Humanity is False (Day 327)

I am currently dividing my time between Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem (I'm referring to it by the English name from now on. . .) and Vagrant Story. For the past few months I've been trying to maintain a pretty strict "one game at a time" policy to encourage clearing out more of my backlog, but man, Vagrant Story can be so tedious sometimes! If I hadn't already made so much progress on it, I doubt I'd be considering it a priority even now. Of course, that's not the only thing that keeps me playing. It actually has a fantastic script and great music--even if I'm not as absorbed in the story as I might otherwise be if I were enjoying the game more.

I've put about 15 hours into Vagrant Story and I still don't feel powerful. In RPGs, I feel it's pretty important to feel like you're gradually amassing more and more power until weaker enemies can be destroyed easily. I regularly come across frail-looking skeletons who somehow take 0 damage from spears and giant war hammers just because of some arbitrary affinity system. I think the system looks really good on paper and I can't really find much fault with it in theory. However, in practice it's exceedingly tedious. The interface could definitely use some work--and despite the pseudo turn-based combat being central to the gameplay, I almost wonder if the game would have been a lot more fun if it had been more of an action RPG.

In order to be consistently successful against most opponents you come across, it's important to have a good variety of weapons tailored to specific situations. However, analyzing enemies is a slow and tedious process and even when done often doesn't guarantee that you'll have the weapon you need to exploit those weaknesses. Even if you do have an air-elemental blunt weapon, it might turn out that that weapon is lower quality than your current weapon and thus infers no particular superiority over your current options--meaning that no matter what weapon you choose to use, you'll be dealing out 2-3 damage per hit while racking up ridiculous amounts of Risk, a bizarre statistic that decreases your accuracy and increases the damage you take from enemies. It decays very slowly on its own or you can reduce it by using certain items.

Vagrant Story's combat system is a hodge-podge of interesting mechanics that don't end up working very well when combined together. Throw in a clunky interface and the necessity to switch weapons frequently by navigating through slow-loading menus and you end up with what is a supremely frustrating experience. It's doubly irritating because the game shows so much promise. If a few different design decisions had been made in the interest of usability, the game would be absolutely fantastic. If ever a game needed an enhanced remake, it is Vagrant Story.

I still intend to finish it. I've put 15 hours into the game and have built up a not inconsiderable amount of momentum. I'm not looking forward to the endgame grind and the toil required to forge weapons suitable for the final areas of the game, but perhaps once I've conquered those final areas I'll gain a new appreciation for the game. Maybe I won't--but regardless of whatever the flaws present in Vagrant Story, I think it's a game that is worth my time all the same.