Vagrant Story

"A mish-mash of the goods from everyone's favorite games."

Vagrant Story is the kind of game than I've been dreaming about. It has taken the best parts from several games and put them together in an awe-inspiring masterpeice. They took the vast and complex map style from Castlevania: SOTN, mixed in a highly improved upon battle system from Parasite Eve, included some puzzles that could have made it into The Legend of Zelda, complimented it with the graphics from Metal Gear Solid, and served it all with an appetizer of characters and story from Final Fantasy Tactics.

Now, the only part that description that is somewhat vague as the part about the highly improved Parasite Eve engine. First off, there is no separation between fights and exploration modes. Everything is done in a single mode. The only thing that someone who was spliting hairs might say separates the two modes is the fact that you have to press a button to draw your weapon and when your weapon is drawn you have less mobility. Now, when you press the button to attack, a wire frame globe appears around you, anything within that globe can be hit by you (just like in PE). Now here is the first really cool part about the battle system, you can target individual limbs. Why would you want to target limbs? Some limbs take off more HP than others when attacked, and of course, the ones that reduce more HP are the ones that are usually the hardest to hit. Other bonus to hitting specific limbs is that you can eventually ruin them, meaning thier stats will go down. For example, if you hit an enemy's sword arm a lot, they will not be able to hit you as hard. The problem with this is that you will probably take off so many HP trying to ruin a specific limb that your foe will die before the limb is useless. Another cool thing about combat is the chain combos. As most of you know, in FF8 you could do more damage with Squall if you hit the button just as he attacked. The same principle works in VS, only they expanded it. You now have three differant buttons to use, each with a differant effect. When you land that first attack, hit the button of your choice and you will do another attack. Here's the cool part, when that second attack lands, hit one of the other two buttons to do a thrid attack. You can continue doing this until you don't press a button at the right time (it gets harder the more hits), or until the monster dies. The most I've gotten is an 8 hit combo, but I've heard about 10 hits. Some of you are probably worried, this really does sound like it makes the game unbalenced. Don't worry, the programmers realized this also. The only way it becomes unbalenced is if you are really good at these combos. If you can do 8-hit combos consistantly, then you will have the advantage. But if you are that good, you should have a leg up.

Ok, it has great gameplay. But as we all know, most RPG fans would gladly sacrifice a great gameplay idea for a better story (Sometimes I think I'm the only gameplay fan left, but enough of my whining). Fortunately, neither where sacrificed in VS. As with Final Fantasy Tactics, the story is based entirely on suspense. You know there is a dark plot in the works, but you have no idea of what it is. Just when you think you have an idea of what's going on, a few new characters are thrown in and add new pieces to the puzzle. I'm not finished yet, so I don't know exactly how it ends, but it seems to me that you won't really have a firm grasp on the whole thing until you've beaten the game at least twice, the same way that FFT was. But with FFT, you could go back and review scenes from earlier in the game, you can't with this. Oh well, you'll just have to play through it several times, beileve me you won't mind.

The only thing left is the sound. Basic attacks and spells sounds are kinda run of the mill. Impressive, but nothing that we haven't already seen on the PSX before. The music during the intro FMV is very nice, but the rest of the music doesn't stand out. Now you may be thinking that sound was sacrificed. It wasn't! VS does something I don't think I've ever seen a PSX RPG do before, it has absolutely fantastic ambient sounds. Zombies wailing in the distance, monsters gnashing thier teeth, realstic sounds with no visible orgin that let you know they are out there. It does wonders to create the atmosphere. It's really a shame more PSX RPGs don't use this.

I hope this gives you a good idea of what Vagrant Story is like. I think it's a strong contender for the best game on the PSX. Although it's may have a hard time beating Tetris as my favorite game of all time :-P. If you consider yourself an RPG fan, you should definitely go out and get this game. Even if you just sorta like them, you should buy it. Fans of other genres should at least rent it. This is one of those games that everyone needs to play. It's like Metal Gear Solid, even if you don't usually like action games, you still had to play it, everyone had to play it. Trust me (a complete stranger, I know) you will only be hurting yourself if you skip this one.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/18/00, Updated 05/18/00