Greenpanda
Banned
I guess it's a bit silly to post impressions of a 4-year-old game, but I think at least a fair number of posters here had generally favorable views of Vagrant Story, so I thought people might be up for discussing it again. Apologies if this isn't the best conversation starter; my posting presence is normally limited to replying to Dragon Quarter and Megaten threads; I never start threads with long impressions like this!
I picked up Vagrant Story not too long after it came out, played probably 75% of it, got stuck at a puzzle in the Temple of Kiltia, and quit. Well, I've been trying to finish up a few uncompleted games before the fall onslaught begins, so I started up Vagrant Story again and played through to the finish this time around.
I actually remembered the game reasonably well despite the intervening years, so I cruised through without too much trouble. Overall, I liked the game a lot; it seems like it was sort of the inspiration for BoF Dragon Quarter, which is great since I love BOFDQ. But while Vagrant Story was probably awesome tops at what it did when it first came out, I think it's a little overshadowed by Dragon Quarter now - DQ has just more strategy to it. i.e., in Vagrant Story you can chain your attacks together in pretty much any order, but in DQ the order actually matters for doing more damage (and thus getting more Party XP).
Of course, I'm sure I was at a huge advantage in Vagrant Story since I remembered so much of the game. I knew, for instance, to cast Magic Ward whenever the harpies come out, and I remembered how the principles of how to upgrade your stuff in the workshop (bronze+iron = Hagane, etc.).
But, I still had fun with the game. Even though a lot of the combat boils down to just matching up affinities, there was a reasonable amount of variety within the game: the Snowfly Forest had a maze, the mines had that timed sequence, the Cathedral put the emphasis on platforming, etc. And, yeah, the fighting is ultimately justrock-paper-scissors, but the fact that your rock and scissor (that is, your beast weapon, dragon weapon etc.
) were only such because you'd built them over time meant it was still pretty satisfying: you were invested in your arsenal. It's more interesting than just slapping down the correct elemental spell as in a lot of games, at any rate.
Also, I especially enjoyed the block puzzles and wish there could have been a few more of them; they didn't really start in earnest until 2/3rds of the way through the game. I always enjoy a good puzzle, but I thought Vagrant Story's were really well-done. Almost all of them entailed used the different block types (sliding block, magnetic blocks, etc.) in new and creative ways that you had to figure out. It wasn't so much a matter of working out complex patterns of block-pushing in your head (though I'd still like that, just not as much ) but of thinking creatively about new ways to use and interact with the blocks.
And, obviously, the game's production values can't be beat; the game still looks good (especially areas like the sunset-lit cliff in the Cathedral - and I can't believe they rendered a whole city street just for one scene in the ending!) 4 years after it came out. Sure, the textures could have a higher resolution or whatever on the PS2, but the art direction and cinematography are so well-done that you pay attention to then and not the pixels on Ashley's back.
And, yeah, translation is fantastic, etc. etc. I think the story would have worked a bit better if they had integrated more into the game, though: a lot of the story scenes are just visions that Ashley has via Callo and isn't personally involved with. Stuff happens with Guildenstern and Sydney, and meanwhile Ashley is looking for keys and sigils, basically. Even just putting Ashley closer to the action would have happened: there was one scene where he listens in to Guildenstern and Samantha talking, and that's a more interesting of way of divulging information than random visions of Hardin expositing. And if they'd integrated the story into the game more, that probably would have also made for more variety in the action: I liked the one boss battle where Ashley and Sydney teamed up to fight Grissom, and putting Ashley into the story more could have made for scenarios like that.
So I had a lot of fun with the game. I can't buy into the "it's too hard!"/"too complex" criticisms - I thought it was a bit too simplistic - but I suppose most of the people griping about that sort of thing were casual fans who just bought VS because it says "Square" on the box. And the menu system isn't really awkward at all; most of the common commands can be accessed with the L2 shortcut menu. And once you memorize that, say, L2+Triangle goes to your heal spells, you can go right to certain commands . It would have been nice to have a shortcut for equipping, though.
I know there's a number of areas you can't get until your second playthrough, so I'm probably going to try to do that before Katamari Damashi, Shin Megaten, Shadow Hearts, etc. start coming out
I picked up Vagrant Story not too long after it came out, played probably 75% of it, got stuck at a puzzle in the Temple of Kiltia, and quit. Well, I've been trying to finish up a few uncompleted games before the fall onslaught begins, so I started up Vagrant Story again and played through to the finish this time around.
I actually remembered the game reasonably well despite the intervening years, so I cruised through without too much trouble. Overall, I liked the game a lot; it seems like it was sort of the inspiration for BoF Dragon Quarter, which is great since I love BOFDQ. But while Vagrant Story was probably awesome tops at what it did when it first came out, I think it's a little overshadowed by Dragon Quarter now - DQ has just more strategy to it. i.e., in Vagrant Story you can chain your attacks together in pretty much any order, but in DQ the order actually matters for doing more damage (and thus getting more Party XP).
Of course, I'm sure I was at a huge advantage in Vagrant Story since I remembered so much of the game. I knew, for instance, to cast Magic Ward whenever the harpies come out, and I remembered how the principles of how to upgrade your stuff in the workshop (bronze+iron = Hagane, etc.).
But, I still had fun with the game. Even though a lot of the combat boils down to just matching up affinities, there was a reasonable amount of variety within the game: the Snowfly Forest had a maze, the mines had that timed sequence, the Cathedral put the emphasis on platforming, etc. And, yeah, the fighting is ultimately justrock-paper-scissors, but the fact that your rock and scissor (that is, your beast weapon, dragon weapon etc.
) were only such because you'd built them over time meant it was still pretty satisfying: you were invested in your arsenal. It's more interesting than just slapping down the correct elemental spell as in a lot of games, at any rate.Also, I especially enjoyed the block puzzles and wish there could have been a few more of them; they didn't really start in earnest until 2/3rds of the way through the game. I always enjoy a good puzzle, but I thought Vagrant Story's were really well-done. Almost all of them entailed used the different block types (sliding block, magnetic blocks, etc.) in new and creative ways that you had to figure out. It wasn't so much a matter of working out complex patterns of block-pushing in your head (though I'd still like that, just not as much
) but of thinking creatively about new ways to use and interact with the blocks.And, obviously, the game's production values can't be beat; the game still looks good (especially areas like the sunset-lit cliff in the Cathedral - and I can't believe they rendered a whole city street just for one scene in the ending!) 4 years after it came out. Sure, the textures could have a higher resolution or whatever on the PS2, but the art direction and cinematography are so well-done that you pay attention to then and not the pixels on Ashley's back.
And, yeah, translation is fantastic, etc. etc. I think the story would have worked a bit better if they had integrated more into the game, though: a lot of the story scenes are just visions that Ashley has via Callo and isn't personally involved with. Stuff happens with Guildenstern and Sydney, and meanwhile Ashley is looking for keys and sigils, basically. Even just putting Ashley closer to the action would have happened: there was one scene where he listens in to Guildenstern and Samantha talking, and that's a more interesting of way of divulging information than random visions of Hardin expositing. And if they'd integrated the story into the game more, that probably would have also made for more variety in the action: I liked the one boss battle where Ashley and Sydney teamed up to fight Grissom, and putting Ashley into the story more could have made for scenarios like that.
So I had a lot of fun with the game. I can't buy into the "it's too hard!"/"too complex" criticisms - I thought it was a bit too simplistic - but I suppose most of the people griping about that sort of thing were casual fans who just bought VS because it says "Square" on the box. And the menu system isn't really awkward at all; most of the common commands can be accessed with the L2 shortcut menu. And once you memorize that, say, L2+Triangle goes to your heal spells, you can go right to certain commands . It would have been nice to have a shortcut for equipping, though.
I know there's a number of areas you can't get until your second playthrough, so I'm probably going to try to do that before Katamari Damashi, Shin Megaten, Shadow Hearts, etc. start coming out