Vagrant Story

"*Slowly points gun to head*"

God where do I start with Vagrant Story? There are just so many terrible qualities I don’t know where to begin. It all started one night, when I was bored and mindlessly browsing Gamefaqs. I was planning on going to my local used game store the next day to buy another game to add to my collection. Being an avid Squaresoft fan I decided to learn a little about some of their other games that I hadn’t played and maybe unearth another unknown classic. When it was all said and done I was looking at two choices: Xenogears and Vagrant Story. Both games had received a lot of high scores and I didn’t know which one to get. So I told myself I was going to go out and buy whichever one they had in stock. I spent that whole night dreaming about a new Squaresoft RPG. The night passed and awoke and I left my house for the game store. When I arrived there, unfortunately, but understandably, Vagrant Story was the only game of choice available. I picked it up and speed home to start in on my new “classic” RPG.

Story - 30/30
You play as the “appropriately” named Ashley Riot. Ashley *snicker* used to be an elite soldier until his family was murdered in front of his eyes. This scarred Ashley for life and he decided to join a dangerous group of soldiers called the “Riskbreakers”. “Riskbreakers” are an elite single man task force that is used to infiltrate opponent’s headquarters. The “Riskbreaker” survival rate stands at a little under 30%, which is understandable, considering the horrid battle systems and game controls these “Riskbreakers” must use to fight their enemies. Anyways, during one of his missions Ashley becomes framed for a murder and its up to him to clear his name, as he wanders from dungeon to dungeon. The story here is actually very good. It’s hard to go into without spoiling anything, for there are lots of twists and turns. I like the games where they have a “dark” mood or atmosphere around them, and Vagrant Story is full of this from start to finish.

The characters here are good. I liked Ashley but I would of rather played as a “bad ass” whom had a little more intimidating and less feminine name. “Hey look its Ashley. Run for your lives”… See my point, it’s not very intimidating eh? The best character here is the bad guy. He is named… Sydney *giggle*. Well Sydney not only has the name of a girl, but he also looks like one as well. Upon first playing I actually thought he was, until I realized that he doesn’t wear a shirt, and if he were a girl they would unfortunately put one on him. Actually though Sydney is probably my 3rd favorite villain from a video game, next to the boulders in Boulderdash, and the God of Evil characters himself, Sephiroth.

It’s obvious why this game is called Vagrant Story and not Vagrant Gameplay. Confused? Then read on.

Gameplay - 1/20
If the story in Vagrant Story is an Olympic swan dive off the high dive, resulting in a perfect score of 10’s, then the gameplay in Vagrant Story is equivalent to that of Suzanne Summers doing, from the same high dive, a quadruple flip, combined with an inverted 360 twist, and finishing with an earth quaking belly flop onto the pavement, missing the water completely, thus receiving the not-so-good score of negative nine billion, two-hundred-thousand-ten. Instead of rambling on for the remainder of my 750+ words about the new levels of crapitude unearthed by the gameplay in Vagrant Story, I will just give you an idea of what it is like to fight a battle in Vagrant Story.

The door opens. Enters Ashley. The enemies, trying to control their laughter from this joke of a name, decide to attack him, 3 on 1 of course. Ashley being the smart lad he is notices that the enemies trying to attack him are a midget goblin, a dog, and a bat. Nothing too tough he thinks, so he presses the circle button. This halts movement on the screen and brings up a sphere that surrounds Ashley, similar to that of the original Parasite Eve. Anything inside of the sphere is in range for an attack, anything outside is not. Ashley decides he will attack the measly bat first, figuring that such a weak creature will easily be torn apart by one shot of Ashley’s crossbow. So Ashley pulls the trigger, and *vvrraattt*, the bolt flies across the screen and strikes the bat for a whopping total of 5 damage. Ashley is confused. He knows that usually bats will not survive a direct hit from a crossbow, so he pauses the game, bringing up the menu. He selects equip and looks at his weapon. Oops, he notices that the weapon he had equipped is for killing dragon-type enemies, not bats, which fall under the beast category. So he equips his saber then prepares to reenter combat. He does so, but before he can attack, the midget goblin bites Ashley in the ankle dealing a painful 78 damage. “Damn goblins”, thinks our intelligently named hero. His life has taken a beating and he now needs to heal, so he reopens the game menu, selects items, then scrolls down an excruciatingly long list of useless items where he uncovers a cure root that will heal him for a pathetically low, 50 life. He uses this, and after he does this he selects to attack the midget goblin. Once the sphere comes up Ashley can choose to attack the goblin in the right arm, left arm, head, torso, or legs. He chooses torso because it has the highest % probability for a successful attack. He attacks and deals 4 damage. 4 damage?!? What the hell? Well before he can figure out why he dealt such sorry damage the bat must give his two cents, and unleashes an attack of his own. Unluckily for Ashley the bat nails a critical hit dealing 128 damage and Ashley’s life reaches the critical stage. Once again Ashley opens his menu but this time decides to us a cure spell. He does and heals 100 life. He then reenters combat. After doing so, the goblin decides to cast a paralyze spell to prevent Ashley from attacking, while the dog bites Ashley in his other ankle unleashing 88 damage. Ashley, realizing the severity of being paralyzed reopens his menu and searches for the item that can cancel out paralysis. He doesn’t have one, so he decides he will make a mad dash to the exit in order to try and save his pitiful life. He gets about 3 steps before the bat attacks again. Once again it does critical damage, but Ashley is not beaten. Sadly though he realizes the bat chose to attack his legs and since it did Ashley’s agility has been cut in half, so he now walks at the same speed Christopher Reeves does. So Ashley continues to walk to the exit, he gets to the door, opens it, and reenters the next room. Only to walk right into an ambush by one of the most overused video games baddies ever created, a blob. This blob easily kills Ashley and Ashley now must slowly load up his data and restart from where he last saved. This is your queue to press that eject button and play something else.

This doesn’t sound like fun does it? No. Plainly put it does not. I am still wondering where this “revolutionary battle and status system” are. The Vagrant Story box claims to have them but they must of put it on there as an April fools joke.

Funfactor- 1/15
This game is hardly fun. Read the above and you will fully understand why.

Graphics – 12/15
During battles the graphics look great. I think the graphics during the talk scenes look goofy.

Music – 2/15
There is no music playing unless you fight a boss. Lucky for you there happens to be a boss lurking in every 5-6 rooms. Unluckily for you the music that plays is awful, and will put you to sleep, if the gameplay doesn’t beat it to it.

Control – 4/5
The controls are ok. They take a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of it you can command Ashley without problem. Its kind of annoying trying to move the boxes around to solve puzzles because if you run too far into them Ashley will hop on top of them instead of pick them up.

Replayability (bonus) – 2/5
They have a new game + feature that becomes available if you can actually sit through the fights and finish the game. This feature lets you restart the game *shivers* with all your equipment, items, and levels.

Overall - 52/100

Someone should be lynched for creating this god-awful piece of garbage. What were people thinking when they gave this game a score higher than a 5; or a 6 at tops. This game is no “classic”, “gem”, or any other inaccurately used adjectives that have unfortunately been used in mass to describe this waste of space. If you see this game in a store you should grab it, take it over to the part of the store where they keep any of the old copies of Hydlide and stash it behind these copies, so no one will casually pick this game up and play it, after hearing someone preach about how “great it is”. Better yet, if you see this game waiting to be sold turn around and make a mad dash away from the game so that you wont be conned into purchasing it. You life will be better. Trust me on this one.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/26/04