Hi, everybody. I hope you had a wonderful 2023, and thank you for sticking with my little JRPG blog. If you’re reading this around the time of publication, you might be thinking, “Hey, it’s already 2024. You’re late!”
And you would be correct. However, as usual, I’ve been playing all the games on my list, just not writing about them. (Hah! Imagine that.) To make it up to yall, I’ll be releasing my retrospectives for the final three months of 2023 over the next week, followed by January’s write-up.
Without further ado, it’s time to talk about…
September’s game: Parasite Eve
November’s game: Fire Emblem Gaiden
I’m glad I’m discussing Vagrant Story right after Parasite Eve. It’s a spiritual successor of sorts to that game—or perhaps “mechanical successor” describes it better, since as far as I can tell, a different internal team at Square made it, yet they clearly iterated on Parasite Eve’s real-time-with-pause combat. Once again, enemy encounters turn wherever you are on the map into a battlefield you can roam freely, where the distances between you and your foes matter. Only this time, the formula works much better.
Part of that’s due to the more-or-less traditional medieval setting, which naturally lends itself better to this style of combat. Parasite Eve’s guns and “mitochondria powers” were OK, but Vagrant Story’s happy to give you all kinds of short- to long-ranged swords, bows, spears, and other weapons to choose from, as well as a litany of spells, ranging from healing to buffs to damage. Fantasy just fits RPGs; it’s where the concept got its start, after all, and it’s one reason I naturally gravitate more toward Vagrant Story’s ilk than Parasite Eve’s.
But it’s Vagrant Story’s final improvement that pushes its combat past its predecessor: the addition of timed button presses when attacking and defending. It’s the former that matters most, since if you take full of advantage of the game’s mechanics, you shouldn’t be on the receiving end of many attacks. Similar to the various Mario RPGs, if you press the button just as your attack lands, you’ll get a bonus, but unlike those games, the bonus is another follow-up attack, which you can chain infinitely. That’s right, though it ain’t easy (not for me and my slow fingers, anyway), and I typically didn’t make it past 8 hits on a good combo.
To shake up the formula even more, you’re not just attacking over and over; you need to cycle through any of three offensive skills you’ve got equipped, which can dish out all sorts of effects. Usually I stuck with the damage-dealing ones, but those that steal MP or health also proved useful throughout the game. It’s fun experimenting: enemy spellcasters tended to annoy the crap out of me with their powerful magic or constant buffs, so hitting them with a quick combo that includes Silence would leave them defenseless. Plus, there’s a ton of other options available that seemed like they’d be useful for play styles other than mine—a good sign in any RPG.
Combat isn’t as simple as timing button presses, however. Vagrant Story also features a rather in-depth strength/weakness system with three tiers to it. Both enemies and your gear have a class, affinity, and type, with type having the most impact on damage and class the least. This ain’t a game you can stumble your way through: unless you understand how these mechanics work, you’ll either immediately get your butt whooped, or you’ll be in for a very slow grind. Don’t do that to yourself. Going out of your way to analyze enemies saves enormous amounts of time in a game that’s already slow enough. (More on that later.)
The game offers incredibly deep weapon customization; too deep, in fact. Certain rooms act as workshops, where you can combine two pieces of gear or two weapons to form another. That may sound cool, but there’s no real way to fully understand how this “combining” works or how to get the good stuff without hours of experimentation or looking it up. I didn’t bother much with either of these; instead I’d combine stuff I wasn’t using and hope it gave me something good. If not, no sweat. In the end, having the most powerful weapons isn’t essential, since class, affinity, and type influence damage far more than raw stats, making me question why the alchemy system was included in the first place. It introduces a lot of tedious menuing that ultimately detracts from the fun, since you don’t get much out of it.
Thankfully, Vagrant Story does not lack for enemy variety, and you’ll constantly need to switch weapons or otherwise change your strategy just to survive. Sometimes that means running past as many enemies as possible, Resident Evil style, as, while combat is often required to advance, you’ll be doing plenty of backtracking, during which there’s no reason to fight. You do get experience, but it doesn’t go toward your stats—stats get raised through equipment and by playing a simple little slot reel minigame after boss fights. Instead, XP goes toward learning the combat abilities I talked about earlier. Here’s the catch: once you’ve got the most useful attacking abilities, which can be attained very early on, you don’t need the rest. Sure, they may be nice to have for certain bosses, but there’s no reason whatsoever to grind in Vagrant Story. Instead, you should explore. Rather than spending hours building the perfect weapon, go look for the likely several chests you missed that hold better stuff. This is the real meat of the game and where most of the fun lies.
There’s no central towns or hub areas; Vagrant Story’s world is laid out Metroid-style, where you can backtrack to previous areas at any time, and you’ll often need to do so after getting keys or other items. If you know me, this kind of game structure is right up my alley, and Vagrant Story absolutely nails it. Upon entering a new area, unfamiliar enemy types seem unyielding and terrifying as you slowly creep around, learning their weaknesses and steadily adjusting your load-out to accommodate. It’s almost like playing a horror game at times; again, I get heavy Resident Evil vibes from the whole thing. But the best part is that once you understand the level layouts, find all the shortcuts, and know how to obliterate every enemy in a few hits, it’s rewarding as hell to run through an area you’ve now conquered, cleaning up chests and other loot while wreaking havoc on baddies you previously feared. At least for me, Vagrant Story lets you reach a “flow state” unmatched by few JRPGs, because most JRPGs don’t ask much from the player in defeating normal enemies in the first place. In Vagrant Story, bosses are often the least of your worries—save points are scarce, and just making it to the next one can be far more difficult than any boss encounter due to a plethora of nasty enemies. From bitch-made bats that snipe at you from high above to mage knights who love repeatedly boosting their comrades’ strength while walling your attacks, there’s nothing more satisfying than finally finding—or making—a weapon that thrashes them.
Vagrant Story also excels at its worldbuilding and exploration, taking you to every corner of the gothic-drenched medieval city of Leá Monde. The game’s set in the same world as Final Fantasy Tactics, called Ivalice, later used as the setting of Final Fantasy XII as well. I haven’t played Tactics, and it’s been over a decade since I played XII, so I can’t say I recognized any references here, but I can confirm Vagrant Story stands on its own: you don’t need any not prior knowledge of its world to appreciate it, or at least, I didn’t. It would hardly matter, anyway, since this is a story focused squarely on Ashley, our protagonist, and the city in which he pursues his target. Ashley works as a sort of royal medieval cop-knight, sent to investigate a duke who’s suspected to be in league with a mysterious cult called Mullenkamp. Without spoiling anything, shit goes sideways, and Ashley must pursue the cult’s mysterious leader, Sydney, through tunnels, streets, mines, gardens, and underground labyrinths, all while evading the Crimson Blades, another royal faction that ostensibly should be on Ashley’s side.
Vagrant Story gets a lot of praise for its, well, story, and I have to agree, with one caveat—if the characters didn’t speak in their British-theater-esque “ye olde English” style, I’m not sure it would be quite as fondly remembered. (Though, I do wish all JRPGs would go with this style; it makes everything feel more epic.) It’s an intricate, well-told story with lots of complex characters and surprising twists, yet I can’t help but think it gets higher praise than it deserves for the simple fact that it’s got a bunch of references to Shakespeare, such as a character named Rosencrantz, or—and I shudder at this one—Romeo Guildenstern. Yeah, seriously. That’s the kind of ham-fisted reference I roll my eyes at.
Still, I get it. This is one of those cult classic games fans love to “lore hunt” for, analyzing every supplemental material and developer interview; diving into all the historical, mythological, and religious references the game makes; and piecing it all together to create a masterpiece. If that’s you, and you completely disagree with me on the story, I respect that. For example, I’d be willing to bet there’s some interesting connection between the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this game and their namesakes from Hamlet, or possibly even their supposed real-life inspirations. I’m sure that’s fascinating stuff, but I’m just not into analyzing games so deeply from a lore perspective anymore. Give me great gameplay, and all I need is for the story to keep both interested in the moment and wanting to reach the next area. Vagrant Story easily achieves that.
So, everything sounds pretty dandy, right? Vagrant Story’s a stone-cold classic. One of the best RPGs on PlayStation, maybe even one of the best games ever. That’s what I’ve always heard, anyway. But I cannot agree, for two gutting reasons. One, it takes forever to do anything in a menu in this game, and two, you have to use menus a lot in Vagrant Story. If only one of these were true, I probably wouldn’t complain at all—old game is old, right? Not a big deal. But the fact that the game is so goddamn menu heavy, I’ve got no choice but to mention it, and not just mention it but complain hard.
It really does suck, because there’s no way to defend how sluggish and unresponsive menus are. Presumably, this isn’t some intentional design choice that snooty modern reviewers happen to find outdated in retrospect; it’s evidently an unfortunate trade-off the devs at Square had to make for the game to look as good and play as well as it does. While I won’t criticize them for that choice, since we might have gotten a completely different game otherwise, there’s no denying it lessens my enjoyment of the experience. In a shorter action game, this is something I can and do overlook, but in an RPG many players would spend 40+ hours with, it’s a big problem. Vagrant Story all but demands you spend hours moving weapons, gear, and items between your limited inventory and storage boxes, and it’s not as if there’s any lack of stuff to manage. You’ve got not only swords but sword hilts and blades, separate items you can only hold so many of. That’s not to mention all the other types of weapons and gear beyond just swords, all with limited inventory capacity. Worse, if you’ve got a full inventory, there’s no way to leave an item in a chest once you’ve found it. You’ve either got to discard it or swap it for something else, a decision no player wants to make-hence all the item management you’ll be doing in workshops.
To anyone who excuses this “inventory sludge” as a fact of life during the PS1 era, I call nonsense. Even in the year 2000, it’s not as if this kind of slowness was standard. Games for the Nintendo 64, love it or hate it, did not often suffer from this problem, thanks in large part to their fast-read cartridges, but at the same time, nor did many competitors on the PlayStation. Something about Square’s RPGs on the console leave a lot to be desired in terms of speed in what I can only presume is a sacrifice on the altar of visual fidelity. While some players might be able to overlook these flaws when judging a game’s overall quality, I can’t. Vagrant Story’s just held back too much by its horrendously slow UI, leading me to feel I could never rank it among the greats. That’s no damning criticism, however; it’s certainly worth a playthrough for any RPG enthusiast, and I had a ton of fun with it regardless.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for November’s JRPG, Fire Emblem Gaiden (a.k.a., Fire Emblem 2), coming very soon!
