Vagrant Story

"One of the best games ever"

This is, without a doubt, Square's year. It started with the incredible Front Mission 3, will continue with such soon-to-be hits Legend of Mana, Threads of Fate, Chrono Cross, Parasite Eve 2, and will culminate in the release of Final Fantasy 9 in Japan. However, in the midst of all the FFIX and Chrono Cross hype, a lot of people seem to have forgotten Vagrant Story. At first it seemed interesting, as I learned more I wanted it badly, and after I found out everything you could do with the item and battle systems it easily became my most wanted game. Finally, when the game arrived, I was there the very first day to pick it up. At the opening FMV sequence, you an tell this game will be something special. The full 15 minute, partly playable into, with credits breaking in every 2 or 3 minutes, creates a movie-like atmosphere, and as soon as I destroyed that first dragon, I was absolutely hooked. Vagrant Story is amazing.

Graphics: 10
While this was a little tough to watch at first, it was only because I had been playing Crazy Taxi and Resident Evil: Code Veronica on my Dreamcast for a long while. For Playstation, though, the visuals are unbelievable. I soon started to love the graphics, though the are blocky compared to DC. There is absolutely no slowdown, everyone is extremely detailed (even though the dungeons may be a little bland), and all of the graphics create a great dungeon-crawler atmosphere.

Sound: 10
The sound effects are unmatched, from unsheathing your sword to slicing though a giant dragon to a box disintegrating with a cut from you to wolves' footsteps, square has done it again. The music is very good too, some of the best stuff in a game ever, but still not as good as Xenogears (Or Tony Hawk Pro Skater, for that matter, but that's really a different kind of soundtrack).

Controls: 8
Nothing really bad here, but nothing very noteworthy either. It does seem, however, that sometimes the timing for chain abilities is a little more picky than normal, because they don't want you chaining 100-hit combos. The ability to look around the room in 1st person is well appreciated, tough.

Replay Value: 9
When you beat the game, you get to save one last time, a save with which to start the game over. Using this you can keep all your spells, weapons. armor, etc, along with all your HP, MP, AGL, INT, and STR stats, making it pretty easy.( I killed the first boss in 1 shot) But also, there are special keys to get into special places that can only be accessed the 2nd time around. The main reason I wanted to play though again was the story. There are so many characters and twists and such that I wanted to go back and watch the story unfold all over again, after knowing what happened to everyone. You'll want to play this one over at least 1 more time.

Gameplay: 10
I'm sure you've heard a lot of people talk about this game and say it's boring. That can be true, but only if you're not a real gamer. If you don't like Vagrant Story's gameplay, you fall into one of 3 categories: 1) You don't like games and/or don't play them much, 2) You don't like RPGs, or 3) You're stupid and/or have an extremely short attention span. If you don't consider yourself one of those 3, you'll probably really like, if not absolutely love Vagrant Story. While it seems to be much the same, crawling from dungeon to dungeon, slaying monster after monster, I never lost intrest in it. Frankly this could have been a very boring game, if not for the following: A kick-ass combat system, an even better item system, awesome spells, tons of stat-upping bosses, hidden items all over, and a compeltely engrossing story. But I'll start with the combat system. If you've played Parasite Eve, it's sort of like that, with the giant circle going out, showing what you can attack. However, there's waaaaay more than that. First of all, there are any number of body parts to hit on most enemies, some doing more damage but being harder to hit, etc. Then, each weapon has different affinities, as do enemies. For example, if your enemy is a dark dragon, but you have a weapon that has a dark affinity and sucks against dragons, you're not going to be doing much damage. But if you've got a sword imbued with light, and good against dragons, you'll be crushing it. Also, some enemies are better against edged weapons as opposed to blunt or piercing. Then there are even spells that change your weapons' and armor's affinity. So if you're fighting a fire elemental, you can give your weapon water affinity and your armor fire affinity, upping your damage to him and basically negating any damage he does to you. And even then, you have the battle abilities. With good timing, you can continue to chain hits against your opponent, but it does raise your risk. Higher risk means that your accuracy goes down, the damage you take goes up, but your healing increases and your chance of a critical hit goes way up. Sound deep yet? There's still defensive battle abilities, also requiring timing, but when you are attacked, not when attacking. Break arts do more damage than normal attacks, and don't raise risk, but they do drain your own HP. Never in a game before in my life have I ever seen so many options for kicking ass. Also, at a workshop you can meld your weapons together to make new, better ones. Gems can also be attached to weapons and shields to give them special attributes. Wow.
There are very, very few flaws in this game. One point in the game, the snowfly forest, is just infuriating. It's too tough. You can't figure out where you have to go, it's just a pain. Despite all the cool stuff that makes this game so different, occasionally you may get a slight inkling that it's starting to all look the same. But the next time you find a sweet spell or crush a boss and get that HP+5 and new grimore, that feeling will go away really quickly. But as great as all this stuff is, if you're not at least moderately ''hardcore'' you'll probably get bored with this game. You have to really like making new weapons, killing bosses, and new items and all that good stuff. If not, you probably won't want to play through the rest of the awesome story, which I won't spoil for you, but things certainly aren't the way the seem.

Overall: 10
This game is incredible. If you consider yourself a gamer in the least, buy it now. If you don't have a Playstation, buy one, if only to play Vagrant Story. I've spent enough time writing, now I gotta get back to playing this sweet game.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/03/00, Updated 06/03/00