/vr/ - Retro Games

Was Vagrant Story really the best looking PSX game?

I feel like fighting games are sort of cheating because most of the time that's really all the system has to focus on in these instances.

I'm 5 hours into this game, just before facing the dragon boss. Over the years I have read many opinions about this game, ranging from a masterpiece to a convoluted mess. And I can see both sides, but I'm afraid I must side with the critics in this one.

The game looks really good, the story looks mysterious but I can't say much about it for now and the game represents so far the most ambitious ATB system square put into a game since FF4, Super Mario RPG and Parasite Eve. But there are many things I dislike:

- It is a dungeon crawler with very similar and boring environment. I think they really nailed down the gothic look and oppression, but there isn't much going on besides it, every room is pretty much a clone.
- There are the "cube puzzles" but don't expect Tomb Raider tier environment puzzles. I'd rather not have them at all.
- So the only thing to do in this game is fighting. The system is well though out, the most complex and ambitious from square yet, but in my opinion also overkill for just one character. You will use the same chains all the time. It doesn't help that up to now I must have faced no more than 5 different kind of enemies. And that's it, kill skeletons and wolves for five hours while pushing blocks to solve predictable zelda tier puzzles but while moving at 1/2 of the original speed.
- I don't mind autistic crafting systems but when I play a dungeon crawler or any action or tactic game I just want to kill, not to bother about the best combination out of a thousand mediocre ones to get a reasonable useful weapon or armor.

I think they put so much focus into the combat and crafting system itself that they forgot completely about the actual meat, the content of the game. It's like a roguelike or diablo clone that looks good but it's very empty, which surprises me coming from Square. By comparison, Parasite Eve is much simpler, but that makes the peace more bearable despite it also featuring a crafting system.

Hard mode: from a normie standpoint only, no dumb "aesthetics" or "soul" BS. State-of-the-art stuff that just looked great at the time, period.