657th played so far

Genre: Action/Role-Playing
Platform: Playstation 1
Year of Release: 2000
Developer: Square
Publisher: Square/Square Electronic Arts

So today, we’ve got an action RPG as another random pick. It’s obviously a more time consuming option that comes up. With that said, Vagrant Story isn”t a game I had heard of before this list. It looks like it fits into the mass of other RPG series Square created around this time, with Threads of Fate coming to mind as another example. What will make this stand out?

Our Thoughts

Aside from a minor introduction, it seems like Vagrant Story is a long, big dungeon crawl. That’s not too bad, especially as the areas seem well designed, but it makes me wonder where the story goes.

So what you get is a decent action RPG that you explore screen by isometric screen. I struggled a bit with the controls and when to attack, but it’s interesting. On the other hand, it adds a decent mechanic through risk, where big attacks reduce your concentration and make you take more damage, creating an interesting trade off of how much you attack.

There’s a decent development system as well to learn through using them, while magic is learned from books you need to use once. It’s a decent way of doing it.

Final Thoughts

Vagrant Story is a decent game with an interesting setup, but most of it doesn’t feel that memorable now. The story is pretty simple and more an excuse than anything. There’s some nice ideas, but I’m not sure it has much that hasn’t been done elsewhere, sadly.