Video games - Vagrant Story

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	Video games - Vagrant Story

Vagrant Story (ベイグラントストーリー Japanese) is a unique action/computer role-playing game game released for the PlayStation in 2000. The game, designed and distributed by Square Co., Ltd., features a focus on weapon modification and creation. It has a carefully crafted story about a Riskbreaker named Ashley Riot who was sent to break a fanatical religious cult's hold on the manor of Duke Bardorba. Shortly after this incident, the leader of the cult, Sydney Losstarot, disappeared and the Duke was murdered. Ashley Riot was named as a suspect in the murder case. The player takes the part of Ashley during the week before the murder, following Sydney into the deserted ruins of Leá Monde.

The game's graphical style is very dark and emphasizes brown tones, adding to the sense of mystery in the game. Some of its scenarios are inspired to some extent by landscapes of the South West of France, notably the city of Saint-Emilion. Its style of cinematics is reminiscent of the style utilized in Metal Gear Solid
: in both games the in-game story sequences were rendered with the game engine and directed with a strong cinematic feeling.

The battle system of the game involves the player chaining different attacks to achieve large combos and deal damage to the enemy. This is done by pressing buttons in timely successions. The player can target different areas of the body, and damage is done according to the part of body attacked and the affinity of the weapon used by Ashley. The longer Ashley fights, the more his Risk raises, making it harder for him to concentrate, lowering his accuracy but increasing critical hits. In terms of movement, players get to jump, shift objects to construct elevations and run.

Players can customize and create weapons and armor which have different ranges, strengths, and statistics. Weapons also become stronger in different areas depending on the enemy types they are used to attack, and armor became stronger in different areas depending on what enemy types attacked it. This often means specialising a weapon to only attack enemies of a certain type.

One of the more often underrated aspects of the game (and hidden to most) is the subtle connection to at least one of Yasumi Matsuno's other works (i.e. Final Fantasy Tactics
), and indeed, the stories, while different in scale and focus, do hold some similarities in themes and stylistic presentation. The most significant connection, however, is the quote from an "A. J. Durai" that appears at the very beginning of Vagrant Story, the descendant of another character who participated in the story of Final Fantasy Tactics.

The programming team was largely the same as the team responsible for Final Fantasy Tactics
, and the team who recently released Final Fantasy XII
. Especially worth mentioning are Yasumi Matsuno (production, direction and battle design), Akihiko Yoshida (character design and background art direction), Hiroshi Minagawa (art direction) and Hitoshi Sakimoto (music).

The English localization, which is accredited to Alexander O. Smith is considered one of the finest Japanese to English video game translations existing today.

Notable people

Yasumi "YAZZ" Matsuno: Production, direction, battle Design
Jun Akiyama: Event direction
Akihiko Yoshida: Character design and background art direction
Hiroshi "Nigoro" Minagawa: Art direction
Jiro Mifune: Effect design
Eiichiro Nakatsu: Character modelling
Tsunataro Yoshida: Motion design
Taku Murata: Main programming
Hitoshi "YmoH.S" Sakimoto: Composition

Trivia

Many weapons found in the game are actually named after alcoholic beverages. For example, the Pink Squirrel and Tovarishch, which are found early on the game.
The game was a commercial failure, partially due to small advertising campaign and lack of localization to European languages, but was a critical success, and remains held in high regard in the action/RPG community. It was the third game in history to receive Famitsu magazine's perfect score of 40/40, an honor held by only six of video games to date and not even achieved by the two most popular franchises of the company (Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest) until March 2006, when Final Fantasy XII
received a perfect score.

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Video games - Vagrant Story

Notable people

Trivia

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