This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on March 23rd, 2019. It has been edited slightly for formatting and to add a slight bit of information.
It’s spring but still cold here in Pittsburgh on this Saturday.
Anyway, welcome back to PlayStation Basement! Every Saturday I am here
reviewing an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Though I
formerly used a rating out of nine to review the game, I am now just using a
Good, Bad, or Neutral.
Today begins a short trilogy of unrelated mech games in
celebration of the 40th anniversary of Mobile Suit Gundam which
began on April 7th, 1979. Our first game is an RPG developed by
S-NEO, founded by former employees of Fire Pro Wrestling developers Human
Entertainment. The parent company, Human, also published the game in Japan in
1998 where it was called Epica Stella. Working Designs, the otaku publishers
of games that otherwise would have never left Japan (Lunar: Eternal Blue,
RayStorm, Arc the Lad Collection, Popful Mail), brought Epica Stella to
North America as Vanguard Bandits in April of 2000. It is a tactical RPG
about a continent drawn into war between the Kingdom of Pharastia and the
Junaris Empire. You control a boy named Bastion whose decisions in leading his
group of friends in battles between ancient mechanical armored suits known as
ATACs will determine the fate of the continent.
The cover art depicts a powerful ATAC standing in a blank field
with some others behind it. While it is well-drawn and has some cool
holographic foil effects, the mechanical armors are basically posing for the
camera in a plain setting, which I am not fond of. Something that's really odd about the American cover is the shrunken ESRB logo. When I got my copy, I actually worried that it was a fake, but the cover just seems to be like that. The backcover has the
familiar layout of a Working Designs game with many images of the game. The
Japanese cover has a stylized depiction of the title on a stone slab with the
same ATAC carved into the slab. This looks a bit better compositionally, and I
like the textural quality and color choices.
Graphically, Vanguard Bandits looks pretty good. There is a
decent variety of maps and different looking units. The 2D sprites on the field
look decent enough, while the 3D battle sprites are well animated. The colors
used in the 3D battles are especially vibrant. The characters have designs that
look like they could have come from an anime contemporary with the game, which
fits the tone of the story well. The opening cutscene uses the portrait designs
to nice effect in an animated sequence. Mostly though, as a tactical RPG, Vanguard Bandits isn’t going to wow graphics hounds, but the aesthetics all
fit together into a successful whole.
The sound design is similar. The songs played in Vanguard Bandits are pretty good, perhaps not the most memorable of all time, but they
do have some nice compositions and quality. Unfortunately, there are not many
tracks to hear, so you’ll hear a few over and over. The standouts are the vocal
opening themes. A less stellar vocal aspect is the voice acting in the game,
which happened only once in my playthrough. It was pretty subpar, equivalent to
low-budget anime OVA dubs from around the same time. I find them stuck in my
head often. The sound effects, though, are good, especially the sharp slash of
the ATACs’ weapons clashing with enemies in battle. There are many battles to
wade through, so I’m glad everything isn’t a pain to listen to.
If you are familiar with games like Arc the Lad, Final
Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, or Fire Emblem, you know what to expect with Vanguard Bandits. The player controls a squad of characters, one-by-one,
moving them across a map and using AP to make attacks on enemies or using
support skills to enhance statistics of allies. Units are rated in BAS
(health), POW (attack power), DEX (accuracy), AGL (dodging ability), DEF
(damage reduction), and WEP (weapon strength). Upon gaining enough experience
by attack or dispatching enemies, the player is given three points to add to
any of these ability scores. Raising scores to certain levels grants new
attacks beyond the simple Thrust and Slash. Abilities gained depend on what
stone (a power source) is equipped to the ATAC the character is piloting.
Facing, emotions, terrain types, range, and the nearness of allies also all
come into play in Vanguard Bandits.
When a character is struck by an enemy that can take a number of
defensive actions from attacking back, defending, dodging, or countering, but
these all cost a number of AP and even FP. FP rates how strained an ATAC is; if
it reaches 100, the ATAC is stunned while the gauge goes down, leaving it
devastatingly open to enemy attacks. It’s a bad place to be.
One big issue I had with Vanguard Bandits is that the game
mechanics are not really explained in the game and barely explained in the
manual. This was before the age of tutorials that we’ve had for the past
decade, but there is a severe lack of clarity. The game does not explain
equipment (this can be figured out after a few missions), learning abilities,
character emotions (these affect abilities in battle and are vaguely described
in the manual), or the effects of passive abilities. This made the game hard to
grasp, and I don’t see any benefit of it really. It’s fun to have some
mysteries, but I shouldn’t have to look up a guide to find out that Chivalry
makes your character deal more damage when facing an enemy’s front.
The story itself is well-told. Working Designs did some nice
work with the dialogue for a game that otherwise uses stock characters such as
the old veteran, the cocky prince, and the nervous traitor. Some of the
dialogue is dated, sometimes in a manner that is a bit offensive. When it does
work, though, the translation of Vanguard Bandits keeps the story fresh and
youthful for American audiences. Even though it often felt like I may have seen
these scenes before, I was happy to see how everything would turn out and
excited to play more each day.
Vanguard Bandits is something familiar but different enough
for fans of anime and tactical RPGs. The mech combat feels a bit simple at
first, but new abilities and more characters turn things around after a bit of
time. The story is well told, but I wish that the mechanics could have also
been explained somewhere. I was able to complete the game after around 26 hours
(an estimate, as there is no in-game timer), though reviews online range the
completion time from 5 to around 18. Since the story can change based on your
actions in the game, there may be a shorter scenario than the one I completed
that gave a happy ending. The game keeps track of which missions you complete
in your course of 20 out of the 65 total and also which ATACs you have seen.
It’s kind of interesting, but I’m not playing this again any time soon. Maybe
you will.
Vanguard Bandits receives a Good.
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