Vanguard Bandits

"Great Strategy/RPG from Working Designs!"

Ah yes…Working Designs….ever since they re-released Lunar: The Silver Star on the Playstation, I’ve loved the games that they’ve done. One of their latest, Vanguard Bandits, is one that most RPG fans should love. If you’ve ever played Final Fantasy Tactics, or Front Mission 3, you’ll love this game. This game is unique, in how it takes the usual Strategy/RPG gameplay, and adds….really big robots! Perfect huh!? If you’ve ever played FM3, the giant robots were referred to as Wanzers. The robots in this game have a much different look to them, and are referred to as ATAC’s. Fans of Strategy RPG’s will definitely want to give this one a try!

Gameplay:

The game plays out much like FM3. You’ll see a sequence, informing you more about the story, and you’ll be given the option to shop, or do whatever you need to do, and then you progress forward. Battles are played out the same way, as you move your units across a battlefield, much like FM3. The one thing that I don’t like about this game, is that if you want to level up, you’ll have to do it as the story progresses, because this game gives you no chance to do some free leveling up, like FFT does. So, if you don’t balance your characters just right, and make sure to level all of them up, then you might find that one of your characters is underleveled, and can be easily destroyed. Not very good if your trying to fight a really hard battle. Of course, this adds challenge to the game as well, which should increase the enjoyment level of many die-hard RPG fans, such as myself.

Story:

You play as Bastion, a young boy traveling with his father. You end up working with some soldiers, who are trying to end the harsh treatment of the Junaris empire. Bastion will work with the Pharastia kingdom, in order to put and end to the Junaris empire, once and for all. This game also features several different storylines, so there’s more than just one way to play this game. This of course, adds replay value to the game, and we all know that’s an important factor to consider when you go to shell out $40+ dollars to buy a game.

Audio/Visuals:

The graphics in this game are nice. As with Working Designs, they have used a wonderful anime intro for this game, as well as some great music tracks to accompany the anime/title screen. The battles play out on a nice, 3d rotatable map, but of course, the characters are done in sprites, which I love! But, when characters engage in battle, the screen changes to a close up scene, in which you can see the two characters fight it out! I thought this was a good feature to the game. It also adds a bit of humor to the game, as you can see characters taunting each other when they do a good hit, or “releasing some steam” at the character if they take a lot of damage. Wonderfully done.

Overall:

At first, I’ll admit, I wasn’t too sure about this game. I didn’t like the fact that you couldn’t spend time leveling up, and I still don’t like it. However, after playing more of the game, and seeing all of the other many features that it offers, I managed to get past that detail, and I’m sure other gamers should be able to as well. I recommend this to anyone who liked FFT/FM3. And even if you haven’t played either of those, go out and give this one a try!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/06/01, Updated 01/06/01