Vagrant Story discussion thread

[Ruldra]

Yeah, I noticed that you can pretty much kill anyone with any weapon with good chaining and the right battle abilities. There's always something you can do if your weapon is useless.

Still, the tactic I've been using is to have one weapon for each enemy class. In case it doesn't work, I'll just chain endlessly and do scratch damage until it dies. One of my chain abilities replenishes MP so I always have enough to cast healing and magic ward. At this point no enemy is really a threat.

Right now I'm at the beginning of the Temple of Kiltia. I'm stuck in a room with a box puzzle and a door locked with silver key. I'm wondering if I'm supposed to have the key at this point, because the puzzle looks impossible to solve.

[Ruldra]

So yeah, just made it to the end. Really awesome game, and I'm glad I experienced it for the first time as an adult. If I had played this as a clueless teenager I'd no doubt get stuck somewhere and quit.

I really like that there's no character interaction (outside of cutscenes at least), towns or shops. Just you, your gear and a bunch of dungeons to explore. Pure dungeon crawler bliss. Also loved the whole weapon customization mechanic and the plethora of bosses they throw at you. It's not uncommon to face a boss and not even 5 rooms later to face another.

The map system also deserves a mention: very detailed and easy to use, you can quickly see which areas you still need to explore, shows all the locked doors and which keys you need to unlock them, and also informs when you have the proper key and the door is unlockable. Makes things so much easier when you find a key/sigil and need to backtrack. I'm sure this map system has spared many players from useless wandering figuring out where to go next.

Unfortunately I found the game to be too easy. Once I got good with chaining I could pretty much kill any boss with any weapon. And the Magic Ward spell is completely broken. Coupled with Gain Magic ability, so many boss fights become trivial. Even the final boss only took me a couple of attempts to beat.

Overall, I liked it very much. Will put it aside for now and revisit in the future to tackle NewGame+.

[Jonathan Ingram]

You ain't made it to the end until you've cleared the Iron Maiden dungeon and defeated Asura. Get to it!

[Ed Oscuro]

100% map completion was my "must do" landmark. Then I started grinding max stats...heh. Took quite a few playthroughs before I found the God Hands workshop, though!

[Jonathan Ingram]

Getting decked in ultimate Damascus armor is another one. Kept me motivated after I'd got 100% on map and chests. Achieving the 100% map completion is actually fairly tricky because of Iron Maiden B2.

[soprano1]

Dammit people, i'm trying to finish Super Mario 3D World
Iron Maiden B2 is a bitch, and at the time i had the PAL version, borders and slowdown for everyone in Europe!

[Ed Oscuro]

Ruldra's quote sounds familiar. I actually didn't have trouble with the final boss - I think I lost once, then got it the second time. After the early game I think things started becoming a bit easier. Of course, on repeat playthroughs the game becomes trivial.

Getting decked in ultimate Damascus armor is another one. Kept me motivated after I'd got 100% on map and chests. Achieving the 100% map completion is actually fairly tricky because of Iron Maiden B2.

Still working on getting the ultimate weapons, actually, which I think should prove even more difficult than damascus armor (iirc that can be assembled from relatively common materials and parts, i.e. hagane + silver, same as weapons, but the components are much more common - at least some top-tier weapons require components that only drop in that Iron Maiden B2 dungeon, or similar places.)

[BIL]

I remember briefly dabbling with the NG+ stuff, but being such an ADD baby with new gamez rolling in for my shiny new PS1 I didn't go too far. I do recall killing a [four armed statue] paletteswap and getting lost in a very dark map-disabling cave infested with killer marionettes though. Also squeeing hard when a random house's locked door was openable on the replay.

I hope I live long enough to play a few more of the games I've been putting off for the last decade!

[Jonathan Ingram]

I do recall killing a [four armed statue] paletteswap

Ravana, probably.

...and getting lost in a very dark map-disabling cave infested with killer marionettes though.

Iron Maiden B2!!! You almost made it to the end, then!

[Ruldra]

Alright, decided to get back to this while everything was still fresh in my mind. Completely steamrolled the story mode this time around (enemies remain with same stats, pretty dumb for a NG+ playthrough), explored all the extra areas then proceeded to the dreaded Iron Maiden dungeon.

Once I got to B2 and realized that the map was disabled, my first reaction was to just go straight ahead and ignore all side paths. After a number of bosses the dungeon became all red, kept going forward then decided to take a turn to the right and suddenly I found the exit to B3. I guess I got VERY lucky here because I found the way out pretty quickly.

Asura was no problem, it was more concerned about buffing itself than attacking me. Kept dispelling the buffs and chained it to oblivion.

After doing the time trials, went back to B2 to explore the remaining rooms and, to my surprise, the map was no longer disabled after beating Asura. Finding my way around was pretty easy now.

Once I got map completion to 99%, proceeded to beat the final boss again and this is the result:



Unfortunately chest count was left at 98% and I can't be arsed to look around for the remaining ones. I'm done now.

Bonus screencaps - my final weapon stats:





This is probably far from optimal play but having dedicated weapons turned out to be really helpful for me.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

I've been playing this for the last few weeks. It's a pretty cool game, even if it's kind of slow-paced, but I'm not feeling the last boss fight at all. It'd be fine if it weren't for his Bloody Sin attack that one-shots you even if you have full health, no risk, and a shield. How are you supposed to stop that without letting it come down to getting a lucky shot off before he uses the attack or using Impact Guard? Everything I've read just says obvious advice like "have full health and no risk".

[Ruldra]

I think the Bloody Sin attack is dark-based, so if you're wearing a lot of Damascus armor you'll be very vulnerable to it. That was the main reason I stuck with Hagane armor myself.

Other than that, I don't know. The first time I took that attack, I had max risk and it dealt like 1000 damage. Next time I made sure I was at full health and zero risk, and it barely scratched me.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

I think the Bloody Sin attack is dark-based, so if you're wearing a lot of Damascus armor you'll be very vulnerable to it. That was the main reason I stuck with Hagane armor myself.

Other than that, I don't know. The first time I took that attack, I had max risk and it dealt like 1000 damage. Next time I made sure I was at full health and zero risk, and it barely scratched me.

I actually never had any damascus gear other than a shield, so that shield may have screwed me over then.

I managed to get past it by hitting him with break arts before he can pull it off, but that strategy just relied on luck so I didn't feel too good about using it. Once you get past that, he's not really that hard, thankfully.

Pretty cool game. I think constantly watching spell animations gets really tiring about halfway through, having to analyze everything is kind of annoying (and it's even more annoying when the spell fails), and most bosses go down to the same strategy played out with different types of gear, so things start to feel a little samey after a while, but despite that it was fun. It had a great sense of style and the combat system had some pretty cool ideas. I don't think I'll do a new game+ right now, but I'm sure I will later on.

[Bananamatic]

The last time I played the game, I took only 0-3 damage per hit from Bloody Sin and that was on NG without any equipment grinding. No idea how, I think the attack is a dark based physical, so while Apocalypse did a bit of damage and Judgment a ton, Bloody Sin did almost nothing for some reason.

The bigger issue there is that he takes 0 damage on NG unless you really grind up a weapon for him specifically.

[xorthen]

I'm almost tempted to load up my old save and show off my gear and stats. I never could get the consecutive 30+ chain challenge.