In the year 2000, the world did not end thanks to Y2K, and Squaresoft performed a miracle. They made a game that got a perfect score on Famitsu, back when that meant something. To put this in better perspective, a magazine that has been around since 1986, had only given out two perfect scores before this point. Nintendo's Ocarina of Time and Namco's Soulcalibur. So yeah, it was a tough magazine to please back then. Since 2008 they hand out on average three perfect scores a year and I'm sure most of us would agree that Nintendogs, MGS4, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Battle All-Star are not the first titles to come to mind that represent absolute gaming perfection that every critic loves. So yeah, this was a big deal back then and the game was Matsuno's sophomore effort with Square, Vagrant Story.
Set in Valendia, Vagrant Story is actually a flashback tale concerning the mysterious events surrounding a terrorist attack on a Duke's Manor by a mysterious cult, and the same Duke being assassination a week later under mysterious circumstances. The only person who can truly answer the question is a VKP Agent named Ashley Riot who was put on the mission to deal with the conspiracy but mysteriously disappeared during the mission. The story proper begins when the Cult Mullenkamp attack the Duke's Manor to look for something. Hearing about the attack, the Church send in the Crimson Blades a violent group of soldiers who deal with religious heretics to deal with the group, but darker conspiracies are afoot as the government dispatches their agent Ashley Riot to the scene as well. Ashley is a Riskbreaker, an elite unit among the VKP who deal with Black Ops for the government that are often tantamount to being suicide missions. His partner for the mission is an intelligence officer named Merlose who is new to field work and has never worked with a Riskbreaker before. Ashley encounters the cult's leader, the mysterious and charismatic Sydney Losstarot who brandishes a mysterious power called the Dark. The cult escapes capture along with a hostage in the Duke's son, but Ashley and the Crimson Blades follow them back to the cursed and abandoned city of Lea Monde, where Mullenkamp's religion began. The city is inundated with the power of the Dark and the Ashley and Sydney find themselves in a cat and mouse game that involves the dark secrets of the city, while both avoid the wrath of the Crimson Blades.
Ashley winds up dealing with far more than he thought with killing Sydney and rescuing the hostage. His own past comes back to haunt him thanks to the dark powers of the city which brings to light the things that mankind wishes to remain buried. Soon Ashley begins to doubt who he is and why he is there, all while discovering the darker conspiracies between the Duke, Sydney, the Church and even his own government as everyone races to find the Gran Grimoire of Lea Monde, which will grant the full power of the Dark to whoever wields it.
I think it's safe for me to say that not only is Vagrant Story Matsuno's best written work, despite his usual unfinished nature of most of his games, but it really is his magnum opus. It's easy to gloss over the many layers it brings to the player and the game has a Kojima level skill in making you doubt what you know. Heroes turn out to be villains, villains are secretly heroes of their own stories, and Ashley gets just as badly mind screwed by his superiors and the bad guys as all of the Snakes in the Metal Gear series. What I love about the game is how non-definitive everything kind of is. Part of this is due to the game's rushed development of course, as some plot threads are left unanswered, but it works surprisingly well to leave a lasting impression as you wonder what became of the games cool cast and wonder ho Ashley truly is.
Speaking of that, I'll say again what I usually say about this but I feel Ashley does Cloud's story from VII much better, mainly by remaining ambiguous. You are given a quick backstory to Ashley in the beginning of the game, but soon Sydney and a few other characters begin to offer a different take on what Ashley remembers and it changes your perspective on the character. Is he a tragic figure with nothing else to live for, or a monster who simply lost the taste for blood and brainwashed to still serve his masters. A neat gameplay-story integration is that Ashley doesn't learn abilities, he remembers them, and I will say that the man is a beast. The game does not mince words or pretend that your victories are not some kind of great feat. It would have been nice if someone would say they were impressed you slayed a god in Dark Souls, especially when the fight was well earned.
In retrospect, it's no surprise that games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne are on this list, while it's never been opening admitted, I feel it's safe to say that Vagrant Story was likely an influence on both games, though probably not as much as Berserk, Lovecraft, and King's Field but like those games, Vagrant Story is about a lone warrior braving a dark and labyrinth eldritch location where monster feast on men and the dead do not go quietly into the eternal embrace. To describe VS at best is that it's a Medieval MGS title with the Sci-Fi elements replaced with dark fantasy and light horror elements. The game does a pretty good job of making Lea Monde feel like an unsettling place and a better job encountering monsters and the undead actually feel kind of like an "oh trout" moment. One of my favorite moments in the game is when you encounter a Crimson Blade Sorcerer, who tries to wield the power of the Dark to summon a monster like Sydney does, only for the spell to kill him. Just when you think everything is over, the guy gets back up, reanimated by the power of the Dark, and his spell completes to summon an enchanted suit of armor. which segues into a dual boss battle.
Gameplay is very difficult to describe. VS falls into the same camp as Zelda and incorporates enough elements from other genres in such an equal amount that it's difficult to really pigeonhole the game into one genre. It's a dungeon crawler with a quasi-turn base action RPG battle system in which your weapon choice effects your attack range and you choose a part of the body to attack before using timed button presses to chain together attacks to either kill or at least cripple the enemy. This is all interspersed with block puzzles, light platforming, and heavy weapon crafting. Bosses are huge and dangerous, but even the mooks can destroy you if you're careless or ill prepared for them. In fact, a couple fully outfitted Crimson Blades are generally a bigger threat than some of the bosses in this game.
One of the most controversial elements of the game is the Risk system, something I hated when I first played the game but have honestly grown to really appreciate and love. As your character chains together attacks, his Risk Meter fills up which dramatically reduces his hit rate, lowers his physical and magical resistance, and skyrockets his critical hit rate. What this means is that as the Risk bar fills, you miss more often and are far more susceptible to damage, even being weak enough to get one-shotted by enemies if they land a critical hit that takes all your health. On the other hand, what few attacks you do land will almost always be a critical hit, and your own healing magic will heal more than normal, so it kind of balances out. You're only means of reducing Risk is to let it go down slowly after disengaging from combat mode which can be very risky in battle since your shield is kind of important to your defense, or by consuming limited items that should likely be saved for later battles. Instead the system works best in short spurts as you attack just enough to get a few good hits in without raising your risk too much and then keep your distance until a new opening appears. You could also try doing an infinite chain of attacks and pray the occasional critical hit will kill the creature before you screw up and it murders you. Course timing slightly changes over time and I believe the game actually has a limit before it will automatically make you miss. It's a neat mechanic that adds a lot of tactical value to the game much like Stamina in the Souls series.It also makes you rely more on buffs and debuffs to save your hide as well which are often a 100x more useful than the games few measly attack spells. Weapon crafting is generally more useful as you find shops to build better weapons from the ones you find or pick off enemies, and the mechanic has an incredibly amount of depth I don't wish to repeat. Short version, weapons come in a variety of forms and materials which work more effectively on certain enemy types. As your character battles certain monsters with a weapon, that weapon's effectiveness against said monster increases, but it decreases against other types of monsters. The easiest way to get through the game is to build different weapons to suit different monsters and situations. Build a crossbow to deal with beast types like bats or goblins. Use silver weapons to deal with ghosts and undead. Hammers against Golems and crab monsters etc. etc...
The dungeon crawling aspect also has a slight Metroidvania element going on for it as you will explore the labyrinth corridors that lead to different sections of the city. Sometimes the way forward is blocked by magic seals or locked doors that need keys so you'll have to backtrack to find a new way forward, but it's still pretty exhilarating slowly expanding the city until you reach the Necrohol which is filled with possessed murder dolls, creatures with instant death magic, and the leveled up versions of the Liches. I will admit the map mechanic could be better, and sort of explains why 3D Maps are not much of a thing. Also the Snowfly "wannabe Lost Woods" Forest can go smurf itself. As a late PS1 game, VS is surprisingly still good looking and Yoshida's artstyle really shines through, especially with Sakimoto's soundtrack. In fact it's easy to see some stylistic parallels between this game and the teams work on FFXII. In fact several ideas and visual styles were used for the Final Fantasy game. What's really surprising to know is that despite the few callbacks and references to FFTactics, VS was originally a standalone title. Made most obvious by the fact the Church of the game is specifically mentioned to be Christian. It was made part of the Ivalice series retroactively, but I feel it's a nice touch that several lore aspects of the game ended up having a major impact on XII such as Arcadia being placed in the Valendia region, and the references to the Kildean Faith. I'm almost surprised Lea Monde wasn't named dropped either.
Overall, VS is a pretty sweet experience, a fund and twisting game in both its story and gameplay. It's like nothing else I've ever played and if you love Matsuno's titles you kind of owe yourself to play through this game. It's been slowly climbing my list over the years and every time I do another playthrough, I end up loving it more. Definitely a game I didn't appreciate at the time because I was too blind to see the games excellent design and cool concepts.
Coming up: Doesn't that beat all?
Last edited by Wolf Kanno; 10-06-2017 at 04:37 AM.
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