YMMV / Vagrant Story

• Awesome Music:
  • The Undercity West theme. It's seriously creepy.
  • The Limestone Quarry is badass too, and The Atrium is just plain tearjerkingly sad.
  • The Prologue theme "Climax of the Greyland Case", "Large Chapel", and "Ifrit".
  • The Great Cathedral. Awesome Final Dungeon music, the music sets up the mood of an invincible Ashley on a mission that is nearing its conclusion, just a few minor Block Puzzles and fools stand in his way...
• Complete Monster: Romeo Guildenstern is a power-hungry man cloaking his ambitions under false piety. Abusing the woman in love with him, Guildenstern slaps her hard enough to draw blood. Hiding his devotion to the forces of darkness by attacking one of their temples with his forces, Guildenstern, in his lust for power, throws aside his religious facade and sacrifices his abused lover in return for immense power. With his newfound strength, Guildenstern intends to take his rule worldwide and enact a cruel dictatorship in which he is worshipped above all else.
• Cult Classic: While not an outright flop, sales for the game were not particularly impressive. It remains a favorite of many old-school RPG players, thanks to a mature, political storyline with great Shakespearean dialogue, a Solid Snake-esque main character rarely found in JRPG's, fantastic visuals, oppressive atmosphere, and complex genre-busting gameplay.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The visuals, storyline, atmosphere, and music of the game are widely praised, but opinions on its gameplay are mixed due to its incredible complexity. Some people find the gameplay systems to be difficult to learn but incredibly rewarding, others think they game is just overly complex and the combat too reliant on timing with the arts, leaving them unable to enjoy the game's other strengths.
• Fridge Brilliance: Much ado is made about what a badass Ashley is, but it's entirely possible to get through the game without unlocking even half of what he's capable of. And since all of his abilities are reclaimed from his lost memory, what a monster of a badass he must have been before he lost it all.
• Fridge Horror: In the Snowfly forest, there's an area where you fight two zombie knights. If it strikes you as odd that you're encountering undead in an area mostly populated by beasts, consider the fate of Faendos and Lambkin, the two knights who entered the forest with Grissom and got lost in the woods...
• Game-Breaker: Absorb Damage. Absorb Magic. Raging Ache. Have fun. Want proof? Here's a guy finishing the game in under two hours.
• Goddamned Bats: Aside from actual bats (which are easy to dispatch) the Imp and Gargoyle enemies are horrendously difficult to hit with anything but crossbows, wield high-level magic, and are tiny and fast.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The staff roll seems to imply that the game's subtitle is "The Phantom Pain". Fast-forward 15 years...
• Ho Yay: Pick a pairing. The evidence is there for it.
  • Guildenstern refers to Rosencrantz as a 'harlot', which - of all the insults he could have chosen, why that one? Unless Romeo's aware that Jan's a quintuple agent of some sort, which is unlikely, you have to wonder.
    • There is an archaic meaning of "harlot", however, which might apply: a low-born, churlish man. Even so....
  • From the translated guide, Sydney and Hardin are each the only one the other trusts, and any doubt between them is always short-lived, no matter what. Considering what kind of Hell they go through, and how Hardin finds out Sydney was lying to him about the "key" the entire time, but forgives him anyway, it's hard not to see it.
  • Just for the record, Ashley goes through the entire game in high-cut briefs and assless chaps.
  • The Ho Yay is so omnipresent in this game that some fans theorize Callo was only included to make it seem less homoerotic.
• Magnificent Bastard: Sydney Lostarrot is a charismatic cult leader secretly cursed with the Blood-Sin tattoo on his back. Kidnapping his younger brother Joshua, the Riskbreaker Ashley Riot is sent after Sydney and Sydney decides to play all the sides after him against one another, luring them into the dark city Lea Monde so he may test them to see who is worthy of inheriting the Blood-Sin to hold the Dark at bay. Believing that any rule or regime must respect human life, Sydney knows only one who has no desire for the Dark can hold its power, deciding to die and pass the power to Ashley, the only worthy successor.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The enemies called "Quicksilver". You meet them in the Undercity, which is dark, damp and claustrophobic. Then you suddenly hear giggling and large dolls resembling children stumble towards you, holding knives. In fact, the in-game monster manual says that these dolls are possessed by the souls of dead children. If that is nothing to you, then the variety in the Iron Maiden sub dungeon will make you squirm.
  • Harpy, a big flightless bird that would look quite normal, if it wasn't for a giant human face protruding from it's chest.
  • The Iron Maiden dungeon room names. Hint — they are not named after Heavy Metal bands.
  • The terrifying gleeful/insane expression on Guildenstern's face in his first boss form.
  • What happens to Grissom is especially frightening.
  • Asura in Iron Maiden B3. All three of its faces look at you and has a very creepy laugh.
  • The final boss' final form.
• Nintendo Hard: Unlike most JRPGs, Vagrant Story likes to keep the player on their toes... by kicking them where it hurts every half an hour or so. Boss fights consistently cream poor Ashley, and random encounters are even worse. Success depends largely on mastery of the game's near-inscrutable Item Crafting system, and there's even a random enemy with an instant death spell... in a game with only one PC. Rumours tell of gamers that actually enjoy this, but it's possible they have been conditioned to it by experiences too horrible to comprehend.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The block puzzles are generally seen as out of place and rather tedious. Fortunately you can set it in options that you only have to complete each puzzle once, otherwise you will have to redo them to a timer each time you enter the room from the same door.
  • The item management system, not so much how it works (even if it's based a bit too much on luck), but how it has its own save file. Workshops are an utter pain in the ass to utilize due to how much saving and loading the game has to do.
• Squick: One of the most horrifying scenes in any RPG, even if the worst part takes place off camera: after capturing Sydney in the Temple of Kiltia, Guildenstern strips the skin off of Sydney's back to get the Rood Inverse tattoo, the key to the Dark power, and wears it on his own back.
• That One Level:
  • Did anyone enjoy the Snowfly Forest?
  • And then there's that bit where you're traversing a maze. Full of traps and Goddamn Bats. In the dark. With a time limit before the exit closes. Which results in being warped back to the starting point with several tough enemies spawning around Ashley that all require different tactics. And several of the rooms in the maze are trapped. Heavily. And the boss at the end of the maze is hard, and isn't even the very end of it. And you'll need to go through it twice or thrice for 100% Completion.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Grissom's Came Back Wrong storyline is tragic and full of narrative potential. And lasts all of two scenes.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: This was one of the last games ever made for the Playstation, and is clearly one of the best-looking. It's aged remarkably well, too. Despite the PSX's hardware limitations, they managed to implement techniques typically used for sprite-based games, as well as some clever rendering tricks to generate some of the most cinematic presentations on the console.
  • This thread details how the Devs made miracles happen, despite their limitations and inexperience with 3D.
• Woolseyism: Vagrant Story is good evidence that this trope should be named after Alexander O. Smith, in whose capable hands the fairly mundane original script was turned into some of the best quasi-Shakespearean of our time. Oddly appropriate both to the setting as well as the overall mood of the game, the localization is pretty much touted as one of the best ever.

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