Will There Ever Be a Sequel? That is the Question a lot of people ask themselves after beating a satisfying R.P.G such as ‘Vagrant Story’, a solo dungeon crawl, in which the player controls Ashley Riot from a top down third-person perspective while exploring Leá Monde and the catacombs underneath.The protagonist is Ashley Riot, a male member of the Valendia Knights of the Peace (VKP) in pursuit of a cult leader named Sydney Losstarot. Sydney, leader of the religious cult Müllenkamp, laid siege to Duke Bardorba’s manor in search of a key and kidnapped Bardorba’s son, Joshua. Ashley’s partner is Callo Merlose, an agent of the VKP Inquisitors. Also attempting to capture Sydney is Romeo Guildenstern of the Crimson Blades, whose mission was undertaken without the approval of the VKP.
What I have just summarized to you my Lvlone friends? Well this is what we call a classic story. Even after its release nine years ago, its memorable events and great game mechanics will also not be forgotten. ‘Vagrant Story’ does not dissapoint, because it has met or surpassed all of my expectations. None the less, we really won’t see a sequel to this game, even if ‘Final Fantasy XII’ contains several references to ‘Vagrant Story’. Terms such as ‘Riskbreaker’, ‘Leámonde’ and ‘Kildea’ (albeit with different spellings in the localizations), are commonly used in both games. Yasumi Matsuno, the creator of ‘Final Fantasy XII’, was interviewed by Joypad, a French gaming magazine, in 2004 on ‘Final Fantasy XII’ and the game world he conceived, Ivalice, when he joined Square in 1995. He describes Ivalice as a complex world with a very long history and the stories of ‘Vagrant Story’, ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’, and ‘Final Fantasy XII’ are said to unfold quite close on the Ivalice map.
In October 2007, during an interview with the development team responsible for the remake of ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’ for the PlayStation Portable (PSP), the Executive Producer Akitoshi Kawazu was asked on the possibility of a remake or port of the title to said console. Kawazu mentioned that it is “the next natural candidate for such an update”, although there would be difficulty in porting the game due to its large technical requirements. Kawazu also remarked that bringing the titular character Ashley Riot into other Ivalice titles would be difficult since even in ‘Vagrant Story’, “there’s really not that much learn(ed) about Ashley Riot. It is a shame that we’ll never see a sequel to the game. We can only hope that it comes into fruition down the road.