Vagrant Story
Dev:Square Soft
Platform:Play Station
Released: May 2000
Wiki: [link]
Eye Candy:[link]

My Thoughts
Vagrant Story is a work of art, plain and simple. I'm not referring to it's Parasite Eve inspired combat system or it's gigantic crafting system, what I refer to is the game's presentation. Graphically speaking the game is a major accomplishment for it's time [link] , whether it's large dragon models or the environment you're exploring, both the textures and polygonal models [link] in the game are very well done. The cut scenes were notable just for the way dialogue was presented in it's comic book style bubbles [link] And finally the sound of the game, the music composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto (also composed FFXII FFT and more) and with excellent sound effects whether its the ambient sound of running water or the clash of metal, the sound truly adds to the overall game presentation; but on to more pressing matters...

Plot
The basis of Vagrant Story is that you take the role of Ashley Riot, a Risk Breaker (think along the lines of a medieval FBI agent) who is initially sent to investigate a certain Duke's involvement in several matters, primarily the man Sydney Losstarot. What comes of this is a tale of political/religious intrigue which I shall not spoil for you, but one thing if note is the game's constant flash backs to a certain scene in Ashley's life, as the game goes on Ashley 'remembers the event more and more accurately' until what actually happened at this point in time is finally discerned.

Gameplay
Vagrant Story is a 3D real time action RPG, you run and jump along the field of play as do your enemies. Combat however is not your typical RPG combat. When your weapon is drawn and you push the 'attack' button, everything freezes and a sphere appears around Ashley dictating the range of your weapon [link] , of course a spear has a longer range than a dagger etc. If an enemy is within range, and not obstructed by the environment you can then initiate combat and take a swing at that cave bat, now is where things get a little bit exciting. Combat is sort of like a rhythm game such that you can equip 4 different moves to your face buttons, as you swing your weapon if you can hit any of your face buttons you'll combo into that move which have a certain animation with it's own timing for chain comboing. The various moves you equip can do anything from raw damage, to stealing life or decreasing enemy defense, but as your combo gets longer you do less damage and to make things more tricky you also have a 'Risk' meter that goes up as you attack, more Risk means less damage, accuracy etc. There's also a fair selection of magic spells to choose from, so while the game plays like an action RPG, it is truly a strategic game at its core.

The other truly memorable part of the game is it's highly in-depth crafting system. In short you find materials, blades, shafts gems etc. that you combine to form a weapon. Weapons can be made of varying materials from iron to the desired damascus, you can combine different blades of different materials to get new materials and so on. Each weapon can develop a certain affinity for slaying a certain type of foe, ghost, undead, human etc. (killing that type of foe with a weapon gives it XP in that category) and when you combine weapons portions of its XP get combined, so now you may not necessarily want to combine that dragon slaying great axe with that sword to do more raw damage, but considerably less damage to dragons. In short the system can be frustratingly in depth and if you don't have the patience for it, [link] might be your only option, personally I just took a notebook and filled it with notes on weapon combining until I could craft some formidable tools of destruction.

And the last thing you'll remember about this game, whether you want to or not, is the puzzles. Vagrant Story is full of simple to complex jumping, block pushing puzzles which I personally believe to be a great aspect of the game, because without them the game might be nothing more than a strategic hack'n'slash.

Overall
Vagrant Story is a tough game, it can be a complicated game in both story line and game play, but all of it's facets are executed beautifully and deserve at least one play through, (cause let's face it, after you craft that damascus omni-slaying weapon, it's very hard to go back to the iron lizard slaying axe.) In the end though, Vagrant Story is a great game, afterall it's one of very few games to ever receive a perfect score from Famitsu [link]

That's it for #1, I think I might do these on a tri-weekly basis or something, if anyone reads them at least, questions comments concerns?

Too much effort put into this article with not enough people readin it, maybe I'll do another one if I get really bored and don't have any school work to do -_-;