Vagrant Story
May. 27th, 2013 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroFollowing an “incident” at the Duke’s manor, Riskbreaker Ashley Riot is sent to the ruined city of Leá Monde to hunt down the mysterious Sydney and discover the intentions of the Müllenkamp cult. However, he isn’t the only one moving within the city; and Leá Monde has a life of its own, which means Ashley is unlikely to escape his sojourn unchanged.
In the deepest part of my backlog, there are a few PS1 games that I’ve had for about a decade, that I feel I never really gave a fair shake, or never played to the extent I felt I should. Vagrant Story was one of them—I remember watching the intro, and being intrigued but not being able to get past the battle system’s complexities and never making it past the first area. I mentioned this to my friend Mithrigil, who is extremely fond of the game but significantly more hardcore than I am, and she offered me her New Game Plus save files. So I got to play the game with an overpowered character using custom weapons named after Sengoku Basara in-jokes.
The overall feeling strikes me as “What if Square made a Castlevania game?” (And that isn’t just me—Jethrien came in at one point while I was played and asked if I was playing Castlevania.) Ashley Riot has a lot in common with Soma Cruz, being a vessel for dark powers, being played by both the villains and the heroes (to the extent there are heroes) and discovering the real history of himself and various events as he goes. And the atmosphere of the game screams Castlevania, what with 3D dungeon-crawling through a lot of dank, decrepit castle-ish places fighting assorted classic monsters.
And on that topic, the game is beautiful for the era, and the music conveys the mood very well. In both cases, I give them a lot of credit there. (I don’t think the graphics engine really holds up to modern standards, but then, I don’t think there’s really anything from the PS1 era that does.) The character designs are all out of the Square standard jrpg playbook, what with Ashley having weird cowlicks and barely any shirt (and ass pants), Syndey having white hair and no shirt, and most of the other male characters wearing extremely tight outfits with strategic cutouts. If you like boys, the costume design is pure fanservice.
The game is definitely something you can call an “action rpg”, though the exploration has a bit more action to it than usual—it occurs to me that this (and Parasite Eve, which the system is most similar to) is a bit like an outgrowth of the Secret of Mana system, though that series eventually went in a different direction. You need to dodge and target enemies on the main screen (there’s no fight whoosh) but the type of attack and damage you do (and whether you hit at all) are menu and stats-driven, and you can’t interrupt the monster’s turns once they start attacking or casting spells.
It’s also more of a dungeon-crawler than anything else, as there’s no “home town” or hub to return to. (Though the areas are all interconnected, and by unlocking doors in later areas, you create shortcuts back to earlier ones.) The game is very linear until just after you get the Teleport spell, at which point you can (and must) start backtracking to gather a few treasures with your new keys and sigils. (Unlike Castlevania, new paths are always opened by keys or key items, not accessed via new superpowers.) Irritatingly, the Teleport spell requires more MP the further you go, so you likely have to use it for short hops, pausing each time to let your MP regenerate.
The map system is acceptable, but not great, mostly because it’s broken up oddly and it’s hard to see how areas connect. Castlevania games are usually good about linking all the maps up, either making one big map or having multiple maps that area independent areas connected at a single point. This has you constantly switching back and forth between area maps, which means that even after you get all the keys and unlatch all the doors, it’s a pain to figure out the shortest route from place to place.
Most of the areas make reasonable sense as part of the story, and the idea that the various factions are latching or sealing doors as they go (which, in turn, impedes Ashley and the others) is logical. Except…Snowfly Forest. Never mind that the “lost woods” gimmick is annoying and one of the few things that got me searching for a FAQ. Why the heck is a magical winter forest in the middle of a city, particularly one where the sun shines in a bright summery manner?
As noted, the battle system is similar to Parasite Eve, but notably more complex, as it has body zones you can aim for, timed hits you can activate in combos (including for defense), the “risk” system that decreases your accuracy as you score timed hits, “affinities” your weapons have for certain foes, special attacks that cost HP, and a whole separate magic system. Actually, this has an air of being the “missing link” between Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy Tactics, using elements of the combat systems and atmosphere of the former, and the storytelling style and several graphic effects from the latter.
I give them credit for having status ailments done reasonably for a single-player game, in that there’s no sleep or petrify effect that leaves you completely helpless (as other Square games tend to have issues with). There’s a reasonably variety of effects that seal one of your abilities or debuff you, enough to keep things interesting.
Ashley gets stronger mostly by defeating bosses—doing so gets you “Elixirs” that increase your stats, and random stat increases on top of that. Defeating enemies builds up your weapon affinities against those enemies, but not much else. There’s no XP and no money. Using certain types of weapons repeatedly unlocks special abilities, and killing lots of monsters unlocks the various types of timed hits, but simply killing things doesn’t make Ashley stronger.
Well, unless you take into account some parts of the far-too-complex weapon construction system. You can assemble your own variety of weapons from blades and hilts, and attach jewels to give them affinities against certain foes. Weapons take damage when used (reducing DP) but also absorb energy (increasing PP), and you can repair them at workshops to swap them back. I’m not entirely sure why this is a useful system. In practice, you need six different weapons (for each creature type) and you’re constantly switching between them when you fight different monsters, but they all handle about the same and it’s frustrating to try to assemble new ones. Also, the inventory is tiny relative to the amount of stuff you can collect, particularly when it comes to weapons and armor. Just fully outfitting Ashley means your armor inventory is half full.
Block-pushing puzzles! There are some decent ones, and a couple of frustrating ones, and a few skippable ones. (Through use of the Faerie Wing item, which gives you a little more jump distance and can be used to completely skip several rooms.) They put in a few neat gimmicks, like the fact that Ashley can pull out his weapon and destroy some type of blocks, which is critical to solving several rooms. They also add a system by which you are timed when you subsequently enter a puzzle room and the game records how fast you solved it—or you can turn that off completely, and rooms stay solved permanently.
The fact that this takes place in the same world as Final Fantasy Tactics (and, by extension, FF Tactics Advance, FF Tactics A2, FF12 and Revenant Wings; though that was only established later when those games were made) feels kinda like an afterthought. Lea Monde is unlike anywhere else in Ivalice; the mythology and the magic are different enough that it might as well be a separate world, and there don’t seem to be any places, creatures or people (besides the quotes from Durai and an occasional bit of item flavor text) that overlap. The ending makes it clear that this was supposed to be the prologue or first installment of a series; this is the story of how the “vagrant” came to be wandering. But that story, to my knowledge, was never told or even referenced elsewhere. Did any of the later games ever reference these events or this game at all?
Also like FFT, this is a game of complicated chessmastery and webs of secrets. There are half a dozen different factions working different angles, and that’s not counting the random creatures of the Dark itself. There aren’t nearly as many cutscenes as you would expect, though—they’re a good density for a 10-15 hour NG+ session (which I played), but if you’re playing the game for more than twice that time, I feel like you’d lose track of early points by the time you revisited them. (Even now, I have some trouble connecting all of the pieces and motivations.)
And finally, I love the line about how Ashley fights like an entire brigade. It’s nice that somebody reacts to the fact that one character is tearing through their ranks single-handedly.
Overall: I think I’ll sum this up as “What if Square made a Castlevania game?” because that’s the overall feeling I got from it. The systems are far too complex for my taste, but the web of a plot is fascinating and there are a lot of good ideas. And I’m shocked that no one seems to have done a screenshot Let’s Play of this yet.
In the deepest part of my backlog, there are a few PS1 games that I’ve had for about a decade, that I feel I never really gave a fair shake, or never played to the extent I felt I should. Vagrant Story was one of them—I remember watching the intro, and being intrigued but not being able to get past the battle system’s complexities and never making it past the first area. I mentioned this to my friend Mithrigil, who is extremely fond of the game but significantly more hardcore than I am, and she offered me her New Game Plus save files. So I got to play the game with an overpowered character using custom weapons named after Sengoku Basara in-jokes.
The overall feeling strikes me as “What if Square made a Castlevania game?” (And that isn’t just me—Jethrien came in at one point while I was played and asked if I was playing Castlevania.) Ashley Riot has a lot in common with Soma Cruz, being a vessel for dark powers, being played by both the villains and the heroes (to the extent there are heroes) and discovering the real history of himself and various events as he goes. And the atmosphere of the game screams Castlevania, what with 3D dungeon-crawling through a lot of dank, decrepit castle-ish places fighting assorted classic monsters.
And on that topic, the game is beautiful for the era, and the music conveys the mood very well. In both cases, I give them a lot of credit there. (I don’t think the graphics engine really holds up to modern standards, but then, I don’t think there’s really anything from the PS1 era that does.) The character designs are all out of the Square standard jrpg playbook, what with Ashley having weird cowlicks and barely any shirt (and ass pants), Syndey having white hair and no shirt, and most of the other male characters wearing extremely tight outfits with strategic cutouts. If you like boys, the costume design is pure fanservice.
The game is definitely something you can call an “action rpg”, though the exploration has a bit more action to it than usual—it occurs to me that this (and Parasite Eve, which the system is most similar to) is a bit like an outgrowth of the Secret of Mana system, though that series eventually went in a different direction. You need to dodge and target enemies on the main screen (there’s no fight whoosh) but the type of attack and damage you do (and whether you hit at all) are menu and stats-driven, and you can’t interrupt the monster’s turns once they start attacking or casting spells.
It’s also more of a dungeon-crawler than anything else, as there’s no “home town” or hub to return to. (Though the areas are all interconnected, and by unlocking doors in later areas, you create shortcuts back to earlier ones.) The game is very linear until just after you get the Teleport spell, at which point you can (and must) start backtracking to gather a few treasures with your new keys and sigils. (Unlike Castlevania, new paths are always opened by keys or key items, not accessed via new superpowers.) Irritatingly, the Teleport spell requires more MP the further you go, so you likely have to use it for short hops, pausing each time to let your MP regenerate.
The map system is acceptable, but not great, mostly because it’s broken up oddly and it’s hard to see how areas connect. Castlevania games are usually good about linking all the maps up, either making one big map or having multiple maps that area independent areas connected at a single point. This has you constantly switching back and forth between area maps, which means that even after you get all the keys and unlatch all the doors, it’s a pain to figure out the shortest route from place to place.
Most of the areas make reasonable sense as part of the story, and the idea that the various factions are latching or sealing doors as they go (which, in turn, impedes Ashley and the others) is logical. Except…Snowfly Forest. Never mind that the “lost woods” gimmick is annoying and one of the few things that got me searching for a FAQ. Why the heck is a magical winter forest in the middle of a city, particularly one where the sun shines in a bright summery manner?
As noted, the battle system is similar to Parasite Eve, but notably more complex, as it has body zones you can aim for, timed hits you can activate in combos (including for defense), the “risk” system that decreases your accuracy as you score timed hits, “affinities” your weapons have for certain foes, special attacks that cost HP, and a whole separate magic system. Actually, this has an air of being the “missing link” between Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy Tactics, using elements of the combat systems and atmosphere of the former, and the storytelling style and several graphic effects from the latter.
I give them credit for having status ailments done reasonably for a single-player game, in that there’s no sleep or petrify effect that leaves you completely helpless (as other Square games tend to have issues with). There’s a reasonably variety of effects that seal one of your abilities or debuff you, enough to keep things interesting.
Ashley gets stronger mostly by defeating bosses—doing so gets you “Elixirs” that increase your stats, and random stat increases on top of that. Defeating enemies builds up your weapon affinities against those enemies, but not much else. There’s no XP and no money. Using certain types of weapons repeatedly unlocks special abilities, and killing lots of monsters unlocks the various types of timed hits, but simply killing things doesn’t make Ashley stronger.
Well, unless you take into account some parts of the far-too-complex weapon construction system. You can assemble your own variety of weapons from blades and hilts, and attach jewels to give them affinities against certain foes. Weapons take damage when used (reducing DP) but also absorb energy (increasing PP), and you can repair them at workshops to swap them back. I’m not entirely sure why this is a useful system. In practice, you need six different weapons (for each creature type) and you’re constantly switching between them when you fight different monsters, but they all handle about the same and it’s frustrating to try to assemble new ones. Also, the inventory is tiny relative to the amount of stuff you can collect, particularly when it comes to weapons and armor. Just fully outfitting Ashley means your armor inventory is half full.
Block-pushing puzzles! There are some decent ones, and a couple of frustrating ones, and a few skippable ones. (Through use of the Faerie Wing item, which gives you a little more jump distance and can be used to completely skip several rooms.) They put in a few neat gimmicks, like the fact that Ashley can pull out his weapon and destroy some type of blocks, which is critical to solving several rooms. They also add a system by which you are timed when you subsequently enter a puzzle room and the game records how fast you solved it—or you can turn that off completely, and rooms stay solved permanently.
The fact that this takes place in the same world as Final Fantasy Tactics (and, by extension, FF Tactics Advance, FF Tactics A2, FF12 and Revenant Wings; though that was only established later when those games were made) feels kinda like an afterthought. Lea Monde is unlike anywhere else in Ivalice; the mythology and the magic are different enough that it might as well be a separate world, and there don’t seem to be any places, creatures or people (besides the quotes from Durai and an occasional bit of item flavor text) that overlap. The ending makes it clear that this was supposed to be the prologue or first installment of a series; this is the story of how the “vagrant” came to be wandering. But that story, to my knowledge, was never told or even referenced elsewhere. Did any of the later games ever reference these events or this game at all?
Also like FFT, this is a game of complicated chessmastery and webs of secrets. There are half a dozen different factions working different angles, and that’s not counting the random creatures of the Dark itself. There aren’t nearly as many cutscenes as you would expect, though—they’re a good density for a 10-15 hour NG+ session (which I played), but if you’re playing the game for more than twice that time, I feel like you’d lose track of early points by the time you revisited them. (Even now, I have some trouble connecting all of the pieces and motivations.)
And finally, I love the line about how Ashley fights like an entire brigade. It’s nice that somebody reacts to the fact that one character is tearing through their ranks single-handedly.
Overall: I think I’ll sum this up as “What if Square made a Castlevania game?” because that’s the overall feeling I got from it. The systems are far too complex for my taste, but the web of a plot is fascinating and there are a lot of good ideas. And I’m shocked that no one seems to have done a screenshot Let’s Play of this yet.
