Vandal Hearts is a streamlined take on the tactical RPG genre for the original PlayStation.
What Is It? Vandal Hearts is Final Fantasy Tactics for beginners. It contains the same core turn-based tactical gameplay but streamlines the entire experience around that to create a significantly more welcoming game for newcomers to the genre. The tradeoff, naturally, is that the game does not have the depth of a FFT.
You play as Ash, the son of a disgraced traitor to your country during a team on political unrest. Things escalate quickly and you find yourself, and your party, on the wrong side of a hostile takeover. The game plays very linearly and you will pick up new party members every so often, each of which will accompany you in all of your fights.
Fights are turn-based with grid moment and basic attack/magic/item options available. There are some interactive elements where you can push conspicuously placed giant boulders down hills to damage anybody in your path, or maybe step on a button to trigger a bridge to explode. For much of the game, there aren’t many area of effect attacks so you have to go one-on-one against enemies. Making this a bit tougher is that any basic attack will result in a counter attack if the target is within range. This is a key strategic component as “leaving a character with enough HP to survive next to an enemy to take them out on the counter attack” is absolutely a valid play in this game.
Characters start as a predetermined class, you get to upgrade their class when they hit levels 10 and 20. The choices here are the most consequential you’ll have in the entire game with respect to party setup. Choosing whether your archer is to become a sniper (a better archer) or an airman (a fast moving class with a lot of positional opportunities, but a melee attack) is about all you’ll get for party customization. Weapons and armor are strictly better or worse than the ones you currently have, so you’ll reach a new city and eventually upgrade everything when you have enough money to do so. Each character gets two items to hold, these do come in handy, but they are basic healing, ailment cures, or MP refreshing for most of the game.
There is some side content in this game but it is quite hidden, as is the ability to grind. Thankfully, you probably won’t need to grind in order to beat the game. You can play the game entirely linearly and be strong enough to defeat your ultimate foes. This streamlining takes a lot of the nerves out of things for first-timers, wondering if you are strong enough to move to the next story battle or if you might get soft locked behind a save in the wrong spot. All of this makes Vandal Hearts a really great introduction to the tactics genre.
Saying the game is for beginners probably implies that it is a very easy game, which is not the case. I probably failed about a third of the battles here and barely escaped another third or so. The game has some difficulty which is paired nicely with many battles having win conditions that are something other than simply defeating all enemies. There were multiple fights where my strategy was simply wrong, I had to learn via an attempt or two how to approach the battle, adjust, and try again. This was a fun cycle and the highpoint of the game for me.
The Best Part: Blood fountains (see the screenshot above). Okay, not really, but the blood animation when a character dies here is so over-the-top I had to mention it. Blood gushes out of the character like, well, a fountain when they die. It is ridiculous and I’m sure was heavily featured in marketing this at the time as an edgy PS1 title. As far as I can tell, it is the sole reason for the M rating (parental warning: there is some PG level cursing scattered throughout as well). What a fantastically unnecessary addition to the game, but it is also what the game has come to be known for and absolutely the reason I heard anything about this game nearly 30 years after its release.
The Worst Part: You will acquire certain characters that join your party a bit weaker than the rest of your squad. The enemies will, quite smartly, proceed to pick these characters off during every battle for the rest of the game. You need them alive to perform actions to level up so they aren’t so easy to pick off, but get close enough to the fight and they likely won’t last the next enemy turn. This could have been remedied during my playthrough by some very intentional grinding, but I did not need to grind at all to beat the game so adding extra hours just to level up these weakest party members would not be particularly fun or rewarding.
The Verdict: If you want a streamlined, linear take on Final Fantasy Tactics, Vandal Hearts is a great place to look. You won’t have to worry about party or character customization, but will be presented with a long series of fun battles that will have you thinking and testing out various approaches. If you are a veteran of the genre, I don’t think there is a whole lot here that will stand out, but maybe give it a whirl for the blood fountains anyway?
How to Play: PlayStation 1, Sega Saturn
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