make yourself harder to beat by certain enemies. There’s also an item system, a forging system that you can only do in certain places, etc, etc, etc.
Dragons!
The gameplay in Vagrant Story is way too complicated.
Not only is the gameplay way too complicated, but the only ways I found to defeat some bosses were to play the waiting game, and hope I can finish them off after 20 minutes of wailing on them. The magic spells that you receive all seem be ineffective as well, despite when enemies use the same ones (you gain these spells sometimes after defeating them) they can take out your whole life bar, while you’ll barely manage to do any damage at all, and half the time your attacks will miss because the “risk” meter gets full if you chain attacks together. Gameplay in Vagrant Story is sadly a huge mess, at least for someone who doesn’t like to micro manage the smallest things when they don’t make any significant change in the gameplay. I’m all for customization, but Vagrant Story is ridiculous in this fact, and it drowns you in a sea of inventory screens and options, while preventing you from playing the game. Once and a while you’ll find an enemy that you can actually hit, and it becomes fun, but having to change weapons for every other enemy is not fun and sucks the life out of this game.
Vagrant Story's Great Graphics
Vagrant Story's Great Graphics
Graphics
The graphics in this game are really great, probably the only PSone game that is on par with Soul Reaver’s graphics. The animations are excellent, and the particle effects while using magic light up the screen and are quite impressive for the PSone. Some of the architecture and art style in the game really make an impression as well a lot of it reminds me medieval Europe, some places look like a ringer for Notre Dame. It feels right and it all works really well.
The cut-scenes are great too, all in engine, but well directed and exciting while getting you ready for the battle. It’s no wonder why this game was so loved in it’s day, it does have a flair for style that most games don’t come close to in it’s time. I’m usually really pumped for a battle after I see a cut-scene, but then sadly the
How does Vagrant Story hold up?
This game has some interesting ideas but the gameplay is way too complicated and it makes this title feel like work, if you’re interesting in the battle system skip Vagrant Story and download Parasite Eve instead.
5.5/10
Journalistic review by PSoneClassics.com of Vagrant Story.
June 29th, 2011 on 11:40 pm
Good review. It seems to me that they made the game with a steep learning curve and complicated gameplay on purpose. They probably wanted to challenge people. That’s just my guess, I don’t know much about the game and I didn’t play it for very long.
It was too much for me, I stopped playing after an hour or two. I just wasn’t having fun, and there were better games in my backlog. I’ll try again eventually. I’ll arm myself with a walkthrough and maybe a combat mechanics guide next time.
June 30th, 2011 on 7:36 am
Well I probably played the game for about 10 hours overall, and I only had 6 hours played on the save though, because some of the bosses were incredibly difficult, and dying after 30mins wipes that time from your save (and I died a lot).
I think I might (MIGHT!) go back to it again, but you need to play this game like a computer, half the time when I attack something my hit would miss, which doesn’t really make very much sense really considering you were swinging a sword. Maybe there’s some trick to getting it to work better, but they certainly didn’t teach me anything to make it fun in that way. Oh well, many more Square games to play.
June 30th, 2011 on 9:05 am
Hey Brennan, how did you map the controls for Soul Reaver? I tried it after reading your glowing review but had big issues with only having two trigger buttons…
By the way, I agree completely with this review. Maybe now that I know others feel the same way I can take it off my PSP GO without feeling like a failure.
June 30th, 2011 on 1:03 pm
I always run my controls as type four, they seem to be the best for most games, the only one I really needed to run custom was Silent Hill, that game was kinda messed up in the control department. I didn’t mind the control in Soul Reaver once I put it in Type four (through the control menu).
As for Vagrant Story, yeah, considering it’s such a loved game I was disappointed. Oh well, these things happen, no worries about taking it off the PSPgo, Vagrant Story felt like pulling teeth out at times.
September 5th, 2011 on 7:26 pm
I think the problem with Vagrant Story isn’t that it’s too complicated, but that the game doesn’t provide a good enough tutorial to make up for it’s complexity.
For example, I was already four hours into the game that I learned that your weapons get better/worse depending on who you attack with them; and the only reason I learned that was because of this useful guide: http://chode.org/misc/vs/
I’ve only just started a new playthrough so that I can try to play it the proper way, but I hear the game becomes a lot more satisfying once you actually understand how the game works.
September 5th, 2011 on 9:14 pm
Yeah, well I was trying to figure out ways to make my weapons more powerful for each enemy type, like undead, humans, dragons etc. and sometimes if I switched around a bit it got easier, but even then I found it such a chore. I’m sure the game’s a lot more satisfying if you play it through the way they intend it to be played, but if it’s so cryptic it’s just poor design. Parasite Eve for instance is something with a similar type of gameplay, at least with the target sphere, but it did away with all the crazy permutations and crafting weapons, and at the end of the day Parasite Eve in my opinion is the better game.
I must have spent a half hour or so just trying to craft a weapon out of all the components I had at the first forge I found, and I kept running into brick walls. I don’t ever think I’ve run into a game that’s so obtuse as that one, and for that reason I don’t really think it’s aged well.
Games have become a lot more simplified in the last ten years or so since this game was released, maybe I’ve become spoiled with games with simpler mechanics. I’ll have to try out that guide you suggested, (I did use one while I was playing though, maybe that one is better!).
September 11th, 2011 on 12:47 am
I do not agree with this review but at the same time I do agree with this review. The weapon switching is a real pain but the story is really good. I downloaded the guide but that helps very little. I’ve already invested 10 hours into this game which is exactly how long it takes to beat the game but I’m only half way thru according to the guide. Granted this is one of Famitsu’s ten perfect score games but I’ve been pussified by modern games.