Memories of Vagrant Story

Good day, dear inhabitants of the resource!
The unthinkable happened: one lazy person came up with the seditious idea of ​​sculpting a wall of text. It’s a strange desire, considering that nowadays video reviews are more popular, which can be more colorful, more informative, and more convenient, but it just so happens that I like to read myself, and when I try to extract articulate speech, I usually start banging my head on the doorframe, so I decided to stick with letters. Yes, there are enough text descriptions of games, but, in my humble opinion, they are too dry (so there will be a lot of water, ha) and do not contain many interesting nuances that could interest the reader and force him to get to know the product personally, without intermediaries. I’ll apologize in advance: I’m not a journalist, not a writer, not even a philologist (you’ll notice all this if you decide to read to the end), perhaps my speech will be confusing, maybe I’ll be inconsistent, there’s just a game dear to my heart, which has received surprisingly little attention on these Internets of yours (despite the high ratings and general recognition), my gamer friends (much more avid than myself) haven’t heard of it, and I want to immerse myself in pleasant memories of wonderful hours spent with a gamepad in my hands, when I greedily literally devoured the picture on the screen with my eyes and constantly returned to the world of the game in my thoughts. Make yourself comfortable, I’m getting nostalgic.
We will talk about the times of the PlayStation 1 and specifically Vagrant Story.
For my young self, getting to know the capabilities of Play Station after the obligatory Dendi (yes, not Nintendo, you can throw stones) and Sega was like a bolt from the blue: I was amazed by the graphics, character animation (even my lips moved!), sizes of worlds, sounds. This delight was genuine and sincere, the variety of games and genres pleased me, but I quickly found my favorites among game makers: Squaresoft (part of the future Square Enix, widely known in narrow circles)
I came across what seemed to be a children’s game (that’s how I perceived anime art at that time) called Theard of fate and… let’s go, let’s go. I devoured games from Square in batches and they were very different (there were three parts of Final Fantasy, and Secret of Mana, and Front Mission, and SaGa Frontier, and the amazing fighting game Bushido Blade, and two absolutely unrealistic parts of Parasite Eve…stop me, this list is sooo long). My favorites as a child shaped my gaming taste and the rpg-jpg genre is still dearly loved by me, but one game stands out among them.
Yes, this is the same Vagrant Story.

I’ll try to explain in as much detail as possible why she so sank into my soul.
Everyone has their own ideas about a good game: for some, the plot is important first and foremost and a good script can patch up gameplay holes for such a player, while for others, unusual mechanics are important and they don’t follow the story. I will try to highlight the pros in each category.
I will rank the reasons not by the importance of the criteria for me personally.

Visual component.
As I already said, at that time (and this is 2001), the games were amazing with graphics. I will never forget my delighted sighs when I saw the games of the Residen Evil, Final Fantasy 8, Parasite Eve 2 and Dino Crisis 2 series on the screen. Yes, I remembered very well that those “graphenes” are coolly rendered “backdrops”, that they are absolutely two-dimensional, and the three-dimensional models of characters and moving objects remained angular, but it still looked very cool. The bar is set high, it would seem that there is nothing to surprise. But here you go! Vagrant Story bursts onto the stage and boldly says: “Guys, move over, I’m three-dimensional. Not only the model of the main character, but also all objects. And the camera can be rotated! And even look at everything from the first person!”. It would seem that this is not new, the same Theards of Fate is completely three-dimensional, like many platformers/adventure games. But here we have an action-rpg announced. And when you start the game, you see the most important visual difference – the art. Despite the original Japanese roots, the game tries to look as Western as possible: the characters look like they came straight from the pages of comics, not manga (there are no signature big “anime eyes”), the general style resembles sketches with oil paint, and at the same time, a lot of attention is paid to details. Like many games from the PS1 era, Vagrant Story presents dialogue exclusively with text, but this time instead of the signature gray squares at the bottom of the screen, you see white “word bubbles” above the characters’ heads. Stylish? Undoubtedly. And you involuntarily remember about Comix zone and hum approvingly. You begin to be convinced of the “Western” nature of the game from the first frames: one of the symbols of the game is the crucifix The Rood, an analogue of the Catholic cross-crucifix, it plays a key role in the story, it is worn around the neck of the main character, it also serves as a background image for the main menu, the inverted Rood flaunts on the sultry priestess Müllenkamp on the game’s splash screen. Yes, they persistently poke us in the nose with this cross, as if subtly hinting that this is a very important and necessary thing.

What also catches your eye is the architecture. Typically Western solutions (stained glass, vaulted ceilings, arches, columns) starting from the intro location (the estate of Duke Bardorba) to the final especially colorful Great Cathedral literally shout: “WE ARE FROM MEDIEVAL FRANCE!”. Indeed, the prototype of the gloomy gaming city of Lea Monde was the French city of Saint-Emilion, a large area of ​​which is occupied by vineyards

(I think this is related to the power-up items in the game. To increase characteristics, the character drinks wine with noble names a la Prudence, Vallens, etc.d., the authors did not skimp on descriptions. You begin to involuntarily envy GG).
The word “typically Western” is also applicable to the ammunition of both the main character and humanoid opponents: all the armor and weapons are also typically European, and, what’s nice, belong to the same era (15-16th century), here the armettes with bascinets really look like them, and the ax swords have very real ancestors (tabars, scimitars, guisarms, etc.d.). Of course, what is a game without a katana?? Of course they’ll let her wave. Since in the game weapons and armor can be made of different materials, the blade can take on different shades (bronze weapons will have a greenish-yellow tint, silver, oddly enough, will have a silvery tint, and khagan (the color analogue of steel) will have a grayish tint). It’s a small thing, but it’s nice. But there is also a shrimp in our barbecue: alas, no matter what armor the GG puts on himself, the model will remain unchanged. Only shields and weapons change visually.
The visual style is characterized by a general darkness: it is worth mentioning that most of the game we will be exploring dungeons and ruins, because.To. the city of Lea Monde has long been abandoned and outright devilry is going on there. Everything here is done perfectly: the dungeons are dark and damp, the city walls are overgrown with moss and riddled with cracks, the forest is gloomy and inhospitable, and tries to confuse the careless traveler. Moreover, all events take place during daylight hours and achieving such an atmosphere is a very commendable thing. Some of the landscapes are breathtaking, they are very good.
Separately, it is worth mentioning the design of the opponents: there are quite a lot of them, again they are worked out in detail, in each location there are living creatures (or their own carrion), but I will highlight the most colorful.
Golems.

There are many of them, they are colossal, harsh, weak-willed. I was wildly delighted when I noticed the inscription EMETH on my left hand (according to legend, to revive a golem on the part of its body exposed to the sun, you need to write the cherished life-giving word, in this case “emeth” is the truth. And if you erase one letter, it turns out “meth”, in Hebrew “death”, which is a cheating way of killing a golem. The Japanese are clearly very fond of the very concept of the golem and hence the development of the “mecha” genre, but this is so, thinking out loud).
Dragons/Wyverns.

Impressive, majestic. Most often they differ only in the color of their scales (although there is one cute dragon with curved horns in the manner of a mountain sheep), but they are still very colorful creatures.
Empty armor.

Evil Possessed Armor. The very first meeting made a huge impression on me, everything about these opponents is wrong. There are also several varieties of them and the armor varies from classic medieval knightly to samurai.
Elemental Elementals.

Do you believe that they are responsible for fire or water?. The membranes between the fingers, the fluttering collar like a flame, the monstrous scaly tail leave no doubt that a fireball is about to fly at you, shower you with a water explosion, or hit you with concentrated darkness.
Humanoid opponents are duller, but look quite decent.

I’d like to separately mention the spells: they have a very long but colorful cast. This is roughly what FF8 was criticized for back in the day (use of G.F. took at least a minute), but I’ve always been a sucker for beautiful animation, and the spells of mass destruction also have four gradations, so it’s generally a feast for the eyes.

Vagrant Story is not only powerful through panache. The sound in the game is excellent: you want to listen to the soundtrack again and again, it is perfect for the location in which it sounds. It’s worth a lot when a melody is able to visualize a location or situation. Here, with your eyes closed, you imagine a forest with a swarm of white ice flies, a forest beckoning into the thicket and deceiving with the same landscape, in which it is so easy to get lost (and this is perfectly implemented in the game, by the way. Yes, yes, you can take a walk in the forest!). Mysterious and smooth, like the passage of time, melody inside the pagan temple of Kiltia.

And here you see https://vegasspinscasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ a majestic cathedral, which time has not spared, with cracks in the walls and floor, but still it proudly rises above the city, unshakable, full of mysteries and secrets (and this melody is somewhat out of the whole soundtrack, it has more of some kind of ambient, or something).

In the dungeon you literally feel the mustiness and hear a drop of water falling loudly somewhere.

In the workshop (a kind of safe location) you feel peace and a desire to grab the bellows and fan the fire stronger (especially in the middle of the track, when the flutes fade away and the drums lead the melody, you can literally feel the heat inside the forge with your skin).

All this is no wonder if you liked the soundtrack from FF12, because it was written by a certain Hitoshi Sakimoto. The man was inspired by the task (not without a kick from Yasumi Matsuno) and tried to ensure that the melodies corresponded to the spirit of each location, and writing the music lasted for as much as a year and a half. If you allow me to express my opinion, it turned out great: the combination of wind and string instruments is a win-win for recreating a medieval setting, and there are also wonderful rhythm parts intertwined. Where it’s needed it’s epic, where it’s needed it’s peaceful.
No less pleasing are the more mundane sounds of footsteps, the clang of armor, the clanking of weapons, the sounds of blows and the whistling of bolts when fired from a crossbow. Above I praised the spells, but the effect of a beautiful picture would be useless without a juicy DISCOUNT. There are also no complaints about completely everyday things (creaking doors, levers, flow of water, falling objects).

If all of the above, perhaps, was not such a rarity (well, this is not the first game with good sound and where the artists did a great job), then in terms of gameplay Vagrant absolutely stands out. What? Let’s start with the battle (this is still an application for an action-rpg).
During combat, when in combat mode, the attack button calls up the “targeting sphere”. We already had the pleasure of seeing a similar thing in Parasite Eve, but with one caveat: there the developers combined the traditional action scale, which fills up during the battle and gives you the right to make your move, but added the ability to move around the arena, which fundamentally distinguishes it from classic jpg. But the essence was the same: the right to act had to wait. Here you are ready to perform actions in a row as often as you like. You can also choose the point of impact that is most vulnerable to your weapon type. The size of the sphere changes depending on the weapon (for daggers it is negligible, for crossbows and spears it is maximum), that is, your fighting style will change quite dramatically: with a short weapon you will have to run after the enemy, but with a huge gun in your hands you can quite comfortably keep your distance.

Everything is clear with the HP and MP bars, but there is still an interesting value – risk. It is worth mentioning that the main character, Ashley Riot, is a riskbreaker, a kind of medieval special forces soldier who is so harsh and brutal that only stone slabs tested over centuries save him from falling through soft layers of soil to the center of the mortal Earth, his services to Valendia are so heavy… The risk indicator replaces Ashley’s stamina, that is, bombarding the enemy with a flurry of blows is, of course, commendable, but the accuracy of the blows will noticeably drop (with a risk value of 100, it will be very difficult to hit the enemy), however, the probability of a critical hit increases significantly. What’s funny is that this works both ways: if you got carried away chopping the dragon’s tail into thin mince and brought the risk value to indecently large, then that same dragon can unexpectedly end the battle with one blow, even if your health was at maximum. So the game seems to hint that risk, of course, is a noble thing, but government agents need to control themselves and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to snort some valerian. And this is not a joke: one of the most popular types of consumable items in the game is Vera root, Vera bulb (well, etc.d. according to volume gradation), which cools the hero (trachea, obviously) ardor and reduces the risk. So in Vagrant Story, in order to drink champagne, you don’t need to take risks, but snort the infusions in time.

A rather complex combo system deserves special mention: during application, a red exclamation mark appears for a split second and if you press the key at the right time, you will continue the attack. There are three active buttons for the combination, that is, you can alternate only three techniques from the list (there are 14 in total). What’s interesting is that depending on the effect of the chain move (for example, some drain life from the enemy, some drain mana), the animation of the strike will also change. For example, the Heavy Shot ability has a strike animation (even if you have a spear in your hands, Ashley will hit the enemy in the teeth with a backhand with the shaft), and the Drain Life lifesteal has a very awkward animation, the GG seems to plunge the weapon into the enemy’s flesh and literally tries to drain health points from him. And status effects like paralysis are generally a quiet horror. Let’s add to this the individual animation of each type of weapon (and there are 10 types of weapons, for example) and it becomes clear that getting used to and remembering the motion set of each category is not an easy task.
In addition to attacking abilities, Ashley can also use defensive ones: similarly, during an enemy attack, you need to press the right button in a timely manner and the hero will ignore/reflect some of the damage. To successfully complete the game, learning how to do this is also vital.
Also, for each weapon there are so-called Break Arts – skills that spend health instead of mana and, as a rule, cause elemental damage. Very useful as long as you don’t have a lot of spells. Each weapon has four of them, and like other combat abilities, they are unlocked for killing a certain number of opponents.
Let’s move on to the topic of equipment.
As I mentioned, the game has 10 types of weapons: fists, daggers, swords, axes/masses, spears, crossbows, two-handed swords, two-handed axes, two-handed hammers, staves. And each weapon for killing unfortunate monsters has a ton of characteristics: Battle Points (essentially, strength, consumed when hitting the enemy, a broken weapon will be ineffective even in the hands of a risk breaker), Phantom Points (a very interesting value, one might say, “the soul of a weapon”. For a new weapon from a chest/forge, this value tends to zero; the damage of such a brand new saber will be noticeably less than that of the weapon to which the hero has become attached. The same points are spent when repairing weapons). Each item has effectiveness parameters against certain classes of enemies (beasts, dragons, demons, people, ghosts, undead). A lot depends on the material of the weapon (silver is more effective than other metals against ghosts and undead). What I personally really liked was the system for changing equipment characteristics: when hitting a dragon a certain number of times, the weapon will receive +1 effectiveness against this class, but it will lose 1 point against, say, people. The law of conservation of mass in all its glory (and they also say that computer games don’t teach you anything, yeah). So it’s simply not possible to concoct a universal wunderwaffle; you’ll have to change your weapon, no matter how good this hammer is to you.

In addition to effectiveness against certain creatures, there is the type of action of the weapon (piercing, crushing, cutting). And here, too, it can be an embarrassment if you ran for four hours straight with a saber drawn, and then you meet a golem. And he’s hard. And angry. And saber strikes don’t impress him at all. And you longingly remember such a cute war hammer with stylish spikes on the pommel, but it seemed awkward to you to use..
And, to top it off, there are 7 more types of damage: fire, water, earth, air, light, dark, physical. And they also need to be taken into account when preparing for battle. Support spells and various jewelry stones will help with this.
As you understand, the game turns from a completely understandable action-rpg into a very cunning strategy. You will have to find an approach to each enemy, recognize their vulnerabilities and constantly adapt. Perhaps this is partly a minus of the game, it may be that to some these mechanics will seem too complex and unnecessary, but I am delighted with these heaps. To be honest, I have never seen such an approach to combat and equipment in games to this day.

An important part of the process are puzzles. All the riddles are tied to the box cubes. Initially, everything is extremely simple: take the box, move it, put it on top of each other, jump where you need it. And then the dirt begins: stone cubes, cubes that slide halfway across the room, cubes with a limited number of actions, magnetic cubes… One puzzle made me turn gray at age 12.
And also a simply amazing crafting system. Since there are no non-player merchant characters in the game, the riskbreaker has to rely only on himself and make weapons from what he gets on the battlefield. Any weapon can be disassembled into its components (blade, hilt, and can be inlaid with stones that will enhance the effectiveness of the weapon). Blades can be fused together and get new things. At the same time, different metals form new alloys (for example, a khagan will be obtained by alloying bronze and iron, and a sword made from it will be stronger and more powerful than a similar bronze one). So that you understand the scope, I will attach a crafting table:

Dagger
Khukuri=Kris + Hatchet
Khora + Pole Ax
Rune Blade + Pole Ax

Baselard=Hatchet + Khukuri
Khopesh + Bardysh

Stiletto =Baselard + Baselard
Jamadhar=Stiletto + Stiletto

Sword
Shotel=Baselard + Voulge
Shamshir + Falchion
Rune Blade + Voulge

Khora=Stiletto + Pole Ax
Falchion + Shotel

Khopesh=Khora + Khora
Wakizashi=Khopesh + Khopesh

Great Sword
Schianova=Hatchet + Shotel
Hatchet+Lug Crossbow
Khukuri + Pole Ax
Shotel + Lug Crossbow
Khora + Fauchard
Executioner + Claymore
Tabar + Lug Crossbow
War Hammer + Lug Crossbow
Griever + Siege Bow
Bardysh + Siege Bow

Bastard Sword=Khukuri + Khora
Khukuri + Siege Bow
Baselard + Bardysh
Khora + Siege Bow
Khopesh + Voulge
Claymore + Schianova
Bullova + Siege Bow
Bec de Corbin + Siege Bow

Nodachi=Baselard + Khopesh
Wakizashi + Pole Ax
Bastard Sword + Bastard Sword

Rune Blade=Stiletto + Wakizashi
Nodachi + Nodachi

Impressive indeed?
I wanted to include all the weapons/shields/armor, but it was too cumbersome, so I limited myself to swords/daggers.

Vagrant story really has a very strong plot, but I don’t see the point in retelling it (what if someone wants to beat the game, but here the spoilers are thick, and the volume is huge for retelling). At first glance, the plot is simple: there is an evil sorcerer threatening the state, there is a brave cardinal who, with the word of God on the lips of this sorcerer, wants to punish, there is a city engulfed in darkness, there is a brave risk-breaker agent who must reward the innocent and punish the uninvolved. And then everything becomes not so clear, the city reveals the hidden regrets of people and their vices, black turns out to be not so bad, white is not so pure. By the way, the concept of the city of Lea Monde personally reminded me of Silent Hill. The result is a great “twist”, a heartbreaking ending and an open question about Ashley’s memories (which character’s real personality was left to the player to choose.Either he is an inconsolable father and husband who has lost everything and throws himself headlong into the pool and takes on hopeless tasks, or he is an insensitive and cold professional).
The plot is without a hint of a smile, gloomy, serious, it has everything: politics, behind-the-scenes intrigue, tragedy. There was a rumor that Yasumi Matsuno did not implement about half of his plans. What a masterpiece it would be if he crammed in everything he wanted – I simply cannot imagine. The game is clearly made in contrast to bright and colorful games (Final Fantasy is the first to come to mind. Yes, yes, I know that part 7 is all gloomy).
The names of two characters made me smile separately: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Shakespeare approved).
Another thing the game forces you to do is to go through it again, because during the first playthrough you simply won’t be able to get to some locations, which really captivated me. And one dungeon is actually an Easter egg, its map forms the same crucifix:

There were rumors about a sequel, but, alas, they were never confirmed. Or maybe it’s for the better, it’s painful to be disappointed in unsuccessful sequels of your favorite franchises.
That’s all I’m talking about? Square has started a re-release of FF7 there. Maybe they will get to VS, but?
Well, you are a very patient person, since you read all the boring stuff to the end (or flipped through the page very quickly, Fastest-Finger-of-the-West).
What was that? Nostalgia, memories that I wanted to share, and the cat yawns from them and shows disdain for my favorite games.
Kicks for the clumsiness of the post are welcome, but please take into account the nickname and make a discount.
Thanks for reading.