my "haute take" is that aside from select elements of FFT/Tactics Ogre (which largely share the same story and overt themes), Matsuno, while certainly a welcome and serious artistic voice in games, actually isn't some master craftsman of deep political intrigue/class narratives. I think his stories frequently end up feeling needlessly obfuscated, compromised, and hard to fully engage with!! It feels a bit telling how rarely I encounter any meaty explorations of FFXII or Vagrant Story's actual themes; It's way more common to come across people simply exalting the fact that "jrpgs with dark political stories instead of rainbow anime teens" exist. I would argue that something like "icky nomura rainbow animu" FFX has WAY more to say about politics and tradition and control than this does, and does it in a more sprawling and artful way! The style and delivery of the narrative in Vagrant Story is remarkable, especially for the time, but it feels too archetypal to be anything ideologically substantive and too staid and self-serious to succeed as an engaging pulp story. Like, I also enjoy the variety and surface level visual/stylistic sophistication here in a big way but A Tale of Two Cities this ain't.

This is legitimately one of the most beautiful games of all time and the cutscene direction remains pioneering and stellar, but so much about VS has kept me at arms length despite my repeated, desperate attempts to fall in love with it. The unforgiving, obscurantist battle and equipment systems require so much tedious menu navigation (which could be FINE if the game thematically referenced the menu navigation / made meticulousness a motif in some meaningful sense OR made the menus nearly as visually appealing as the rest of the world, but it doesn't) and many of the dungeons feel strangely disengaged with the story due to the way they run in parallel with flashbacks or cutaways. The fatiguing systems and stages make the game feel like you're looking in on a story through a foggy window rather than inhabiting and experiencing one. Vagrant Story is an incredibly interesting and visually arresting title that is rightfully a historic gaming curio, but I really don't think it has that much to offer beyond that. Maybe your experience will be different, but I keep searching for meaning here and ending up frustrated.