Vagrant Story is a really hostile game, and I can only assume all the 9s and 10s it got from mainstream vehicles back in the day were a case of either Squaresoft bias (understandable ngl) or reviewers being in awe with the presentation values and the ahead-of-its-time cinematic direction.

This game does a very poor job conveying much of anything to the player. You have to accept the fact you'll need to read stuff up online, and/or read the in-game manual (the relationship between class affinity increase/decrease is explained wrong in there though, whoops)

Once you understand the systems, bosses just fucking melt in front of you, it's crazy. But this is when the game's biggest issues (imo) arise:

I would have absolutely not enjoyed this game if I played on an actual PS1, instead of an emulator. I think development was rushed and/or troubled, because there's no reason for this game's UI to be so bad.

Square has never done RPG menus this poorly, and the menu programmer has this game as his only credit ever, which makes me feel like they got some rando on the street to program their menus

This game's development was very clearly rushed and/or problematic, there is no reason for the menus to be so bad, and there's no reason for you to have to save everytime you store or remove something from your container (Resident Evil-esque chests because, oh yes, you have a limited inventory)

And secondly, this game's suffers from inflated, artificial difficulty, mostly coming from the Risk mechanic. Everytime you attack, that increases. As that increases, your hit rate drops - and that already feels stacked against you, I have missed 60% attacks some four times in a row, multiple times. You may actually have everything in place to deal lots of damage to the boss, but if that hit rate is too low - oh boy...

There's also chain abilities, basically the thing of pressing a button at the right time, though the timing is super strict.

And finally, the game shake things up ocasionally with box puzzles and some basic platforming... now when games try to do that, it can either be a fun change of pace, or fail spectacularly, and just be on the way. This is the latter. It's not at first, but the final stretch has some puzzles I had zero fucks to give and just went straight to a guide, and some platforming moments that felt pixel perfect - there were times where I couldn't tell if the puzzle was correct, of if I was just jumping at the wrong pixel.

Anyway, Vagrant Story is very hostile to the player, but it looks incredible for the PS1, the cutscenes are truly ahead of their time (though the story itself suffers from disjointed storytelling - another reason why I think development was troubled), and once you understand how it works, it's incredibly satisfying to steamroll every boss on your way.

But I can't recommend this game easily. You must be open to some min-maxing, you absolutely have to be okay with constantly (constantly) navigating menus to change your weapon/gems. Approach with caution. And play it on an emulator for the love of God.

A remaster or remake with a good UI, an easier and faster way of changing equipment, and maybe making the systems a little less excessive... would probably be something pretty special.