The graphics in Vagrant Story are absolutely breathtaking. Every character model is gorgeous, pushing the limits of the aging PlayStation, and then some. The mouths move, the muscles seem to flex, and every square inch is textured with care. No confusing duplicate character in this game, mind you. Even the bit enemies are well-detailed, with the bat looking appropriately batty, and the wolf looking appropriately lupine. Each room has bits of detail that can only be appreciated by hitting Start and looking around in first person view (and this is highly suggested as a means of finding hidden exits). I don't know how much time it took to render this game like they did, but it must have been a whole lot.

The sound in the game is just as good, with great sound effects and death sounds, and a soundtrack that only really picks up when it should -- boss battles, important scenes -- and then tones itself down when not needed. What's more, there are ambient sounds in every room, from insane cackling to the moans and groans of the undead. Amazing aural entertainment is what Vagrant Story delivers on.

All of the in-game movies are in the game engine itself, which means that you have absolutely no load time between the characters talking and the characters fighting. This is a wonderful, wonderful feature that was really first used to its potential in Metal Gear Solid, but Vagrant Story really takes it to the next level. The speech bubbles that appear whenever the characters talk are both a great way to show what's going on (and the font itself is gorgeous, almost hand-written), and a secondary emotive style -- if the bubble's got spikes, you can be sure the speaker's pretty damned upset.

Mmm. Vagrant Story takes all the best parts of the games that you've played -- the real time battling of Parasite Eve, the deep plot of Final Fantasy Tactics, the localization skill of Working Designs and Atlus -- and takes them one step further. Truly, this game is the pinnacle of console role-playing (at least for now).

First, let's take the battle system. You can walk around in two modes -- weapon sheathed, which means you have both hands usable for such things as picking up boxes, climbing ledges, and whatnot, and weapon out, which lets you attack your opponents. There is no meter that tells you when you can attack again -- you can generally attack mere moments after your last onslaught. When you choose to attack, the sphere that first appeared in Parasite Eve pops up, showing the range of the weapon that you have selected, and you get to pick body parts of the enemy that you want to hit. The game shows you your chances of hitting and how much damage you can do. Once you've done this, if you've gotten to the point of the game that you can chain attacks, you can start tapping buttons and do massive damage, heal yourself, repair your weapon, and more. The battle system has more depth than most wargames, and that's saying a whole lot. As you do chain attacks and block enemy attacks, a meter called 'Risk' goes up. Higher Risk means that you hit less often (but do critical hits more often), take more damage, and spells work better on you (both damaging and curative). When you're not fighting, Risk drops slowly, and you can also use items to reduce it. Along with all this, you can put weapons together at workshops and combine weapons and weapon parts to try to make better ones. This may all sound terribly complicated, and it is, but the game eases you into it (with the now defacto Square standard -- amnesia -- as the explanation), and you'll be in the game fiddling with your weapons in no time.

Then there's the plot. Your name is Ashley Riot (a seeming homage to that big, bad Ash in Housewares, of Evil Dead and Army of Darkness fame), and you're a Riskbreaker, one of an elite group of, well, butt-kickers. The game takes place in the city of Lea Monde, which starts out seeming like a bunch of crypts and opens up majestically later in the game. The plot itself is convoluted as hell, on par with Tactics for the sheer possibility of confusion, but it has a major leg up on Final Fantasy Tactics -- the best translation of a Japanese game, ever. Every single word seems to make sense, as the characters speak true Middle English instead of Dragon Warrior-ese, with phrases to laugh at, be scared by, and just damn cool stuff. Square has finally redeemed themselves for the poor past few translations. It even tops Working Designs -- something that takes a whole lot of work.

I could go on and on about this game, about the crazy room names for every location in the game, about its excellent auto-map reminiscent of Descent, of the Break Arts that let you beat the crap out of the bosses, out of the bosses that can and will beat the crap out of you the first few times until you figure out their weaknesses, about the four schools of spells and their usefulness -- but this review would be pages and pages long. So I'll stop here, and just say that this game has Gameplay, with a capital G.

If you're a tweak-fiend, making sure that everything you have is the best you can make, you'll find the game difficult. If you're not, you'll find it impossible. Prepare to spend time making sure that you have all sorts of weapons, as different enemies are susceptible to different things. This game is much larger than was originally made out, so be ready to spend hours tromping through the world, and be on guard -- the enemies get stronger to match your power.

In a brilliant show, you can hit L2 and bring up an amazingly useful pop-up menu where you can pick any of the four spell types, use an item, set your attack and defense buttons, and use a Break Art, all without having to wade through menus. Sheer genius. The menus themselves are easy to understand, and the online help is extensive and helpful. Controlling Ashley becomes second nature after the first ten minutes in the game. The ability to store items in the ubiquitous container and pick them up anywhere in the game is terribly handy, even if it means waiting through long saves every time you take something out or put it in. I could nitpick and find flaws -- huge savefiles and matching save times, uh... but there's nothing really there to complain about. The game -needs- the large savefiles, and the speed of the save is a limitation of the hardware. I have never given a 100% to a game before, but I feel that Vagrant Story is the first game I've played that truly deserves it. It is a masterpiece, a game to purchase a system for. If you are at all interested in the genre, or even if you are not, you owe it to yourself to pick up Vagrant Story. It's just that good.