![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Gems may be attached to suitable weapons, increasing their abilities in specific ways. There's no thronging riot of sword-flash here: just precision murder, caring strikes to lay enemies low: leg then arm then torso. He is a one-man army - alone for almost the entire game, save for a brief moment when he and Losstarot join forces. His preference to work alone - a shadow assassin who's as comfortable wielding a crossbow as a lance - sees him part company with his companion Callo Merlose at the entrance to the game's story. His dour demeanour - a coolness derived from years of dehumanising military focus - ensures there's no riot of laughter when he settles into a scene. Sydney Losstarot, and you, the hero: Ashley Riot.Īshley Riot, by contrast, ill-fits his name. But beneath the bluster it's a game about men locked in an irresistible duel. Vagrant Story, one of the final releases for Sony's PlayStation and designed by Yasumi Matsuno and his crack team of number-crunching tacticians, is a game riddled in medieval intrigue, warring factions, grimoires and knife-in-the-dark power wrangling. But Losstarot is the developer's most mesmerizingly wicked creation - and he's not even the primary antagonist in his game. In Squaresoft's peculiar police line-up of arch-villains it's Final Fantasy 7's Sephiroth who is most regularly called forward to mind. When Sydney Losstarot summons the devil, you better look lively. The tattoo on his back - always on display and, in the game's most gruesome twist, the unholy grail that some wish to carve from him for themselves - is a brand bespeaking his fragile hell-contract for immortality. The cult prophet's surname is a prickly contraction that speaks of defeat on the cards. A roulette wheel spins after each boss fight, offering you a random statistical upgrade. It sends shivers down your spine, moments before those shivers turn to shockwaves as a summoned golem brings down his gravel hammer. It's not a plea for devilish help it's a demand. Then to his feet and, in loud proclamation, issues reminders to the darkness of the terrible oaths they've made, of 'sin-soaked contracts of kinship' and other such unsettling imagery. He kneels, glaring at existence through his blonde fringe, a scissorhand nail scratching arcane symbols on a bald cobblestone. Get on with it.īut when Sydney Losstarot casts a spell everything's different. So we thumb-twiddle till the cutscene plays itself out. It's grown routine, robbed of spectacle by familiarity. We players are used to occultish showmanship: the sweep of the staff, the hooded head bowed in dramatic concentration, the twitch-lipped incantation the purplish burst of colour as spell conjures from air. When Sydney Losstarot summons the devil, the devil comes a-sprinting - or, at the very least, sends his most senior fiends without delay. ![]()
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