Vagrant Story 
ベイグラントストーリー 「Beiguranto Suto-ri-」
Release Date: February 10th, 2000
Genre: Action RPG
Director: Yasumi Matsuno
Composer: Hitoshi Sakimoto
Writer: Yasumi Matsuno, Akihiko Yoshida (Script/Story)
Developer: Square
This post has been on my mind for years, so brace yourself for some rambling…
Vagrant Story is a game with a fearsome reputation for being hard and for alienating people. However, it converts those who persist and complete it into diehard fans. Given the right circumstances, they evangelise it, talk about its qualities and how it is such an influential game.
I am one of them.
It is an action RPG with a fantasy setting based in the Ivalice part of the Final Fantasy world. That written, it refuses to be bound by expectations of the genre and its connotations of that venerable franchise because its writer and director, the legendary Yasumi Matsuno, crafted his own vision.
Ivalice is a dark and war-torn land where politics, religion, and class divide people.
Players enter this world through dense and deep battle systems.
His games respect players enough to offer them a challenge and a mature story with charismatic characters that probably didn’t pander to focus group testing and market appeals in the way that, say, Final Fantasy XII did with main character Vaan.
Released in 2000, it straddled the grim-dark generic medieval fantasy of Western studios and teenage protagonists on an adventure full of self-discovery from Japan, to offer a story full of magic, murder, monsters, moody music, occasional platforming, box puzzles, and the sort of cinematic storytelling that made it an unforgettable experience. And yet…
Like so many…
I found my first experience with the game was not pleasurable in the least.
Played a year or so after its initial release, I found the combat clunky, the weapon creation bewildering, and understanding the enemy and how to beat them hard.
You can construct swords, hammers and more to tackle a range of human and supernatural enemies. However, if the weapons don’t have the right attributes imbued by magical gems or particular parts, you aren’t going to do much damage. That giant crab with 1000 health points requires a blunt weapon with air affinity. Forget a pointy fire-powered sword. That will only do single-digit damage! And seeing the 1s stack up in a battle that turns into a slog is so disheartening!
Much of my confusion and estrangement from the experience was rooted in the game’s complex crafting and battle systems. My first attempts at understanding them weren’t dedicated enough and the game makes few allowances, offers little in terms of tutorials, and expects the player to experiment to mix and match the right items for each enemy encounter. I wasn’t in the right mind frame to do that hard graft.
You have to understand that this was a random purchase as a teenager at a time when I was playing more arcadey experiences like Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Metropolis Street Racer, and Dead or Alive 2 on the Dreamcast. In terms of RPGs, I was experienced in a range of titles from turn-based Skies of Arcadia to isometric Baldur’s Gate, action RPGs Illusion of Gaia and Zelda, and the wonderfully immersive Shenmue (I love that one to such an extent that I travelled to Yokohama when I lived in Japan). I was resistant to this game which effectively threw an armoury at you and expected you to pick up the pieces and assemble them.
Despite that, Vagrant Story haunted me.
This may sound like an exaggeration but there are so many elements of it that are unforgettable that my mind has jumped to them every so often over the years. The rich atmosphere of the setting, the power of the music, the dark story. What also haunted me was the knowledge that my initial resistance to the game likely stemmed from a short attention span and an unwillingness to experiment with the game’s many deep systems and master what was on offer.
Time and maturity gave me the patience to reattempt the game more than a decade later. That, and jumping into and adoring other Yasumi Matsuno RPGs, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, and Final Fantasy Tactics XII.
Set in the kingdom of Valendia, you play Ashley Riot, a government agent on the trail of a charismatic cult leader named Sydney Losstarot who has connections to a politician. Following the blonde-haired, metal-limbed magic user’s trail leads to the once-mighty-but-now ruined city of Leá Monde, a site of tremendous mystical power that is riven with mythical monsters from golems to dullahans.
Meanwhile, the two characters find themselves in the sights of the Crimson Blades, a religious military force that has descended upon the place because their leader, Romeo Guildenstern, has intentions of harnessing dark powers for himself.
Okay, a solid start but it gets so much better.
The story wrongfoots, the player by having the backgrounds and motivations of the cast become murkier as a Memento-like story of false memories, manipulation by various parties, and betrayals explain how Ashley goes from being a government attack dog to the titular vagrant cut loose by the end of the game.
But it is less about the plot twists and how they build up the character of Ashely and more to do with the vividness of characterisation.
Okay, there are RPG tropes: memory loss/trauma (like in Final Fantasy VII); hidden background/powers (like in Baldur’s Gate), but his character is different from a typical protagonist in the sense that he begins and ends his story as a highly-motivated and professional agent. He will uncover conspiracies and be unwavering in his efforts. As he recovers memories, he gains powers and a new view of the world but underlying all of this is his confidence in himself. Indeed, he’s maybe a tad over-confident as seen in the opening cut scenes.
Click to view slideshow.But that bad-assery, aside from being laugh-out-loud funny, is refreshing and attractive considering the genre is already full of one-note indecisive mopey teens, sexy vixens like Red Sonya or big buff and gruff guys in the vein of Conan the Barbarian. Furthermore, translator Alexander O. Smith gives the dialogue a Shakespearean quality that punches the drama and class up so that the intrigue , threat, and portents, carries a lot more weight.
The other characters are just as developed, multi-faceted, and ultimately engaging. Sydney is an androgynous mechanical antagonist whose duplicity makes him a slippery customer as he alternately aids and hinders Ashley as the two find themselves fighting against the Crimson Blades and Guildenstern who exhibits a cold intelligence, wisdom, as well as the genocidal tendencies of a fundamentalist.
Add into the mix that everyone’s design is cool as hell with their sleek-looking armour or sexy with skin-hugging/baring costumes and androgynous looks created by Akihiko Yoshida and Hiroshi Minagawa’s design. Heck, unlike a lot of games there is even the frisson of genuine sexiness, particularly between Guildenstern and one of his lieutenants, Samantha, in their design, blocking, and the faintest interactions that excel in the art of suggestion rather than the cringe-inducing and more explicit sex scenes in the graphically superior but bland-looking Dragon Age Origins.
People may not think much of PlayStation-era polygons compared to more modern photogrammetry and graphics but the art direction and design of the Vagrant Story‘s characters is just so perfect and the way they move in the game captures the imagination. This is especially felt because the direction favours some of the most kinetic camera movement, with dynamic pans and dolly shots, and distinctive angles to capture the characters in cool poses and relay the atmosphere of the world which is a wondrous place to explore.
As much as this might be a cliché, the setting of Leá Monde is a really evocative setting defined by lots of environmental details bathed with dynamic lighting and colours.
Click to view slideshow.Ashley’s infiltration of the city takes him from the browns and blacks of haunted wine cellars and mausoleums where torches and fireplaces cast a warm glow against the dark. The magic infused undercity, with its magical lamplights, and the Sanctum, where there are shelves and desks full of scrolls, are coloured by turquoise and cyans. Once you get topside you weave in and out of the city streets and misty Snowfly Forest and it all culminates in the cathedral which, fittingly, has the balmy orange rays of a setting sun to guide your ascent to the top and the final battle.
There is a lot of variety on offer and while you do your exploring in the third-person, you come across houses with their shutters hanging open, doors ajar clothes, and flags fluttering. Each of these areas has names like Priests’ Confinement and Hall of Sacrilege. Go inside buildings and shafts of light pierce through gaps and shine upon unmade beds, larders with contents spilled and more that indicate the history of the place. This is all rendered in 3D and easy to navigate thanks to excellent camera controls but the developers also allow players the treat of viewing this detailed and beautifully illustrated world through a first person camera. You can admire the environmental storytelling, spot logically placed resources such, as weapons chests in armouries and stat-boosting wines in cellars, and these come with a helping of lore that gives life to the world and keeps you plugged into the atmosphere which is given a surge of life by the music and sound effects.
Again, this may sound like an exaggeration but the music, once heard, is unforgettable. It is composed by the legendary Hitoshi Sakimoto, a collaborator on Matsuno’s other games, and his compositions run the gamut of percussion-heavy James Bondian spy thrillers to bombastic actioners suggestive of blaring trumpets and sweeping strings fit for battling knights and golems and the synth-infused choral singing that chills the soul as you climb through the Sanctum’s cloisters. The pieces that everyone always mention are heard in the Workshop and Ashley’s recollections, beautiful works that stir the emotion and remain lodged in the memory. Add to this that the sound effects potent – the difference between stepping on cobblestones and grating, the heavy crushing thump of a mace blow to flesh, the shikk of swords being pulled and the krish of metal on metal and the vision for this fantasy world is potent and enthralling and so it is no surprise that it makes such an unforgettable impression.
And we come back to the combat, that part that initially put me off. Like, say, Persona 3, the game throws A LOT of equipment, items, magic, and combat mechanics your way. On top of that, there is a weapon upgrade tree that is long-winding and sinuous as it takes in different materials that can be scavenged from a wide variety of places.
When you go into a workshop, you will spend hours breaking down weapons to rebuild them into powerful forms. Maybe that is why the iconic Factory song is engraved in my memory but it provides the perfect accompaniment for the endless experimentation to create new and more potent weapons.
Magic is simpler, more of a fire and forget. Once out in the field, it is up to the player to “level the weapons” by using particular ones on particular enemies. That, and ensuring the right “anti-monster” parts are inserted so they can deal more damage. Experimentation. An awareness of elemental affinities that creates a rock-paper-scissors pattern. This necessitates scrolling through menus and many players complain about this but menu surfing is a part of every RPG and no worse here.
Once out in the field, that menu surfing continues as you use magic to buff yourself and debuff your enemies and analyse them to figure out where their weak spots are. This creates a stop-start flow to the combat which some find off-putting as they go from jumping to selecting a cascade of options to figure out where to swing a sword.
Click to view slideshow.I for one found it quite intuitive once I got enough practice and there is a lot of freedom to engage in fights, keep on trucking through levels, and improvise on the fly in battles as enemy encounters encouraged me to make use of items in my inventory and break with my usual miserliness when it comes to using resources like magic and potions and saving them. In one boss encounter, I made use of the platforming elements to avoid fighting in an arena and scale the walls just to avoid enemy attacks. It was funny to pull it off and I relished throwing myself around the various location and into different encounters as I finally mastered the game and its systems.
Anyway, this has gone on long enough and I haven’t gone into too much depth on combat but once you’ve got the knack, it becomes second nature and quick but it requires dedication. People who complain about it are quietly revealing that they have that limited attention span I once had. Now I fly through the game in different playthroughs, something I rarely do with other games.
This is one of my absolute favourites, one of the reasons why I rate Yasumi Matsuno and Hitoshi Sakimoto as two of my favourite creatives (who I will write about again) and one of the reasons I am raving about this game with this post.
I’m tempted to rewrite this to make it shorter and punchier. If you made it all the way through, thanks for reading and I hope you can enjoy the game.