Vanguard Bandits
Combine huge robots with anime, and strategy, you come up with this game, Vanguard bandits. The concept of the game seems a little silly at first; however, once you start play you will feel right at home. You shall watch your small group of outsiders/rebels do battle with a huge empire, taking on the highest ranks, to reveal the underlying motives of a blood thirsty general. Those of you familiar with Final Fantasy Tactics, or Front Mission 3 will recognize the battle system for this game, as it is basically a simplified version of these, with additional features. If you are a fan of other strategy RPGs, you will love this one. But for those of you looking for something new and exciting, I fear you will have to look elsewhere.
You start this game as a young man named Bastion, whose destiny is to lead a rebellion against a corrupt empire (sound familiar). Even though VB takes this "Oh so common" approach to its story, there is still has much to offer. The twists, turns, and crossovers in this game gives VB a better feel, even though the overall emphasis is fairly straightforward. The story is basically like the rest of the game, all the ideas here have been seen before, but working designs has just elaborated on them a bit. The story is basically good enough to keep you interested in fighting more battles. The base of this game is actually quite solid, the story holds little excitement, but it will your interest once things get going.
Vanguard Bandits has an anime style look to it, from the character art to the cut scenes, you can see how this game has been influenced by it. The mechs you guide, here called ATACs, are highly detailed, and take a kind of shape modeled after samurai. These mechs look and move like people would, unlike that of Front Mission 3. VB takes this look a step further with its battles. Instead of using normal animation for attacks, Vanguard Bandits goes into a cut scene for showing actual attacks. After you have set up your attack, the screen will fade into a 3D rendered environment with two rendered battling mechs (actually looking quite good for its purpose). Other than these graphics, you get what you would expect from a game like this, on a platform like this. You get the standard 3D terrain, including your standard rotation, and zooming features for observation purposes, and a non-free roaming world.
As in any strategy RPG, the battle system is the key element in the game, because it decides how you determine a strategy for your battles, and is pretty much the game in its entirety. Vanguards battle system takes not a new approach, but more of an upgraded one. VB has all the regular elements of a normal strategy RPG, you can attack, check status, move etc. However, this is not where VB differs from other games. When you are the "attacked" is where this battle system really comes alive with new innovations. The battle system here allows the victim to choose how they will respond to an attack, giving you certain options such as, attack, defend, avoid, and counter. This gives the user an opportunity to have more control of your characters actions. This feature adds a little more depth to this games play. As in all strategy RPG's, Attacking position is key, weather it's a front, behind, or side attack, will determine the options you get to use, the percentage success rate of your hits, and the amount of damage done. Making it all the more fun to plan for your battles.
There are a lot of the battles in this game, and many of them have an almost epic feel. You will go through around 60 missions, all of them substantial to the plot, unlike some other games where you end up fighting in a lot of unimportant battles. Vanguard Bandits seems to take an approach that treats every effort you make like an important one. VB also conquers the task that so many other RPG's have struggled from, difficulty. Most RPG's now a day can be beaten with in a week of play, for the simple reason that is lack of difficulty. Some RPG's are great, but the level of difficulty would be low, making it a less enjoyable experience, than the struggle of completing certain difficult games. This problem will not have to be worried about here, however, Vanguard Bandits is a quite difficult game, and you will be playing many levels over and over, to get the results you want, or even often just to finish it. On some levels you will feel you have the upper hand, then watch the game just slip away. Anyone looking for a challenge can certainly find it in this game. This level of difficulty also adds to this games replay ability, some results will make you want to play it again; others will leave you greatly satisfied. There are a few lengthy drawn out battles can take quite a long time, but for the dedicated, the time will pass with ease. This games battles, and battle system are both very well done, they have very solid bases, however, there really isn't much new in this department.
Other than the battles this game there are a few other interesting feature to look into, such as "interview" where you get to talk other people in your party. Also involved with the more strategy based theme, you have to upgrade your mechs, but at the same time you have to balance them with the rest of your team. This game is fairly bland when it comes to variety; it gives you what you "strategy" fans are looking for, strategy and fighting that's it.
The music in this game is very reminiscent of Working Designs other RPGs. It has an opening song (just like other WD rpgs), and then the rest just ends up fitting well with every scene your encounter. If you were partial to the music in the Lunar series, I am sure you will be a fan of the music here. Even though the music here is good (tolerable), the sound effects, are quite bland, almost as if they just banged pots and pans together in front of a microphone, but this is to be expected from a game with using mechs (or ATACs).
The phrase I thought would never be spoken, I can now say. Vanguard Bandits, is the typical strategy RPG. There really isn't much new here by way of game play. This game takes its play from the familiar Final Fantasy tactics. Adding a few elements here and there but the basic settings are quite similar to that of FFT, however simplified. Take if from me, you have to be a real fan of the genre to play through this one a couple times. This game isn't for everyone and that's the truth, some elements of the game will get boring/annoying, and for most, they can't handle it. If you're into strategy games with little movement, you should greatly enjoy this one, however typical it might be. This game isn't good but its defiantly not bad, it accomplished what it setout to do, the thing is, is that it didn't really setout accomplish much.