Vagrant Story

"Horrible play control and interface problems"

In reading the other negative reviews of this game, I noticed a trend. The general opinion is that Vagrant Story is a difficult game with poor play control. I disagree with this. Vagrant Story is an easy game with VERY poor play control.

The reason I say it is an easy game is because... with a little forethought... it is! All you need is a good set of weapons and armor! In Vagrant Story, weapons and armor take the place of experience points and levels. A good set of weapons and armor... sound simple? This is where the VERY poor play control comes in.


^PLAY CONTROL: 1/10

Weapons and armor must be created by the player in workshops. There are no shops or merchants in Vagrant story. All the items you need must be obtained by defeating enemies.

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In a Nut Shell: Why is the weapon and armor creation system not fun?

- Weapon/armor ingredients are random drops with no way of knowing what you will get
- Workshops are hard to get to, especially before the teleport spell is learned
- Insufficient space in inventory to hold needed ingredients
- Unnecessarily and unbelievably long loading screens when using the inventory

Weapons and armor require a suitable workshop and a recipe to be created. The ingredients (other weapons and armor) are dropped randomly after defeating enemies. To add yet another twist, you can only create new weapons and armor in workshops, each of which can only create and work with weapons and armor of a certain material type.

I would have to say though, that the most annoying aspect about creating weapons and armor would have to be the storage chest and the inventory system.

In Vagrant Story, the main character can only hold 8 weapons and 16 pieces of armor. However, you will likely already have around 4-5 weapons as well as 8 pieces of armor that are part of your regular equipment. Effectively this means that you can only carry a few more weapons and 8 more pieces of armor at any time. The solution to this is supposed to be the "storage chest".

Now I really have no idea why Squaresoft did this but here is how the storage chest works. First, when you choose to open it, it loads your game from your memory card... this takes around 15 seconds. Next you can either retrieve or deposit items into the chest. Next, YOU MUST LOAD YOUR GAME AGAIN, an additional 15 seconds. FINALLY YOU MUST SAVE YOUR GAME, YES ANOTHER 15 SECONDS.

Why do you have to load your game twice and then save your game in order to use the storage chest?

Now as I said these workshops where you create weapons and armor are few and far between. Each workshop only works with a certain material type, ie wood, bronze, iron, etc. Typically you will have a huge backlog of weapons and armor to make, with most of the ingredients inside the storage chest. This means many trips to the "storage chest" switching items into and out of your limited inventory, with each trip lasting at least 2 minutes.

You could just skip this and not make weapons and armor. Right?

That is when the game gets really hard, because the progression of the enemies in Vagrant Story seems to assume that you have the latest weapons and armor available. Again, the main character has no level or experience and stats are entirely determined by what equipment you have on.

Alright, so you made the weapons and armor you needed to not get killed in the next dungeon. You're good to go now, right? RIGHT? You are only half done. Now you have to train them!

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In a Nut Shell: Why is training weapons and armor not fun?

- There are over 100 possible weapon affinity combinations, but only 8 spots for weapons in your inventory
- Difficult to train or even control element affinity (fire/water/wind/earth/holy/dark)
- Using a weapon on several different enemy types usually reduces it's effectiveness
- Armor affinity will almost always end up "human" since humans are most common
- No fast way to change weapons, gems or armor
- Training weapons and armor does not progress the storyline

Unfortunately making the armor and especially the weapons is only half the process of creating an effective character.

Next you must train your weapons and armor by defeating enemies and surviving their attacks. This is how you train armor and weapon "affinities".

For example, many enemies are of the type "dragon". Therefore, it is prudent to have a weapon devoted to "dragon" type enemies. The way one does this is by attacking only dragon type enemies with one weapon. Over time this weapon will develop an affinity for dragons... in other words it can kill dragons easily.

The problem is that you will never find any dungeon in Vagrant Story with just one type of enemy. "Phantom" type enemies often appear with "undead" type enemies. By attacking both with the same weapon you will raise neither affinity. This is because undead affinity cancels out phantom affinity.

Using your "dragon" affinity weapon on an "evil" type enemy will actually reduce the dragon affinity and vice versa.

The solution is constantly changing back and forth weapons and special gems that raise and lower affinities... constantly. There is no quick way to switch your weapon or the special gems in Vagrant Story. This makes for very long and tedious battles.

And other than the weapon you choose to use, there is no real strategy to the game.

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In a Nut Shell: Why is there no real strategy to Vagrant Story?

- You can't run away from enemies, they are faster than you
- The only effective way to defeat enemies is to use the right weapon type
- The position you choose to attack from doesn't matter
- Offensive magic is not effective, the best weapon magic hurts your character
- The game is linear, with one ending

You may at first cast a "strength up" spell on yourself or a debuff on the enemy, but otherwise battles consist of attacking your enemy with a weapon, over and over again. There is generally no way to run away from enemies, or any advantage to being in certain positions over others. The best way to fight is to run within range, attack with your weapon, attack again, and again while moving as little as possible.

Magic does not work very well because of the limited amount of magic points you have, which don't go up since you don't gain levels, and the poor power of the spells themselves compared to regular attacks with weapons. Weapon magic is strong but hurts your character when you use it.

Also it doesn't really matter what you do in Vagrant Story, since the game is linear and has one ending.

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In a Nut Shell: Why is the risk system not fun?
- No real way to lower risk without items
- Risk lowering items can only be obtained as random drops from enemies
- In long boss fights you cannot survive without some risk reducing items

I might as well mention the "risk" system here.

As you attack, a stat called "risk" goes up that can only be lowered by NOT ATTACKING or by using items. Remember that items can only be obtained by defeating enemies, and the items you get are random. In other words if you use up all of your risk lowering items, there is no way to reduce your risk during a battle without dying.

This is a particularly bad problem during boss fights where one doesn't have a properly trained weapon for that boss.

When your risk is around 50 or so you begin to miss a lot and take more damage from enemies. At 100 you will not be able to attack anything and will take significant damage from regular attacks.

Risk is not a problem if you train and create good weapons and armor. That is really the heart of the problem... creating good weapons and armor. Its a long, boring and tedious process, but if you do it Vagrant Story is a very easy game.


^GRAPHICS: 9/10

Vagrant Story is probably the best looking game for the PS, and would not look out of place on the PS2. The characters, bosses and dungeon designs are all detailed and aesthetically pleasing. Animations are fluid and realistic.

Everything is in 3D and the camera can be rotated, although the rotation buttons are opposite to what you would expect and there is no way to change this.

Unfortunately many of the dungeons, though beautifully in detail, are repeated with slight changes to the lighting and enemies.


^SOUND: 8/10

The sound of Vagrant Story really doesn't stand out to me. There is no voice acting for the characters, but I think this is a good thing since voice acting tends to annoy me. During combat the characters can be heard reacting to weapon blows and each type of enemy sounds uniquely different. For example, skeleton enemies sound like what you would expect a skeleton to sound like.

The music is about average and mostly ambient... you probably won't even notice it.


^STORY: 8/10

The story of Vagrant Story is quite good and strangely mature for a Square game. I don't want to spoil anything so I will just say it is not the typical story you would expect from the opening intro.


^OVERALL: 3/10

I think 3/10 is a bit high. It just goes to show you that even the best graphics, story and sound can't hide horrible mechanics and gameplay. In my opinion its the gameplay and play control that makes the game, whether that game is Pac Man or Final Fantasy Tactics.

How successful would Donkey Kong have been if every time you died you got to watch Donkey Kong jump up and down for 2 minutes? People get frustrated by things like that.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/29/08

Game Release: Vagrant Story (US, 05/15/00)