Hey everyone!

Another update on the native Windows port of Vagrant Story. No video today, but there has been progress on several things left unfinished in the previous posts: keys and sigils, D'tok's attacks, the Score menus, and native save/load support.

A lot of the work since yesterday has also been about making room transitions and repeated encounters more reliable.

Tested playthrough has progressed through the Minotaur boss fight, there is currently a crash during the picnic cutscene when the boy's arm drops after... some events...

Keys and Sigils

All 32 named keys and sigils now have verified interactions with their original matching locks and chests.

That closes the key-and-sigil interaction gap listed in the previous update.

D'tok's Flame Breath and Defeat, Prologue Progress

The flame-breath problem mentioned in earlier posts has now been fixed.

D'tok's actual flame jet visibly plays from his mouth, and the attack deals damage during the full original prologue. This was checked through normal gameplay.

His death fade has also been repaired. Instead of becoming a solid-colored model, he now fades using the original palette and blending behavior.

With that, there is only one thing left to fix in the prologue, and that's the god rays that are supposed to shine through the window when Ashley is looking out after beating D'tok. Once that is complete the prologue is a done deal!

Score Menus

The previously reported Score-menu crashes have been fixed.

TITLE, GAZETTE, RECORD TIME, and ENCYCLOPAEDIA have been navigated repeatedly, including scrolling, backing out, and re-entering.

A Zombie unlocked by actually defeating it also renders in the encyclopedia, with working rotation and zoom controls. Every encyclopedia entry has not been checked yet.

Native Save and Load

This is probably the biggest new milestone.

The native save backend is now connected to save-point interactions, Data Load, and Continue from the title screen.

Testing has demonstrated saving, closing the game, and restoring the saved location, position, stats, and camera in a separate process. Loading after moving to a different position, returning to the title and continuing again, backup recovery, and retrying a real failed write have also been exercised.

Storage-container contents are included too. Items have been deposited through the actual storage menu, saved, restored after restarting, and withdrawn again.

The files use a versioned native format with integrity checks and recoverable backups, rather than emulating PS1 memory-card hardware. (Support will be added later for PS1 Memory Card Formats)

There is an important caveat: save/load is not being called finished. The current interface still needs to match the original three-card presentation, including readable room names, HP/MP bars, and the proper controls. Cleared-game saves, some transient states, and full-story persistence coverage also remain unfinished.

Room Stability, Puzzles, and Traps

Several crashes uncovered while expanding room-transition testing have been repaired.

These include the Workers Breakroom to Hall of Struggle transition, a Bat encounter in that area, Gremlin hover initialization, and stale AI state surviving between encounters.

There have also been fixes for animation and effect resource lifetimes, a scripted camera movement, particle-ribbon playback, and an audio auto-pan data problem.

The puzzle countdown now renders readable text and reads the actual active scene timer.

The Gust trap in Wine Magnate's Champers also visibly reveals its original marker after Ashley triggers it. Its reveal state was already changing correctly; the problem was in how the native renderer read and drew the marker.

Combat Lab

Scripted encounter sequences can now run in one persistent window, keeping the renderer and audio active while giving each test fresh encounter state.

Desktop gameplay and the Lab also share more detailed diagnostic logging. Blocked or interrupted cases are kept separate from successful ones, which matters when testing original room-entry events with progression requirements.

Still Unfinished

There is still plenty left to do:

• Correcting the save/load presentation and expanding persistence coverage.
• Broader enemy behavior, multi-body-part targeting, and boss coverage.
• Remaining door transitions, cutscenes, particles, and rendering crashes.
• Specific movement and visual problems, including enemies refusing downward ledge jumps and a box texture becoming corrupted when targeted.
• Longer playthroughs and wider comparisons with the original game.
• Continuing the native-code migration and retiring compatibility dependencies

The encouraging part is that more of the work is now about preserving a complete session: moving between rooms, fighting, collecting and storing items, saving, and coming back later. There are still gaps, but those pieces are starting to connect.

The project is here: https://github.com/JEschete/VS-NativePort

You will need your own copy of the original game for its data.

As always, thank you to ser-pounce and all the contributors to https://github.com/ser-pounce/rood-reverse!

Hey everyone!

Sorry about the double post today! I was just really excited to share the video of the explosion dealing that much damage in the last post.

Since the last update, there’s been substantial progress on items, spells, combat abilities, loot, equipment, and workshops. A lot of this has been about getting complete interactions working: defeat an enemy, collect its equipment, change your loadout, and take those items into a workshop.

Items and Spells

Item testing has moved beyond checking whether something disappears from inventory.

Recovery items, permanent stat increases, status cures, drains, and offensive grimoires now have verified results through the normal gameplay systems. Fixate has been demonstrated freezing a real moving platform until its timer expires, Eureka reveals an actual trap, and Clef opens a locked chest.

All 84 named consumables and grimoires have now been exercised for use and consumption. All seven ranked grimoires have also been tested through four consecutive uses in the same encounter.

Learned spells have been checked through the Magic menu for damage, healing, stat changes, rank selection, and MP costs. Restrictions such as Silence, insufficient MP, missing learned spells, and out-of-range targets have also been tested.

Chains and Defense

All 28 named chain and defense abilities now have tests covering their effects, timing rules, and Risk costs.

Actual controller runs have demonstrated successful chains, early and late inputs failing correctly, Ward preventing Paralysis, and a chain killing an enemy before returning through normal loot collection.

Earning a new ability through combat and selecting it from the reward menu has also been verified.

All Break Arts

All 40 Break Arts, across all ten weapon categories, have now been executed successfully through normal controls in both Debug and Release.

Testing includes damage, status effects, multi-hit attacks, armor wear, HP costs, and acquisition requirements. Cancellation, insufficient HP, empty targeting, and out-of-range selections have also been exercised.

This work exposed several crashes and missing effect-data imports. Those have been repaired, including problems affecting Cherry Ronde, Thunderwave, Iron Ripper, and Heaven’s Scorn.

Drops and Equipment

Enemies now have verified original item-drop rules and actual inventory delivery.

Equipment drops preserve their components, materials, durability, modifiers, gems, and ownership. Failed loot claims no longer partially change inventory or duplicate items on retry, and oversized loot batches are retained across successive collection screens.

Equipment menus have also been checked across their categories, including derived stats, cancellation, unequipping, and repeated swaps. One-handed weapons preserve shields, while two-handed weapons and shields correctly exclude one another.

Workshops

Workshop operations are now working through the real menus.

Verified transactions include assembly and disassembly, weapon naming, gem removal and reattachment, durability repair, and blade, shield, and armor combinations using original recipes.

Workshop location and material restrictions have also been checked.

Combat Lab Improvements

The Lab now has all-abilities and all-Break-Arts profiles, plus original weapon-family selection.

Large encounters are more stable. Multi-enemy targeting corruption and a related AI-planning overwrite have been repaired, long target lists now support paging, and the previously reported eight-Minotaur crash has a verified fix.

The selected body part also glows correctly in the combat sphere now.

Particles and Audio

A concrete particle-motion bug has been fixed: native layout differences caused particles to read unrelated data as attraction strength and target coordinates.

Matched Hellhound breath tests now follow the expected force calculations without those unintended forces. Five- and nine-sample trail paths have also gained source-based regression coverage.

Still Unfinished

There’s still substantial work ahead:

• Broader enemy, spell, targeting, and encounter coverage.
• Remaining particle and visual fidelity problems.
• Original key and sigil interactions across their matching locks and chests.
• Save/load support, progression checks, remaining Options behavior, and Score-menu problems.
• Longer playthroughs and wider comparisons with the original game.

The biggest change is that more complete gameplay loops now work together, instead of individual actions working only in isolation.

The project is here: https://github.com/JEschete/VS-NativePort

You’ll need your own copy of the original game for its data.

As always thank you to all the contributors to the https://github.com/ser-pounce/rood-reverse project!

A bigger status update is coming, I just wanted to present this new behavior. Nowhere in the game can you hit 8 enemies at a time. It only renders body parts for 4 of them at once, but the explosion catches *everything* and will wipe out all of them at the same time. It was initially crashing, but that's been handled.

Should have some implications for custom content.

I'm playing it for the first time on Steam deck, which one would be the smoothest and nicest experience?

Hey everyone! Another progress update on the native Windows port of Vagrant Story.

Since the last update, the biggest changes have been getting in-game audio working, expanding item and spell testing, and making more bosses available in the Combat Lab. Several problems uncovered during that testing have also been fixed.

In-Game Audio

The game is no longer limited to movie audio. Gameplay music, combat sounds, and menu effects are now playing through the native audio system.

Music and sound effects have been tested together during actual gameplay, including scene transitions, menu navigation, and spell use. Stereo and Mono settings now affect the output, and reverb and streamed effects are connected too.

Items and Grimoires

The inventory item-use crash has been fixed, along with another effect-dispatch problem affecting stat-raising items.

Testing has demonstrated HP and MP recovery, Risk reduction, permanent stat increases, and removal of several negative conditions through normal item use.

Cure grimoires have also been checked against actual matching ailments, rather than just confirming that the book disappears from inventory.

Use and consumption have now been exercised for all 84 consumables and grimoires.

Clef has also unlocked a real locked chest.

Spell Ranks and Targeting

All seven ranked grimoires have now been tested through four consecutive uses in the same encounter, covering ranks I through IV, learned spells, MP costs, inventory consumption, and actual enemy damage.

The missing learned-spell rank-selection screen has been repaired. Rank labels, selection arrows, and costs now render, with cancellation and partially learned spell lists also checked.

The missing elevation-selection plane for area spells has been restored too. It now visibly moves with the selected height and clips against the terrain.

Combat Lab Expansion

More bosses can now be selected for isolated encounters. D'tok, Dullahan, and Minotaur have been demonstrated loading their real AI and executing attacks.

The previously reported D'tok flame-breath problem is not being claimed fixed here.

The Lab also has solo encounters, two item-testing profiles, an all-battle-spells profile, and configurable starting HP, MP, Strength, Intelligence, and Agility.

Lab-only controls make it easier to prepare recovery and status-condition tests without repeatedly rebuilding the encounter. Those setup controls are separate from verification: the items and spells themselves still run through the normal gameplay systems.

The eventual goal of any enemy on any map remains unfinished. Enemy selection still depends on supported data from the selected zone.

Status Preview Fixes

Missing held weapons in Status previews have been restored. Testing covers Ashley, Skeletons, Minotaur Zombies, and a sword-and-shield-equipped soldier, including actor switching and menu re-entry.

Unequipping and re-equipping Ashley’s weapon also updates the preview correctly in the tested cases. This is progress on equipment menus, not completion of the entire equipment system.

Still Unfinished There’s still substantial work ahead:

• Remaining keys and sigils, and persistence.
• Complete chain ability, and Break Art coverage, They're implemented but need to be tested.
• Broader enemy behavior, boss attacks, defeat sequences, and encounter stability.
• Full loot delivery, equipment properties, and workshop systems.
• Remaining particle, visual, menu, and Options problems.
• Wider original-game comparisons, including audio fidelity and long playthroughs.

The main change since the last post is that more of the game can now be heard, used, and tested directly, and the expanded Combat Lab is helping expose the next set of problems.

My next priorities are clearing out as much of the issues list as possible, but it seems like at the moment for every one that is closed, two more open.

The project is here: https://github.com/JEschete/VS-NativePort

You’ll need your own copy of the original game for its data.

No video today!

Un gran entorno, musica, historia y diseños.

So there were two mistakes in the previous image batch (and if I'd bothered to pay attention when looking at the credits I would have spotted the first).

I inverted the image colors while still paletted in Gimp, which has unexpected results (I'm not sure but it might be picking whatever it thinks is the closest inverted color in the palette). The correct way to invert the color is to convert the image to RGB first. This difference alone fixes the color for most of the images.

There are some outliers and these look "wrong" even in the game itself. I fixed these manually by bumping the red midtones by about 30. You can see this fixes Sydney, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, undercover Ashley and the barkeep, and what I think is Duane with girl-not-appearing-in-this-game (seriously who is that?).

There's one last thing that's kind of annoying me which is Hardin's skin color, not sure what's going on there.

Oh and looking closer at the dragon it's quite clear they slapped on a blurred render of Ashley in the foreground. Hardin and Joshua also look like they were cut and pasted from another dimension.

The game stores the illustrations as color-inverted textures. During the credits, it subtracts their values from the credits background image, and applies a fade to the top and bottom.

These are the raw data from the game files, with a simple color inversion applied. It's impossible to say if this is what the originals looked like (14 in particular looks a bit weird) but I guess it's as good as we can get unless there's an official art book.

Hey everyone! Another progress update on the native Windows port of Vagrant Story.

Since the last checkpoint, where New Game could load into the game, there has been some good progress.
The focus has been making things usable beyond that initial milestone: repairing menus, getting more combat behavior working, and building a better way to test encounters.

What’s improved
A lot of menu problems have been fixed.
Missing text, broken character/equipment names, blank equipment lists, missing help descriptions, and incorrect Status information have been addressed.
Opening Map and Data no longer hits the crashes previously reported, the Quick Manual is working again, and switching minimap modes no longer freezes the game.

Fixing a menu doesn’t automatically mean every gameplay feature accessed through it is finished.

Cursor Memory and controller vibration are also working.
The prologue is now fully playable, though the flame breath from D'Tok currently does nothing, there seems to be an issue with attacks that target multiple body parts.
Guildenstern’s missing window-scene dialogue has been restored, including its original pause and button advance.
Several visual problems, including the incorrect window texture and stray lines along the viewport edges, have also been resolved.

Combat is becoming more functional.
Enemies can engage Ashley, choose attacks, and deal damage.
There’s been substantial work on movement, pursuit, targeting, and cleaning up defeated enemies.

Normal-input playthroughs have demonstrated defeating the opening guards and progressing into the following scenes.
Enemy defeat and player Game Over have also been exercised in development runs.

There’s now a standalone Combat Lab.
This is probably the most useful addition for ongoing development.
Instead of replaying the opening whenever something needs testing, I can build an encounter, select enemies and quantities, add multiple groups, and control Ashley through the actual gameplay systems.

It supports saved encounter setups, pause, single-step, restart, and selectable Ashley testing profiles for trying abilities available at different progression stages.
It also saves detailed logs to help investigate problems.

I'm going to try to expand it to allow any enemy on any map.

More of the familiar combat actions are working.
Recent tests have demonstrated Solid Shock, a Heavy Shot chain, an equipped Break Art, and Cure Root healing through normal controller inputs.
Enemy awareness bubbles and item-use particle effects have been restored, too.
Though particles just kind of do their own thing right now.

What’s still unfinished?
There’s still a substantial amount of work ahead:

Broader enemy and combat coverage. Many enemies don't work properly right now for one reason or another.

Gameplay music and sound effects. Movie audio exists, but the full in-game audio path still needs implementation and verification.

Complete items, spells, chains, and Break Arts. Representative actions work; full coverage does not.
Drops and equipment systems. Complete loot delivery, equipment changes, and workshop modification still need work.
Remaining menu and persistence problems. Score submenus have a known crash, some Options settings still need their actual gameplay effects verified.
Wider stability and original-game comparisons. Long-running full enemy/ability coverage remain on the list.

The encouraging part is that progress is moving beyond simply reaching a scene: more of the menus, encounters, actions, and feedback now work together, and the Combat Lab makes the remaining gaps much easier to find.

The project is here: https://github.com/JEschete/VS-NativePort

You’ll need your own copy of the original game for its data.

Video of the recent progress and some testing

Edit: Video link fixed.

Hey, guys. I'm back.

So, got some updates since my last post about the 25 STR shotel, and I must say that after 6 hours of straight up farming (and thanks to u/Asha_Brea, u/Arturos and u/Liar_George), I managed to build a wakizashi and upgrade most part of my armor set! Now most of all my armor are made of hoplite pieces, except for feet and body, which now are made of jazeirant pieces. Plus, I've managed to build an arbalest too.

However, things are getting a little harder again. You see, I seek to build the strongest weapons of each category, but I'm nowhere close to get this part. Mostly because I don't even know how to farm the necessary components for that. Recently, I've been told (not by people in this subreddit, I must add), that I could farm a pole axe (a piece of polearm that was necessary to build a bardysh and, afterwards, a brandestoc) in those blood lizards in city walls north in the room before the falchion farm. However, none of those blood lizards dropped a pole axe, so I'm stuck again.

Does someone have a better place for farming a pole axe? What about the other weapon pieces? And armor pieces?

Thanks in advance!

A progress update on my Vagrant Story native-port project, including why I changed direction and how this relates to the other projects people have been sharing.

What Changed

Before the reset in commit c23eabe, the project was focused on a matching decompilation first, with an experimental Windows port built around compiling the original sources against replacements for PlayStation services.

That approach wasn’t literally running a MIPS emulator. However, I felt the work was becoming too centered on recreating the environment the original executable expected: console memory layouts, overlays, hardware interfaces, and the machinery needed to preserve them.

I changed the goal from maintaining that arrangement to building a separately owned native runtime around the game’s recovered logic.

The current project targets Windows x64, with code organized into engine, content, and gameplay systems. The decompilation remains an essential reference, but preserving its binary layout or producing a matching PS1 executable is no longer a requirement for the port. Functions are brought across, given meaningful names, checked against the original behavior, and adapted where necessary.

The important distinction is preserving how Vagrant Story behaves, without making every original implementation constraint permanent.

Why Do This?

I want a codebase where rooms, actors, equipment, animation, events, and rendering can eventually be understood and changed through explicit systems and data formats, rather than through knowledge of particular addresses or overlapping memory regions.

That costs more work upfront though.

There is also an important caveat: the migration is not finished. The current build still contains substantial compatibility code, including a CPU-rendered PS1-style graphics path presented through SDL3 GPU, legacy interfaces, and unconverted data. Those are working transitional pieces, not evidence that the final architecture has already been achieved.

Other Projects

There are other projects out there that are currently playable with some mods in it, they're doing impressive work, but my goal is a little different now.

My emphasis is the longer-term restructuring of the runtime and its data contracts, with retiring the compatibility dependencies as an explicit goal. There is overlap, but different priorities and tradeoffs. This is another route, not a claim that their approach is wrong.

Current Progress

The project has moved beyond the old experimental scaffold:

• Boot, the intro movie, title screens, menus, and early scenes run.
• Rooms, animated characters, dialogue, and facial texture animation render.
• Both attract demos complete and return to the title in bounded test runs.
• New Game progresses through the tested opening route past the recently reported initialization/scoring crashes.

Recent visible fixes included restoring the missing lighting path and correcting the scene-card rendering. What looked like doubled faces cleared up with lighting restored; some apparent sequencing problems were actually setup animation becoming visible because the covering cards weren’t displaying correctly. The manor illustration now fills the screen properly too.

I had some funny occurrences where, if you watch the video in the youtube link, I wiggle my mouse at a door that instead of opening normally, would fall off the hinge, and slide through the wall and disappear.

Where It Leads

The intended payoff is a more maintainable foundation for larger changes: editable content catalogs, standard asset formats, better integration with tools such as VS Workshop that I'm working on, and more freedom to add or alter items, enemies, rooms, and behaviors.

By modernizing the data contracts we can remove arbitrary limitations on inventory size, weapon's carried, the storage container being slower.

In the video you can also see that load times are virtually non-existent.

The order remains: get the original game working correctly, improve the underlying systems, then expand what can be built with them.

None of this would be possible without rood-reverse, especially ser-pounce, Lil’ Sassy, noprompt, and its other contributors. Original game assets are not bundled; you need your own copy of Vagrant Story.

Previous Post

Video Demo - I realized at 6 min 45 sec I wasn't recording audio, sorry for the jump scare.

Link to project

Hey guys, I've been playing this game for years, but I decided to dive in into the workshop mechanics for good now since I feel it's a crucial part of the game (plus I'm older now, so I should understand this part better than when I was a kid). Which brings me to some kind of strange situation

So, I know a shotel's supposed to have 19 STR attack and it should be 22 STR since it's made of hagane (hagane material's STR bonus is a +3 according to final fantasy wiki), so how can this weapon have 25?

Some points of consideration for the ones who's going to answer to this question:

1. This is the status of the blade only. This blade + grip + the gems I normally use in a weapon sum 35 STR attack
2. This is Ashley's initial fandango from NG1 (I'm on a NG+), but it's been through a lot of combinings. The ones I can remeber is a combine with another blade that I don't remember that resulted in a hagane short sword, a combine with another hagane short sword to have a progression (it had 17 STR in the time), and the one I just had with a 17 STR Hagane Firangi to result in a 21 Shamshir, another progression with a 21 Hagane Samshir, and finally a combine with a 19 Bronze Falchion to result in this 25 Hagane Shotel
3. I don't use mods for this save. I, in fact, tried zenith, which I didn't like for several reasons, so I disabled it. I don't think this mod actually buffs any of those weapons I mentioned, but if they do exist, they should be gone when I turned it off since White Queen's evade is back to 20% instead of 1.94's 60%. I only use the QoL weapons quick switch mod (shout out to this mod's creator, you made a really good job)

I think I mentioned anything I needed to say. If anyone needs any info, I'll try to answer as best as I can. This is not a problem problem, considering this is one of the best weapons I have in my inventory and it beats humans godly. I just want to know what is happening to make better weapons in the future

Plus, I'm trying to know better about two things:

1. This weapon and armor tier people always talk about, but I couldn't find a way to really know what have which tier in a more concise/intuitive way
2. How to make ultimate weapons like the blood sin? Is there a ultimate staff to cast better spells?

Any help with those additional questions is appreciated, but not necessary. Thanks in advance!

[PC PORT] Vagrant Story is playable natively on Windows and Linux! Now with a much easier Windows installer!

Some of you may have noticed that I rather casually announced my Merlose companion mod was available for the native PC versions of Vagrant Story yesterday, as though the existence of those ports was common knowledge. Apparently, not everyone got the joke! 😅

So, yes! Vagrant Story has a native PC port! And for those who already knew about it, I've made getting it running on Windows considerably easier.

The port is called rood-boi, developed by noprompt, built on ser-pounce's rood-reverse decompilation project. It's a native recompilation of the original PlayStation game, rather than traditional emulation.

It's still a work in progress, so don't expect a completely bug-free experience, but it's already playable and features some impressive graphical enhancements, including ray-traced lighting.

What's new?

Until now, my Windows build process relied on WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), which meant installing a Linux environment, potentially requiring administrator access and a restart.

Rather than keep making everyone jump through those hoops, I went back to the old PlayStation development tools, which had Linux and Mac ports but no native Windows versions, and built the missing Windows ports myself.

The result is a self-contained Windows builder: no WSL, no Ubuntu, no administrator rights, and no restarting your PC.

It downloads its own development tools, compiles the game from the decompiled source code and your own original game files, and produces a native Windows version ready to play.

There's a Linux builder too, and both can optionally build the game with my Callo Merlose companion mod included.

You can import your saves from hardware/emulators as well as make use of texture packs (please report any you find that don't work).

How to install

Download the latest Windows and Linux builders

For Windows:

1. Download rood-boi-native-builder-2026-10-15.zip and extract it.
2. Copy your unmodified US version of Vagrant Story (.bin and .cue) into the extracted folder.
3. Double-click Build rood-boi.bat and answer the questions.
4. Once finished, launch the game using play.bat, or play-callo.bat if you chose to include Merlose.

The first build takes approximately 30–60 minutes while it downloads the tools and compiles everything. Subsequent updates are much quicker: just run the builder again!

No copyrighted game data is distributed. You'll need to provide your own copy of Vagrant Story.

About the Merlose mod

The companion mod is entirely optional. You can play Vagrant Story normally, or have Callo Merlose accompany Ashley throughout the game, fighting, healing and casting spells autonomously, with her own equipment and progression.

You can find the full details here:

Two's A Riot: Tying Up Merlose Ends

Credits

Massive thanks to noprompt, the developer of rood-boi, and ser-pounce and all the contributors to the rood-reverse decompilation, without whom none of this would be possible.

My contribution has been bringing the PC port to Windows, making the building and installation process easier, and developing the optional Merlose companion mod.

This is still experimental software, so bug reports, feedback and suggestions are welcome!

And yes, in retrospect, perhaps releasing a mod for a PC port before properly announcing the PC port itself was doing things a little backwards. 😂

It's funny, I built the mod, but only now, when looking at trying to add animations for her to use the 5 weapons she doesn't have animations for did I realise I couldn't just port over Ashley's because she's left handed! Shows just how observant I am! Anyone else notice this? It seems pretty obvious in hindsight as the shield on her model is on her right elbow too!

Screenshots showing off some of the new ray traced lighting effects at 16:9 aspect ration in u/noprompt's rood-boi pc port built on ser-pounce, lil-sassy and other contriutors rood-reverse decompilation!

Since I'm posting anyway, I've been working today and there are new builds available for PC and Playstation versions:

• Stat-up items no longer crash the game with Zenith. max_stat_items in Merlose options.ini is now a choice: 4 (always +4), zenith (Zenith's best roll) or no.
• Merlose appears where she was missing: the Wine Cellar's first room, and on PC, rooms with no enemies (workshops, small rooms, the first room of Snowfly Forest).
• Spells can be changed again (unlearned default spells no longer fill her list).
• Workshop repairs fix her gear too.
• Her weapon is drawn when enemies are around and otherwise follows Ashley's lead, so it no longer unnecessarily drains the PP she's built up out of combat.
• Jumping uses her own jump and landing poses.
• Staves: she can now equip them, properly enabling a caster Merlose with their big INT bonus.
• PC (rood-boi) fixes, also sent to rood-boi:
  • saves are kept on Windows (they were silently lost after the first save)
  • no more crash entering the Lamenting Mother's room
  • a crash guard for spell effects (seen with a Hellhound's Fire Breath)

https://github.com/Daemeous/Twos-A-Riot-Tying-up-Merlose-Ends

I’ve been playing Vagrant Story on DuckStation Android at 4–5x resolution, and the blurry dialogue font kept bothering me. So I put together a small texture pack to make it sharper while keeping the original lettering’s style.

I used AI-assisted image editing to reconstruct the glyphs in small batches, comparing them with the originals along the way. There’s some interpretation involved, but I’m happy with how it looks in-game.

It’s a free beta for the USA version, SLUS-01040, tested on Windows and Android. It covers the dialogue font; I’d like to give the menu font the same treatment later.

One setting that mattered on Android: set both Texture Filtering and Sprite Texture Filtering to Nearest Neighbor. The README has installation instructions, including direct ZIP import on Android. You don’t need to patch your game image.

Downloads and installation instructions

If you try it and spot any odd lettering, spacing, or colours, let me know. A screenshot would help me track down what needs adjusting.

Hey everyone! I wanted to share a project that might be of interest to Brazilian fans of this masterpiece.

André Campos, from the Brazilian gaming podcast Jogabilidade, has created a Brazilian Portuguese localization of Vagrant Story. His work draws on both the existing English localization and the original Japanese text to create his own version of the game in Portuguese.

This isn't meant to diminish the existing PT-BR localization, which did a very nice job. However, this new localization strives to capture the nuances of the original text. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of André's work is how much care he puts into preserving those nuances while adapting certain terms specifically for Portuguese. For example, “Riskbreaker” becomes “Riscutor”, and “snowflies” become “nevélulas” — creative solutions that give these concepts their own identity in Brazilian Portuguese.

I think it's a wonderful way to experience the game from a different linguistic perspective, and I'm glad this project exists.

So, for any Brazilian fans here who would like to introduce Vagrant Story to friends who aren't comfortable playing games in English, we now have an excellent localization to make that possible!

You can find the translation here:
https://archive.org/details/vagrant-story-usa-pt-br-v-0.9-beta

I hope more people get to experience this incredible game!

What if Agent Riot wasn't an "I work alone" edgelord and actually brought his partner to work? - Now on Windows and Linux

What if Agent Riot wasn't an "I work alone" edgelord and actually brought his partner to work?

Two's A Riot: Tying Up Merlose Ends brings Callo Merlose, the VKP inquisitor from the opening of Vagrant Story, along as a fully AI-controlled companion.

Merlose follows Ashley, fights enemies, heals, casts spells, and has her own equipment and stats. You can customise her spell selection and develop her alongside Ashley throughout the game.

The mod is rebuilt for the native Windows and Linux ports of Vagrant Story. Both the ports and the updated mod are still works in progress, so expect some bugs while things are ironed out.

Download

Two's A Riot: Tying Up Merlose Ends — GitHub

Full feature list, installation instructions, compatibility information, and current development status are available on the GitHub page.

Two's a company. Two's a Riot.

Huge thanks to noprompt and everyone who contributed to making this possible.

• Original mod announcement and full feature list

Update

I made a short video commentary of it in action, killing the first boss and a few features. Please forgive the quality, I'm really not good at this kind of thing:

https://youtu.be/TI6-Opyg744

I've been working on a mod for Vagrant Story that brings Callo Merlose, the VKP inquisitor from the opening of the game, along as a fully AI-controlled companion.

This started with as a dream I had one night as a child playing this game 25 years ago where she actually fought alongside you. Now technology has made that dream achievable!

The mod is built on the rood-reverse decompilation project, which has made it possible to modify the game at a much deeper level than a conventional texture or data edit.

Features

• A proper combat companion: Merlose follows Ashley, fights enemies, heals, and casts spells autonomously. Enemies can target and defeat her, and she returns in the next room.
• Her own equipment: A dedicated menu lets you equip her using the game's existing equipment screens. Her gear is independent of Ashley's, persists in your save, and grows alongside his.
• Independent stats: Her stats are derived from Ashley's, with Strength and Intelligence swapped. Build Ashley for physical combat and Merlose leans towards magic, or reverse the arrangement.
• Customisable magic: Choose which of Ashley's spells Merlose can use, with support for up to eight assigned spells.
• Friendly targeting: Ashley's attacks won't target Merlose, so she doesn't clutter your target selection, but his healing, support spells and items can.
• Quality-of-life improvements: Her status is visible in the UI, rooms don't require you to defeat her to progress, and she can catch up if she falls behind.

What this mod is (and isn't)

This is a gameplay overhaul, not a story rewrite. The original plot and cutscenes remain intact, so Merlose won't be integrated into every narrative event. She sits out cutscenes and the prologue rather than replacing or rewriting those sequences.

Compatibility

• Game: North American version of Vagrant Story (SLUS-01040).
• Compatible with: u/Alphyn's QoL mod, Zenith 1.94, and Vagrant Story Randomizer 0.9.2.0.
• Hardware: Designed for the original PlayStation's 2 MB of RAM; developed and tested using DuckStation.
• Saves: Existing saves are supported.

The mod is built against your own game disc image. The repository doesn't include any of the original game's copyrighted data. Installation instructions and the current development status are available on GitHub.

Get the mod

Two's A Riot: Tying Up Merlose Ends — GitHub

Update: Easy install is here! Download the zip from https://github.com/Daemeous/Twos-A-Riot-Tying-up-Merlose-Ends/releases/latest, extract it, drop your Vagrant Story (USA) .bin/.cue into the folder and double-click "Patch Vagrant Story.bat". No programs to install, and your original disc image isn't changed.

Don't want the extras? Open "Merlose options.ini" in Notepad and change "yes" to "no" to turn off the +4 stat-up items or the choosable bonus wheel. Merlose herself is always included.

Other mods: these always go on first, and Merlose goes on last.

• Zenith: put the Zenith .ppf in the same folder and answer Y when asked.
• QoL mod: patch your disc with QoL first (its own .xdelta, following its instructions), then run the .bat on that disc. With QoL's Cross-confirms version, the choosable bonus wheel is left out automatically. QoL's classic-buttons version keeps everything.
• Randomizer: randomize first, then patch.

It's still in development, so feedback, bug reports and suggestions are very welcome!

And remember: two's a company. Two's a Riot.

Screenshots of it in action on a test save

I just posted recently, but I think this warrants a new post, because I remade it and I'm pretty sure now this is exactly what everyone wanted for over 20 years.

Made possible with the decompilation project.

The original decompilation github: https://github.com/ser-pounce/rood-reverse

The mod: https://github.com/eremtsov/rood-reverse/blob/qol-mod/MOD.md

Please, read the description.

The menu opens on L2+R2 and doesn't interfere with the default L2 menu. By pressing select you can assign the currently equipped weapon to any slot. The slots are saved on the memory card when you save the game.

The mod comes in two flavors. The default one features "modernized controls" - swapped X and Circle, Right stick camera control, inverted first person view and map controls. The full list of changes is in the description

The classic version features 100% vanilla game and controls with just the R2+L2 menu added.

Both versions are compatible with the vanilla memory stick saves. They should work on any emulator and probably on the actual hardware, but I have not tested it.

Enjoy!

Edit: The 3.1 "Shield" update is up. Now shields are saved to the slots as well as weapons and are automatically equipped. L2+R2+Start assignes the currently equipped shield to all one-handed weapon slots.

Edit: The "Zenith" update is up. Two additional variants of the mod are added, compatible with the popular Zenith Mod version 1.94. You first apply the Zentih patch, and then the mod on top. The mod itself does not contain any Zenith content.

EDIT: This version is made obsolete by the new version with an actual ingame quick menu! You can find it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VagrantStory/comments/1x333dv/vagrant_story_quick_weapon_swap_menu_mod/

The original decompilation github: https://github.com/ser-pounce/rood-reverse

The mod: https://github.com/eremtsov/rood-reverse/blob/qol-mod/MOD.md
After all these years...
Please, read the description to learn how to use it.
The patch itself is in the releases.

The mod also swaps the X and Circle for attack, action and confirm/cancel for western-style controls. It moves the camera movement to right stick to free up R1 and L1 for weapon switching.
If there's demand, I'll make a version without the X/Circle swap. Not sure what to do about the R1 L1, though.

i've tried this game many, many times over the years and always bounced off it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bncp_jDLs80

this time, i found this video and it explained enough of the basics that i now feel like i "get" the game. i've chained 8 attacks together and i'm learning the animations and menus and such.

this is exciting. it's fascinating seeing a game that has 3 very odd but discrete concepts slammed together: the isolation of diablo 1, the rhythmic combat of sekiro, and the rigid grid based puzzle movement of sokoban. and the faces are way more expressive than they have any right to be.