There is a mechanic in the game called Risk as you attack (and chain attacks), your Risk counter will rise, and as it grows higher, you'll have less chance to land hits and will take more damage from enemies, but also a higher chance of scoring critical hits. Mastering timed button presses and blocks is not as easy a road to victory as you may think, though, as there is a significant Risk VS reward element to the game - literally. Countering their attack for partial damage, blocking about half the damage you take from a particular type of attack, or preventing status effects from being inflicted, to name a few. Defensive abilities work on a similar principle to the above - time a button press to an enemy's attack hitting you, and you'll get a bonus effect in return. Timing hits is quite precise, though, and will require some practice on the player's part. Several can be chained in a row as long as you continually time button presses to a hit, racking up damage very quickly. Offensive ones allow the player to time button presses during attacks to perform followup attacks, often with added properties - Draining some health from the enemy, restoring a small amount of weapon durability, inflicting status effects, or just doing extra damage. Enemies can do the same to you, however, so keeping yourself healed during battle (and out of reach of your foes whenever possible) is a key part of the overall strategy.Īdding to this are battle abilities, which come in both offensive and defensive forms. Similarly, hitting the same spot repeatedly can cause a critical injury, inflicting negative effects like weakened attacks or parrying, silence or reduced movement speed. Enemies are often vulnerable in only a specific point or two (for example, an early boss is an animated set of armor with a very thin connection between its torso and abdomen - hitting anywhere else will do much less damage). Unlike Parasite Eve, however, Vagrant story features intra-model targeting - the ability to hit an enemy in their torso, a limb or the head. Vagrant Story also featured a combat system somewhat similar to Parasite Eve, albeit not tied to a turn gauge - pressing the circle button at any time pauses the action, bringing up a 3D globe that you can target enemies within with your weapon. Limited inventory space was also a turn-off to some, though the game did at least provide linked chests you can put items into and retrieve from any other like chest, similar to the safe rooms in the Resident Evil games. The game was even broken up into 'stages' - generally each time you defeat a boss, you'll get a ranking, some items and a semi-random bonus to your stats (governed by a rolling slot machine). While touted as another entry in their acclaimed line of 'movie-like' JRPGs (and having the aesthetics and some gameplay elements to match), it was really more of an action-oriented dungeon crawler there were no shops, a limited supply of items, HP and MP would slowly recharge over time instead of doing so at inns or save points, and it had an emphasis on platforming and puzzles in between story beats and battles. The prompt to change classes will appear after you exit the meditation area after a few moments, giving you the option to keep your current class, or change to another class.Vagrant Story was definitely a divisive title among Square's PS1 entries, proving to be much different from their usual fare. So for example, having 10 points in Elementalism and Sinistrope will grant you the Black Mage class, but then putting 11 points into Keeper will change your class from Black Mage to Dark Keeper instead. It has also been stated to be possible to change your class if you gain more points in another combination.

Only one special class can be active at a time, and putting more Memory Points into a third discipline can change the active special class.' From level 19+ on, the two disciplines with the highest number of AND a minimum of 10 Memory Points invested into each of their Memory Trees will unlock a special class, granting bonuses to some of your stats and skills, as well as certain special effects. In case you don't know already, the wiki states that 'some of the disciplines share special affinities. So I have yet to see a combined guide that has all the classes currently available in Enderal with the recent Steam re-release so I figured here would be a good spot to post the information on all the old and new class combinations in one spot.

Vagrant story combination guide