What is easily the best looking game for the Playstation 1, could use a remaster that goes into it like a director's cut. I want the visuals to stay the same, seeing all the facial expressions, all the animations for the characters, the great lighting and everything is impressive, but for one, it's too long and has balancing issues that hold back what actually is a pretty enjoyable experience. I like the unique combat system, that there's no typical leveling up but almost all stat improvements are tied to your equipment, the depth of its weapon customization. But later parts of the game just drag on and on, especially since enemies have a high priority on stat changing spells which turns the fights into a battle of getting nerfed and buffing yourself up again constantly - with unskipable, way too long animations.
This is a good game and there's potential for an even better game, if only Square Enix were to ever lay their finger on it again.

I'll be honest, the combat in this game gets pretty repetitive but damnson, is that world immersive. Fantastic music, textures and top tier low poly design. It's a FEAST I say!
The game has a super interesting concept of training your weapons against type of enemies or armor. And it works pretty well! I ended up training a trash dagger from the beginning so well against a type of enemy it like 3 shot the first phase of the final boss. So that was satisfying.

The story is kindof a mess but the speech bubbles are entertaining and if you play with a friend you can criticize the NPCs curious fashion choices at the same time. Win win.

Overall while the minute to minute gameplay wasn't mind blowing it's a game that still left a mark and resonated from creating a world I wanted to entirely explore and it's a real shame there's no sequel to expand on the systems!

True fact: If you wonder why there is an intro with belly dancing that has nothing to do with the game it's because of my friend who I catsit for who worked on that scene and got really into belly dancing at that time. It's a question that had weighted heavily on me and now that I've learned that I can die in peace. Hopefully you too.

One of my most favourite games. When I first finished Vagrant Story, I immediately replayed it. That’s a good sign. As much as I like the gameplay and how weird and layered and obtuse it is mechanically, the crushing atmosphere, as well as the still great cutscene direction (it’s funny to think that this game that came out in 2000 has better cutscene direction than a lot of games that would come out over the next 10+ years), my favourite thing about it is the writing. I’m a big fan of Yasumi Matsuno’s games and especially his writing. They’re often devoid of a lot of the melodrama/anime-ness that you expect in a JRPG. Vagrant Story’s script (brilliantly translated by Alexander O. Smith) features very little exposition. This is the key, I think. It’s saved for when the characters themselves need something to be explained to them. It helps it feel so much more immersive. You end up having to piece together a lot of the finer details yourself. As such, it probably has some of my favourite video game writing ever. Unfortunately, it’s not all so amazing. Menu navigation sucks, level design is pretty repetitive and it feels like there isn’t much flexibility in regards to builds given how vital it is to exploit enemy weaknesses. Maybe I just need to experiment more? Excellent otherwise, though.