Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8828 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Crave
• Platform: PlayStation

Amazon.co.uk Review
Vagrant Story is one of those games that wows you at the start--a big "WOW!" in this case--but maintains only a tenuous hook in the long haul. In this mix of action/adventure and fantasy role playing, players are cast as a Riskbreaker (think one-man army) named Ashley Riot, whose pursuit of a villainous cult leader takes him to the mysterious city of Lea Monde.

The highly stylised graphics in Vagrant Story are easily some of the best ever seen on the PlayStation, and give the game a gorgeous, distinctive look to match its sombre tone. Cinematic story sequences blend in almost seamlessly with gameplay, which takes place in 3-D environments (viewed from a third-person perspective) that can be rotated to provide the best angle.

Vagrant Story features a rich battle system built on both strategy and quick reflexes. In addition to character statistics, weapons and armour have detailed numbers of their own and can be disassembled, assembled or even combined to create new items. Hand/eye co-ordination factors heavily in combat, as Ashley develops offensive and defensive battle abilities that require perfectly timed button pushing in order to be used.

Unfortunately, it's all too easy to get bored with Vagrant Story. The painfully-linear gameplay here doesn't rise above killing enemy after enemy in room after room, and (oh boy!) solving puzzles by manipulating boxes. If not for the wholly intriguing (but sparsely littered) plot, one would be strongly tempted just to leave Ashley to rot in the catacombs beneath Lea Monde. --Joe Hon

Manufacturer's Description
A brutal battle wages between the knight of the Crimson Blade and the Mullenkamp Cult in the city of Lea Monde. Caught in the middle of the Ashley riot an agent for the Valendia knights of peace elite riskbreck unit. After a chance encounter with Sydney Losstarot the leader of the Mullenkamp cult. Ashley finds himself in a life or death game of cat and mouse amidst a plot bigger than both of them. Vagrant Story is a unique mix of the action, adventure and RPG genres. Combining the classic epic Square storyline, the depth, detail and options of Final Fantasy with intuitive and immediately accessible combat system. Set in a 3-D game world you negotiate your way through the subterranean world of Lea Monde using numerous weapons & spells as you battle toward the truth.

Customer Reviews

My favourite PS1 game ever
Vagrant Story is quite a surprising game when you first play it: the graphic style is very original, and the comics-like dialogs are as well. The fighting gameplay is excellent, with the chain combos et the selection of the part of your oponent's boby that you want to hit. The replay value is very good, since when you beat the game the first time, you unlock items that will allow you to explore areas previously innaccessible. But the real strength of this game is its scenario: deep, complex, serious, sometimes tragic, always incredibly interesting, dealing with subjects such as serious as, for instance, religion, etc...
There are loads of brilliants dialogs, sharp and full of implicite meaning, and, if you want to put a picture on the word "charisma", just think of Sydney Losstarot, the greatest video game character ever.
Buy it, you won't regret it, as long as you like "serious" video games with great scenarios.

A Forgotten Gem
Vagrant Story is a game that completely surprises you when you play it. You don't really expect it to be much of a good game, or to have much of a story, but boy does it win you over. The story and world setting is extremely unique, and not like the 'cloned' worlds and plot of Square's popular Final Fantasy franchise.

STORY---9/10
The game centers around one man, Ashley Riot, a sort of government agent aka riskbreaker(who I might add has the coolest hair ever). He is hot on the tail of a religious fanatic named Sydney Losstarot in an ancient city called Lea Monde. The whole of the game takes place in and under this mysterious city, full of the undead and fantastical creatures. A third party is also involved, a group of knights called the Crimson blades. Although the story does not seem much at first, it becomes very dark and deep with many plot twists and turns. The game also has many indepth cutscenes and conversations that reveal new things to think about, many of which are viewed with Ashley's amazing ability to see through the eyes of others. There is so much to think about however that sometimes you may become confused or slightly bewildered as to whose side people are on (though it is probably meant to be so), and that would be my only downfall of the amazing storyline.

GAMEPLAY---8/10
The story however takes place second to the action, which is the most prominent feature of Vagrant Story. The game has one of the most interesting battle systems ever, which is neither turn-based or real-time: Opponents are seen in the various rooms you explore and there are no special battle scenes for attacking them. However, you don't simply hammer the button to destroy them. Attacking involves first pressing the circle button which will bring up a 'globe' of attack range (depending on which type of weapon you have). You then have the option to attack different parts of enemies, such as legs, body, head etc. causing varying amounts of damage depending on the armour worn on each body part. Also, a little later into the game you will earn the ability to pull of chain attacks which are executed by timed button presses. While you are attacking like this all other movements and actions are halted, which is why it cannot be labelled as real-time fighting. There are also magic spells to learn and special moves for each type of weapon. I will not go into any depth about these, but I promise they are very impressive. You will do A LOT of fighting in Vagrant Story and if you are more into adventuring and questing then this may not be the right game for you.
Levelling up doesn't occur in Vagrant Story. The experience from enemies comes in the form of new special moves and chain attacks. Your stats are increased when you kill boss characters and you receive a bonus to a certain stat through use of a fruit-machine style system.
There is also an involving weapon/armour crafting system, and every one that you find can be broken down into components. (eg. sword into blade and grip) You can also fuse various gems into your weapons to give them extra bonuses.
One final game feature I will mention is the 'risk' bar, which increases every time you attack (including with each chain). When the bar increases, the more power you will have but also far less accuracy, so it's best to try and keep it low. You will also take much more damage, and it is a task to maintain a balance between the two.

GRAPHICS---10/10
The graphics in Vagrant Story have a very unique and unbelievable quality for the PS1. They are possibly the best I have ever seen on the platform. Spells and special effects remain unbeaten in my eyes even now, and you will enjoy watching them time and time again in admiration.

Audio---9/10
The musical score is classicaly (Square-ishly) unforgettable and the tunes compliment the setting extremely well. They are amongst some of the best composed I feel. Boss music is especially memorable. There is no voice acting, but this is not an issue with such atmospheric music to go alongside every scene.

REPLAYABILITY---8/10
Although you will slaughter hundreds upon hundreds of monsters and beings, the fighting rarely gets boring, and I found that it takes a very long time to become bored of killing in this game. However, some people may feel differently about this. The second time through playing, you keep all of your stats and spells etc. from the first play, so there is incentive to keep growing in power. Also, you can unlock special sealed doors leading to previously unreachable areas, so I would say there is a fair amount of replayability within the game. You will also enjoy watching many of the story scenes again.


Vargrant Story is a very unique and never-before-seen game and you will either love it or hate it, although I feel it hard to take side of the latter.

------ Dragon Fang ------

Epic RPG from the Squaresoft Stable
Squaresoft have created an absorbing adventure that stands apart from other RPG's on PSX. The storyline is very impressive and engaging with plenty of twists & turns, nice cut scenes & flashbacks and a powerful cast of characters. Special praise needs to be lauded to Squaresoft for creating one of the grandest opening sequences ever on Playstation One. The intro is super long and requires you the gamer to get involved by controling the central protagonist of this tale Riskbreaker Ashley Riot, even before the game starts proper. This game has gorgeous graphics, top notch sound and some puzzle elements. Combat is 3-D action based as opposed to turnbased. The combat system for an RPG is quite innovative, you can target a specific body location rather than just simply scaling down the HP tally. You also have a wide selection of spells & Offensive and Defensive Battle Abilities. The latter are activated via a chain process. So if you perfect your timing you can string together a whole series of lethal attacks without enemy reply. Furthermore, each time you defeat a boss you gain extra magic, items and bonus increases of your stats. On the downside if you want to get very far in this game you need to train up your weapons & armour to specialise against different categories of of enemy such as undead, humans, beasts, evil etc. This can be a touch irksome as you have to keep on changing weapons/armour each time you meet a different class of enemy in order to specialise. Furthermore, this game has limited replay value despite new locations opening up 2nd time around; as you commence your 2nd game with the powerful weapons that you finished with first time around, this makes the game very easy. However, these are very minor drawbacks to what is an excellent title. Vagrant Story also benefits from a fine mapping feature, game manual feature and under the game menu Score you can observe how well you are doing , mission time taken, combat statistics, monsters encountered - this is another nice touch. If you like RPG's and have yet to sample this I would readily recommend this as you should not be disappointed with this rich and regal RPG.