VAGRANT STORY IGN TRIAL

The game takes place in the fictional kingdom of Valendia and the ruined city of Leá Monde. IMDb: Please get rid of that broken piece of garbage.The story centers on Ashley Riot, an elite agent known as a Riskbreaker, who must travel to Leá Monde to investigate the link between a cult leader and a senior Valendian Parliament member, Duke Bardorba. Please note that the preceding includes some ridiculous things like 'excel-lance' and 'UN-fun' because of IMDb's incredibly retarded 'error checking' system. As is always the case, no matter how flawed something, there will be a small niche group of vocal supporters who will insist that the thing in question is the greatest creation in history, and that people who don't like it just don't 'get it.' Beware of misguided fanatics.

To call the game tedious is an understatement of epic proportions. As it stands, Vagrant Story is a micro-management nightmare. All they had to do was come up with some sort of quick menu for changing weapons, as Seiken Densetsu 2 did seven years earlier. You have no choice but to spend 45% of your game time opening the main menu, opening the weapon menu, finding the right weapon, opening the accessory menu, changing the elemental jewels on the weapon, etc. Yet the creators of the game didn't bother to implement any sort of quick menu for weapon switching, a la Secret of Mana. The end effect of all of this is that as you play the game, you are literally constantly changing weapons.

VAGRANT STORY IGN TRIAL

Whether the new weapon will be better or worse than the weapons you sacrificed to make them involves much trial and error.

Another thing you can do in workshops is disassemble your weapons and reassemble the parts to make new weapons.

You must repair your weapons in workshops, which are few and far between in the game. The lower the rating, the more worn out the weapon, the less damage it does. Finally, each of your weapons has its own 'wear' rating. And then there are the usual elementals as well- fire, ice, earth and so on. An enemy might be weak against blunt weapons, but almost totally impervious to edged weapons or piercing weapons. (sic) On top of that, there are specific weakness ratings. Using your weapon against a human enemy will make it stronger against humans, but weaker against phantoms. The enemy classes are paired off into diametric oppositions. There are several (eight?) classes of enemies in the game- Beast, Human, Dragon, Undead, Phantom, etc. The problem is, at the very heart of the battle system is an abysmally UN-fun weapon and armor system. It's an interesting hybrid cross between standard real time action combat and traditional RPG turn based combat. The battle system in and of itself is fine. Where the game ultimately fails is in the game play. Unfortunately, all of these shining examples of fine craft and 'video game design as true art' is all for naught because of one single fatal flaw: The game simply isn't fun to play. This is one of the ultra rare cases where the English translation is arguable far superior to the original Japanese script. The English translation is especially spectacular, due to its masterful coloring with 'Olde English' which adds so much to the tone and atmosphere. The story, the script, the characters, the graphics, the soundtrack. Almost everything about Vagrant Story is par excel-lance.

Vagrant story ign