agrant Story tells the tale of Ashley Riot, a fearsome warrior with a silly name, a bad memory and a wacky hairdo. Ashley, member of the elite Riskbreaker unit of the Valendian Knights of Peace, has been sent to the haunted city of Lea Monde to investigate the activities of the Mullencamp cult. He finds himself confronting his own memories as often as he takes on armed opponents, while fighting his way through the forces of the cult, the church and the denizens of Lea Monde itself. Vagrant Story offers a rich, if linear, plot; an amazingly original combat system; and surprises worth dozens of hours of game-play.
Much of the game's complexity and originality come from its combat system. No other console role-playing game offers so many options. Ashley gains the traditional marks of advancement in an RPG (more hit points, magic points and higher stats) rather slowly, but his weapons and special abilities also grow to amazing strengths. Each weapon--and there are dozens--has a rating against the six creature types found in the game. In special workshops located throughout the city, weapons can be made more powerful by giving them new hilts, new blades and gems or even combining two into one. Mastering the weapon system takes several hours, but the most important rule about equipment in the game is that it's most effective if used against only one type of foe.
Vagrant Story has a limited but effective puzzle component. All the puzzles involve crates or rocks or other, stranger, types of blocks. The early puzzles are simple exercises in stacking crates in the right order, but the final puzzles require players to slide frictionless and magnetic blocks around in ingenious combinations.
The last game you'll buy before PS2
There are few PlayStation games that rival Vagrant Story's graphics. That's a grand claim with new hits like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and Parasite Eve 2 on the way, but Vagrant Story stretches the PlayStation's processor to the limits. Although its background and characters don't look quite as sharp as the static, more detailed backgrounds of games like the Resident Evil series, its rotating perspective and smooth clipping make Vagrant Story the title to beat.
The reflex-based Chain and Defense abilities are a great addition to the detailed turn-based combat system. The mix favors careful management of the weapons over the ability to hit the button at the right time, but some of the bosses are nearly impossible to beat without mastering the Defense abilities. The variety of weapons, the endless ways of combining them, and their ratings against different monster types make the combat system much more than a Diablo-like exercise in picking up better and better weapons.
There are a few oversights in the complex interface. Changing weapons is one of the most important facets of the game, and the interface suffers because of the time it takes to access the equipment-changing screens. Also, the quick menus accessible via the L2 button need to be more complete. But considering that the game is the first to use this combat system, it's almost perfect.
Vagrant Story is long, complex, engrossing and surprising in places. It's an amazing odyssey that shows off everything the aging PlayStation can do. The only real question about Vagrant Story is: why haven't PlayStation titles been this good for the last four years?
