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I CANNOT TELL YOU GUYS HOW LONG I HAVE BEEN WAITING TO START MY VAGRANT STORY ERA!!! ❤️❤️❤️ 😭😭😭😭 BUT ALSO SUPER APPREHENSIVE AND SELF CONSCIOUS because this is one of my favorite games in the universe, and one of my favorite soundtracks, like EVER. Easily my favorite thing Sakimoto has ever composed, and yes that includes FFT--YES I KNOW LOL YES I know exactly what I'm saying bear with me!! It's just THAT good though! Sakimoto achieved a musical cohesion with the Vagrant Story soundtrack as whole that honestly very few soundtracks achieved back then, and even now--there's so much mature, intricate thematic transformation and thoughtful motivic deployment interwoven throughout that makes the whole thing feel like a symphonic tone poem of sorts, and that's just insane to me. It's a masterpiece, truly omg.

I really don't know how i'm gonna fit in everything I want to say about this game and OST without going over the 5K word limit, but I'm gonna try to keep it concise. Even though I started out in the Atari/NES/SNES era, the PS1 is my favorite decade. Just so many quirky experimental JRPGs and JRPG adjacent hybrids came out of the 90s and early 00s, and this was one of them, when Square was putting out cool offbeat things like Parasite Eve and The Bouncer and Ehrgeiz and Einhander along with four mainline FF titles (I consider Tactics a mainline FF despite what anybody says lol). Unfortunately, it didn't do as well as they hoped, which was a shame, as the narrative, story, storyboarding, worldbuilding, and visuals were absolutely, staggeringly top tier, peak Matsuno. I was absolutely riveted despite hating dungeon crawlers, I powered through because I was so intrigued by the dark fantasy vibe and HAD to know what happened next. Gameplay was...I gotta be honest, it was pretty rough around the edges, though that didn't stop me from beating it 6-7 times lol in the hopes of discovering story details I might have missed. There IS world continuity with FFT and FFXII with Vagrant Story being set in another part of Ivalice, and if you've played FFXII you'll notice the same DNA in the mechanics, things like how you cast spells and attack movements to some degree, all feel like Vagrant Story.

I owe SO much to this game, like literally the only reason I have a Youtube channel at all is because I discovered Ramon van Engelenhoven's incredible piano fantasy on the themes of Vagrant Story back in 2013 and it absolutely FLOORED me, and I created an account just to be able to tell him how awesome I thought it was. (Which you can hear in it's final form on Spotify/iTunes!!! https://music.apple.com/us/album/vagrant-story-piano-collections-fantasy-on-themes-from/1533727551) Like I couldn't even fathom how it was possible to arrange this harmonically complex OST for piano and was so inspired by Ramon's work, I tried to arrange it myself but I literally could not do it justice and got all discouraged and shelved it for ages lmao. Like even if I worked up something decent, then tried to learn it, it would be so incredibly difficult and unpianistic, I'd just set it aside. I mean even now with this is a halfway decent attempt at that stellar opening cinematic, I can't do it like he can 😭😭😭 like his rendition of Climax of the Graylands Incident, I cannot and will not even TOUCH that one but my gosh that is just peak vgm piano arranging and playing!!!! ❤️❤️😭😭 But hey I need an excuse to talk about how much I love this game and OST hahahaha so you guys have to deal with my renditions sorry lol!

Anyways so this has been in the works for YEARS, along with a few other tracks, so I can do my own baby Vagrant Story piano collections lol. I feel like arranging 20+ Final Fantasy Tactics tracks for five years helped me work up to it lmao, before I felt like I could give it a halfway decent shot. Thanks for putting up with me and sorry for rambling, this game means a lot to me and I have a lot of weird complexes about covering it when Ramon's phenomenal version exists. Thankfully he's such a lovely and wonderful person and has been so encouraging throughout this whole process and I'm so grateful to him sob!!!!!

Anyways, I don't know how many of you out there have played this lesser known PS1 title, but I hope this finds a few fellow Vagrant Story fans out there! Thanks so much again guys for listening!!!

(Speaking of Sakimoto--I WOULD be playing Unicorn Overlord right now but my brain literally cannot handle Basiscape awesomeness in a Vanillaware SRPG plus Hamauzu awesomeness in FF7Rebirth plus Sawano awesomeness in Xenoblade X plus whatever weird hold Hidenori Shoji has on me with the Yakuza OSTs, all at once lol. But trust me as a lifelong Vanillaware meatrider it's MOST definitely in the plans!!!!!)