I’m not really a great fighter. The karate lessons and kickboxing training didn’t really translate to real life fighting skills for me. Thankfully, I am a pretty peaceful person and have never felt the need to instigate a fight with someone. That said, it takes two to tango and I’m gonna try to defend myself if push comes to shove, y’know? One day at recess when I was in the second grade, two fifth graders I didn’t know (a boy and a girl) walked up to me and began calling me names and pushing me around. I don’t remember all the details, but I remember their issue with me being something dumb — they didn’t like that I was bad at soccer or something. They pushed me backwards into the shaded, woody parts of the schoolyard, where it would be harder for the teachers to keep an eye on us and they continued to call me names and mess with me. I am asking or rather telling them to stop, but keep in mind these two kids are 10-11 years old while I am 7 — They’re in a different weight class AND I’m outnumbered. They shove my back up against a large oak tree and the girl (Megan? Something like that) takes a step back and winds up with a closed fist. Although a few details in this story escape my memory, I remember this vividly — Everything went into slow motion for me. Sunlight peeking through the canopy of leaves, piercing the trampled, dirt pathways leading through the woods. The boy’s chubby, sweaty, and hairless arms pinning me against the dry tree bark. A warm spring breeze whipping through the trees, instructing the leaves above to dance their noisy little dance. I could see her taking aim at my stomach and the path of her punch. Here it comes. What am I going to do? She shifts her weight and begins moving her fist in my direction. I know what to do — if I could jus-(THUD)! She drives her fist into my abdomen and I double over. Immediately following the punch, she grabs my head with both of her hands and slams it backwards into the oak tree behind me, knocking me out.
Vagrant Story is that friend who shows up to your costume party wearing a full Shakespearean outfit, starts quoting Hamlet, and then quietly wins the chess tournament in the corner without breaking eye contact. It’s brilliant, intimidating, and you’re not quite sure if you’re smart enough to be hanging out with it. Vagrant Story is an action role-playing game released in the year 2000 by Squaresoft — you play as Ashley Riot, a leather-clad medieval super-spy with memory problems and abs carved by the gods. Ashley is tasked with infiltrating a cursed city full of cultists, undead, and ominous political tension.
Truly, I did my best to engage with the story of this game — I even found and read a near-lost comic book based on the game (huge shoutout to the reddit user (who has since deleted their account?) for the scans). In classic Japanese-videogame-storytelling-fashion, this game tries very hard to not let you understand everything that is happening in the story. To get the most out of it, you need to be paying close attention to every bit of dialogue, but players also need to know that they have to just not touch their controller on the first boot up of the game. There are three different cutscenes that play at the title screen and one of them contains the ONLY explanation of the framing device of the story. Needless to say, it took some real effort to follow the story of this game and I am happy to say, it is actually a pretty gripping tale. Also, for some reason it is set in Ivalice, the same world as Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. Really odd choice, because the actual crossover between the games is very slim.
The combat of this game feels like filing taxes during a sword fight. It is as complex or simple as you want it to be — you won’t get very far if you want it to want it to be simple, though. The basics are as follows: approach an enemy, press a button to freeze time, target an enemy’s body part, attack and time more button presses to chain combo attacks together. If I were to cover everything, I would have to go over chain & defensive abilities, break arts, spells, stats, the risk meter, damage & power points, weapon class/affinity/type, and crafting. The crafting system alone is complex as hell — you could spend hours fusing a demon-slaying longsword only to realize it bounces off skeletons because it’s not infused with “blunt lizard affinity” or whatever. Swap a single ingredient and you might accidentally create a god-slaying spoon that only works on Tuesdays. Vagrant Story’s crafting is not here to hold your hand — it’s here to break it, rebuild it with iron affinity, and make you thank it.
Even though this game actively resents you with its (way too) complex combat system, obtuse story, and sluggish menus, there is plenty of fun to be had chopping up bad guys. With a little practice, you should be able to hit the proper timing for each of your combo attacks and the dopamine hit provided by each correctly timed combo pairs nicely with absolutely crushing your enemies.
The real negative takeaway for me was the fact that every boss encounter felt like hitting a brick wall. The developers tried to get clever with the bosses for this game and the result is a lot of trial and error. I would slay my way through a whole level decimating enemies and then run into a boss that I can only hit for 1-2 damage at a time. The ideal solutions would be something like reflecting the boss’ attacks, using a certain type of magic, or a particular weapon. This resulted in a pretty big pacing issue with the game that is only not a problem if you are already familiar with the boss Ashley is up against.
All in all, Vagrant Story is a great game if you have the time to sit down and learn how it works. The problem is that the amount of time it takes is massive compared to most other games. If you happen to possess the ungodly amount of patience required, then you are in for a good time, but otherwise I might advise staying clear of this game. It has great ideas and was certainly paving the way forward for many games that released after it, but in my opinion, Vagrant Story arrived a little too soon.
My second grade teacher, Ms. Ulewicz was gathering her students to go back inside at the end of recess and noticed there was one child missing — me. She walked around the schoolyard until she found me knocked out by a big oak tree. She woke me up and took me inside. I got sat down in the principal’s office and they asked me a bunch of questions about what happened. Luckily, there was no real visible damage on my body and I seemed to be okay. Remember how I didn’t know who my assailants were? Mrs. Ulewicz walked me around to a bunch of the older kid’s classrooms until I could identify the two kids who had attacked me. Embarrassing to say the least. All of our parents were notified and I received a shockingly heartfelt apology from the two kids. Alls well that ends well, I guess. If only I could have used Ashley Riot’s ability to stop time and assess the situation, maybe none of this would have happened..
"Come for the leather and lore, stay because the menu system won’t let you leave"
"Too ambitious and too obtuse"
"I wish I was any good at this game"
