Title: Vagrant Story
The Phantom Pain
Developer: Square
Publisher: Square
Platform: PS
Original Release: 2000
Introduction
I started gaming in 1999—I was essentially brand new to video games, and they fascinated me. I spent lots of time playing, and lots of time reading about games. In early 2000, I ran across a rave review for a game called “Vagrant Story”, developed by the company that had created Final Fantasy VIII (the second PS game I ever played). The game sounded really interesting, so I looked for—and found—more reviews, all of which were extremely positive. As soon as I could, I picked up it up.
From the very beginning, I was hooked. The game opened with a sweet CGI intro sequence (the only pre-rendered video in the game) intercutting between a warrior preparing for battle, and a beautiful, scantily clad woman dancing—all to a stirring musical theme.
After the intro ended, the menus appeared. I waited, to see what sort of demo mode kicked in, and got an interesting cutscene which helped set up the story and reeked of political intrigue. I was hooked, and when the menu appeared again, I started my first playthrough.
The game begins with the invasion of Duke Bardorba’s mansion by the Mullenkamp cult. Our hero, Ashley Riot, is dispatched by the powers that be to investigate. At the mansion, he encounters Mullenkamp’s leader, and ultimately follows him to the ancient, deserted city of Lea Monde which serves as Mullenkamp’s base, and where the game proper takes place.
Primary Characters and Character Design
- Ashley Riot—The protagonist, his past contains mysteries unknown even to him. His life will be profoundly changed by the events in Lea Monde.
- Sydney Losstarot—Leader of the Mullenkamp cult, he is not precisely what he appears.
- Jan Rosencrantz—A shadowy figure sent to Lea Monde as a spy. He claims to know the secrets of Ashley’s past, but can he be trusted?
- Romeo Guildenstern—Leader of the Crimson Blades, warriors in service of the Church. He and his men are sent to investigate Mullenkamp’s invasion of Bardorba’s home, and like Ashley, he (and his troops) subsequently follow Mullenkamp to Lea Monde.
Character design is a nice middle ground between a Western approach, and the no-holds-barred craziness commonly seen in JRPG character design. One peculiarity of the design: even the men have a bit of a feminine look to them.
Gameplay Systems
Combat is kind of a fusion of real-time and turn-based combat—it’s an extension of the system used in Parasite Eve; a button press freezes the game world, and brings up a wireframe sphere surrounding Ashley. The sphere’s size depends on the size of the equipped weapon or selected spell. Any enemies within the targeting sphere can be targeted—more specifically, any portion of their bodies may be targeted. Each targeted body part is labled by name and by percentage to hit. Percentages change on the basis of equippped weapon type, weapon quality, and risk (explained below). Once a body part has been selected and the “attack” button hit, the game unpauses and Ashley attacks.
Weapons are of three main types:
Every enemy has a weakness to one of these types; blunt is best against skeletons, edged against beasts, etc..
Weapons (and armor) are created from many materials:
- leather
- wood
- bronze
- iron
- hagane
- silver
- damascus
All weapons have numbered attributes for enemy class and enemy elemental affinities.
Class represents the type of enemy:
- evil
- human
- beast
- undead
- phantom
- dragon
- evil
Affinities are standard elemental affinities:
- earth
- air
- fire
- water
- light
- dark
All weapons can be broken down into multiple components—typically a handle and a blade. This comes in handy for the crafting portion of the game.
In addition to attacking with weapons, Ashley can make use of break arts—weapon-type-specific attacks which are paid for in HP. Each weapon-type has four of these, earned by making x number of kills with a given type. For example, the dagger-based break art “Shadoweave” has a dark affinity, and is of type blunt, making it useful against enemies that have high light affinity and/or a weakness to blunt weapons.
Ashley also has abilities that can be invoked as part of combat, with proper timing of button presses—defensive and chain abilities, which are mapped to the top three face buttons. Defensive abilities allow Ashley to reduce the amount of damage taken due to various types of attacks, and are triggered by pressing the desired face button immediately prior to the enemy attack striking home. Chain abilities allow for inflicting additional damage and various negative statuses, and are triggered by pressing the corresponding button just as Ashley’s lands his attack. As implied by the name, these can be used many times in a row, creating a chain of attacks. However, each time a chain ability is used, risk goes up, something that’s important to keep in mind in big battles.
Risk is—as the name implies—a measurement of danger. It begins at 0 (no risk) and rises to a maximum of 100. Various actions taken by Ashley raise it. It’s important to manage risk carefully—the higher your risk, the less likely you are to hit your targeted enemy, and the more damage you’re likely to take from an enemy attack. At the same time, high risk significantly increases the amount of healing bestowed by the “Heal” spell, so there’s very much a risk-reward vibe at work (pun most definitely intended).
There are four schools of magic in Vagrant Story:
- Shaman—Healing spells to restore lost HP and cure negative statuses.
- Enchanter—Spells that add elemental affinities to weapons and armor (light and dark affinities excepted, for some reason)
- Warlock—Attack spells. Fireballs and what-not.
- Sorcerer—Buffs and debuffs, basically.
Crafting takes place in workshops scattered throughout Lea Monde and is essential, given that weapons degrade and workshops are the only place they can be repaired. But most players use the workshops for modifying and creating weapons and armor; any two weapons or armor pieces may be combined, which in turn merges their class and affinity attributes. Certain combinations create entirely different weapons or armors, and can also transmute materials, allowing a bronze blade to be upgraded to iron, for example. With one exception, workshops allow for combining only certain materials. For example, the “Work of Art” workshop only allows combining of wood, leather, and bronze items. Only the “Godhands” workshop (available in new game plus) allows for combination of any and all material types.
Each workshop contains a roomy chest that allows for storage of items. In a feat of videogame magic, there are several such chests, and they all contain the same items. This allows for storage of weapons throughout the game and across playthroughs, which can be handy when utilizing the workshops to create more powerful weapons and armor.
Sound Design
Music is fantastic; Hitoshi Sakimoto composed many great tracks, including some great boss battle themes. Additionally, ambient sounds are everywhere; when passing through the Lea Monde proper (as opposed to the dungeons beneath it) birds can be heard. Inside dungeons, gutteral growls float from the dark, and wolves yowl. During combat, weapons clash noisily.
Visuals
With the exception of the introductory movie, everything seen is rendered in realtime by the game engine. The camera treatment feels very cinematic (one of Square’s earliest efforts at cinematic presentation), and the comic book-style dialog bubbles help give the game a unique experience. And unlike most/many other Square RPGs produced at the time, the graphics are fully 3D, which really aided the designers in creating a beautiful, haunting world.
Story
I won’t go into plot details here, as I don’t wish to spoil anything. But there’s a lot going on, and a deep backstory, as well. Lots of things are left unexplained, which can make for vigorous debate, which is fine unless you’re talking to folks who are convinced that the big bad is actually future-Rinoa. Oh, wait.
Ultimately, the story is satisfying, though an unintentional tease; the ending makes it clear that the story events transformed Ashley into the titular vagrant—in other words, Vagrant Story was only the beginning*.
Overall
The gameplay is very satisfying, but there are certainly some problems. The game is extremely difficult on a first playthrough, though this is negated by subsequent playthroughs with improved stats and gear. There are sections of the game that are only completeable through trial and error, and at times these can be tedious. Most frustrating for me is the lengthy delay when going into and moving through the menu system, and along similar lines, extremely slow I/O when accessing and writing game saves.
Never-the-less, I can’t recommend Vagrant Story highly enough; I’m normally put off by extreme difficulty, and have abandoned many games due to it, but I completed Vagrant Story…and immedately started a new game plus.
Available now on PSN!
*Sadly, despite widespread critical acclaim, the game did not sell well, so a sequel was ruled out at the time. And if today Square-Enix decided to make a new game, there’d be a bit of a problem; write/producer/lead designer Yasumi Matsuno left the company in the midst of Final Fantasy XII’s developement (true, other people could make a sequel game, but if Matsuno wasn’t involved, I would not trust the resulting game to be faithful to the original’s spiri).
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