Well, I was hoping to finish the game without using cheats, but that last fight was a bore and I didn't want to have to slowly whittle him down while using all of my healing items.

The plot certainly took like 5 turns in that last section. So I guess Ashley didn't kill his family and Sydney and Rosencrantz were just manipulating him to get him to mistrust the VKP? But I have no idea what happened at the end with Ashley turning into/back from other characters. Oh well.

I ended up being lukewarm on Vagrant Story. The battle system was certainly unique, but the time you had to spend in menus felt excessive. To play every encounter optimally, you had to spend about a minute in menus swapping out weapons and gems and the like. Not particularly fun. And then when you *do* play optimally, the bosses are trivial. Except for the final boss, which I simply could not do more than one point of damage on, so I cheated.

The battles have the standard PSX issue of having animations that go on for far too long. Yeah, I get that you have nice effects now, but I got that in the first hour. Admittedly, I did pick this up because of how visually impressive people said it was, and for some aspects, it was. The models were gorgeous, some of the effects impressive (the character lighting), and the cutscenes were well-shot. That said, the environments were mostly bland and uninteresting, so it was a big of a mixed bag.

The story was interesting, with some intriguing mysteries. It certainly didn't over-explain things or get too bogged down in the dialogue, which I appreciated, along with its limited cast. At the same time, it threw out a bunch of curveballs in the last hour or so, and I'm honestly not sure what happened at the end.

I don't regret playing it, but I'd have a hard time recommending it to anyone else. I think you'd get the majority of the experience by just watching the cutscenes.

свернуть