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 (One man's epic struggle to obtain the most ludicrous haircut ever in RPGs)
CLASSIC GAMING
Vagrant Story
Developer: Squaresoft
Publisher: Squaresoft
Year: 2000
Genre: RPG
System: Playstation
Everyone knows about Final Fantasy. Even your grandparents who didn't even touch a Pong machine know about Final Fantasy to the point that it exists. We all know it, and either love it or hate it, like Marmite, Dr. Pepper and Halo.
But there's another side to Final Fantasy that less people know about, and those who do lament the fact it is not as well known despite its somewhat more impressive take on storytelling than its mainstream equivalent.
Dear friends, I speak of the Ivalice series, of the Final Fantasy Tactics series that has now blended into mainstream with the coming of Final Fantasy XII. But even that has a dark side. Come with me, into the dark shadows of a town faraway called Lea Monde...and I shall show you what lurks within the deepest of forgotten worlds.
Story - Ivalice, as always, is consumed within civil war. But here we deal with the kingdom of Valendia, where an attack was set upon Duke Bardoba's manor in the Graylands, and his son was kidnapped by the religious cult Mullenkamp, led by the charismatically strong Sydney Losstarot. You are Ashley Riot, part of the Valendia Knights of Peace (the VKP) and amongst one of several members in the militant division known as "Riskbreakers".
Upon confronting Sydney, the cult leader escapes to a forbidden city known as Lea Monde, which had been destroyed and sunken into the ground by an earthquake 25 years before. But the journey for Ashley is arduous, and filled with terrifying creatures that he only believed existed in fairytales, yet Sydney's strange powers and wielding of grimoires seem to be able to concoct all sorts of monsters from the walls of Lea Monde's stricken past. With an objective in mind he traverses deeper within even in the face of other enemies such as the Crimson Blades, holy rivals in his objective.
 (That's not a dragon)
Graphics - How shall I say this gently.....it's Playstation graphics in 2000. What do you expect? The humans are pointy like hedgehogs and the walls and floors are practically plastered with Animal-Crossing style wallpaper layouts of brick and mortar. But at least the characters move pretty nicely, and they don't have pipe cleaners for arms like in Final Fantasy VII. The monsters are in their element here to look frightening with their pixellated sharpness, especially the dragons.
Seriously, you are going to shit yourself at your first dragon, and I mean DRAGON, not that wounded wyvern at the start of the game, he's the freaking tutorial boss. Regardless of how the humans look, everything else looks pretty good, even if the game looks very rough and pointed in its design, if only to allow an environment more physically navigable.
Gameplay - Now that we've gotten past the whoel civil war/kidnapping/unholy summonings story that might be par for the course in Ivalice, let's get into the gameplay, one of the biggest attractions or turn-offs to the game. Vagrant Story takes on a rather interesting system that's rather unusual in Square's usual RPG dynamics. Firstly, Ashley can run AND jump AND push crates around to navigate throughout the labyrinthine Lea Monde, which already means this is a dungeon crawler, with the occasional block puzzle so I hope you guys enjoy that now and again to break the flow. There are also save points and storage chests similar to those in Resident Evil to offload materials.
 (THAT'S a dragon!)
In battle, Ashley has a spherical wire frame around him to show the range of his attacks and also to target individual body parts. It's like VATS from Fallout 3 except with limited range. Course Ashley at first can only make a single attack per time frame, but later on he can obtain Chain Abilities, where the battle takes on a guise like a rhythm-based game that you can fully control. When an ! appears above Ashley's head, you can initiate a Chain Ability to continue attacking the enemy, and then another and another until you want to change strategies or the opponent dies or you fuck up your timing.
This isn't the only thing he can learn as Ashley can also learn Defensive Abilities that allow him to block or counter moves from enemies when they attack him, similar to the Mario RPGs. Finally there are the Break Arts, which are powerful moves that cost a bit of HP to perform but increase damage. There are several Break Arts per form of weaponry from longswords to crossbows to your own bare hands.
Of course where would combat be without weapons though? Well across the game you obtain a variety of weapons of all lengths, all of which are random in every playthrough concerning what they are and what their element is. And here is the biggest part of the game itself. Weapons crafting.
Let's get this out of the way right now. If you want to enjoy Vagrant Story, you need to be a finickety son of a bitch and get weapons crafting down as much more than just a gimmick, but as probably the only way you are ever gonna finish this game, something I should have learnt when I was 13.
 (Who's ready for INVENTORY!?!)
Occasionally in your travels through Lea Monde, you'll find abandoned workshops perfect for crafting weaponry which involves either building them from scratch using various parts, dismantling them to replace other parts or naming and renaming weapons, which is actually pretty fun when you can have a huge-ass sword called THE MOTHERFUCKER OF ALL SWORDS, if they allowed that much of a text limit that is.
The main reason why you want to be good at crafting in this game, is because of the fact that each and every weapon has three things to consider. The material, the affinity and the class. It goes quite technical into a D&D level here. The affinity is the elemental alignment of your weapon. That is, whether it's of the fire element, water element, air, dark, light, etc, so naturally fire sword beats water demon easier, you get the idea.
Class is what type of creature the weapon affects best, ranging in a variety of creatures from Beast (wolves and bats), Evil (unholy physical devils), Human, Phantom, Dragon and Undead. Finally, and this is the part that makes or breaks it for some, the Material. There are three kinds of materials being Blunt, Edged or Piercing.
Now imagine you're facing a dragon, a big dark green bastard of a gateblocker. Your weapon is fire element. Check, the dragon is weak to it. Your weapon is strong against Dragons, check. Your weapon is blunt.....no dice. With the addition of these three classifications, weapons can become quite useless if, despite having the right affinity and element, your weapon isn't quite the right material in handling a beast this size, and will not be as effective as it would be.
The Material is what matters the most here, so this game becomes something of a wet dream for those who grew up on Dungeons and Dragons crafting their skills to absolute all-round balanced perfection. Now to some people this is a very inventive deep system that allows a wonderful range of customisation over your weapons, something that barely any other game ever does.
To others, it's an overcomplicated mess of statistics you don't want to give a fuck about. I don't mind the affinities or the elements BUT WHY SHOULD MR DRAGON OVER THERE GIVE A FLYING FUCK THAT I HAVE A MACE INSTEAD OF A SWORD WHEN IT THROBS WITH THE SPILT AND RUINED BLOOD OF HIS KIND!!?!?
Oh and finally, you can only alter certain weapons and certain materials in DIFFERENT workshops. Have fun!
 (Oh look, a flame troll. Let's poke him!)
Aaaanyways, there's also magic which you learn from Grimoires that enemies occasionally drop or that you find in chests across the city. Once you use a Grimoire, you learn the spell for keeps and use MP in order to use said spell to heal, create status effects, attack, and manipulate your own affinities and elemental resistance. Magic spells can also hit multiple targets unlike your physical weapon.
Finally, one other unique gameplay element to cover in Vagrant Story, is Risk. Ashley, being a Riskbreaker, has to undertake some seriously risky business and as such, he has a Risk Bar which increases in Risk Points.
As you gain more of these by being hurt or attacking a combo onto an enemy, your defence and accuracy will go down in exchange for your power and health recovery. It's essentially Ashley's adrenaline levels, which also increase with Chain or Defensive Abilities, but not with Break arts.
Music/Sound - For me, this is the greatest strength of Vagrant Story. Hitoshi Sakimoto, longtime composer of the Tactics series and Final Fantasy XII, continues to stay true to his homeland of Ivalice with a magnificently dark ambient soundtrack ranging from abandoned churches to submerged marketplaces to clashes against demon-possessed suits of armour and fire spirits.
Every new area has its own atmosphere, every new boss has its own theme, giving each and every depth of Lea Monde its own audially sinister history to lament to. It is truly one of his finest soundtracks in its variety of ambience and monstrous confrontations.
 (Warning: This game contains scenes of extreme pseudo-Britishness)
So....we have reached the end of the tunnel, back out into the light. How do you feel about catching yourself a whisper of the dead air that winds through Lea Monde? Does it chill you? Thrill you? Still your heart?
Then whatever choice you make, it always lies there in wait, a dark little etching in the history of Ivalice, forgotten by many souls, free in their lives to carelessly control their bodies like puppets, to deceive and despise men. Should you ever wish to visit this dark dark city.....I do hope you're now prepared.
Fun and Innovation - 4
Replayability - 4
Gameplay - 3
Presentation - 4"Videogames are bad for you? That's what they said about rock 'n' roll." - Shigeru Miyamoto  Hail Slither, The Eternal Champion!
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Mmm. This made me think of Chrono Cross. Crazy how the story worked with so many possible characters in your group. It's too bad I simply can't stand the older graphics... CC, FF7/8.. I'd love to play those again but just can't get into them now.
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