The graphics in Vanguard Bandits, for the most part, are simply passable. The battle maps are populated by the bouncing mecha we know and love, 2D sprites on a 3D battlefield. The battlefields themselves, while often challenging in their layout, never really inspire like some of Final Fantasy Tactics or, even more so, Tactics Ogre's maps tend to do. They get the job done, but not much more. When you have battle cut-scenes turned on, every time two mecha clash, the game switches to a 3D view of the action. Even here, the attacks and effects are pretty simple, with the exception of some from the endgame. The mecha themselves look quite nice, however, and it's fun to watch them pummel the crap out of each other. You'll quickly turn it off, though, as the game goes a whole lot faster without the delay of the 3D battles. Each character is unique and interesting, probably made moreso by Working Designs' splendid translation, and the main characters have a myriad of facial portraits that appear whenever they talk, signifying their mood. Some are dead serious, others are just funny. Good stuff. The music in the game is passable, but repetitive and often unmemorable, although I found myself humming it a whole lot as I played the game. The voiced tracks are good, but nothing spectacular, and the voice acting at the end of the game sounds like it's coming from the bottom of a well. Ack. But presentation is not a major strength of Strategy RPGs -- hell, the best one on the PlayStation is a port of a Super Nintendo game -- so these are really only minor flaws with the game.

Vanguard Bandits has plenty of gameplay and characters to more than make up for the problems with the presentation. You are Bastion, the son of Kamorge and a pilot of an ATAC -- this world's name for mecha. You live in the Kingdom, and the Empire has slowly been beating your land down to almost nothing. As the game progresses, you are thrown into a storyline with betrayals, surprises, and a seriously pain-in-the-ass bad guy that unfortunately has the name of one of my favorite authors of all time. Ah, well.

The gameplay itself is pretty standard strategy-RPG fare -- maneuver your units, preferably to the sides or back of your opponent, and slam away. That is, for a turn or two, and then you'll notice these little stars above your guy's heads. Then the enemy will beat you to a pulp. See, you have to deal with Fatigue, or FP, and if you get too much of it, your team member just poops out for quite a while, leaving them wide open to any and all attacks. Just guarding against attackers raises your FP, as do attacks -- each attack raises it different amounts -- so managing your FP is sometimes more important than managing your character's health. You -will- live and die by your Fatigue, so make sure you keep good track of it.

The game itself is 20 missions long, but there are 56 missions total. Three story 'arcs' make up the entire gameplay experience, and even then you have to play a few of the story arcs multiple times to see each mission. I beat the first, main story arc in 10-15 hours, so look at 45+ hours if you want to see the entire game. This is a hell of a lot of replayability, which I always enjoy in any game, especially in a strategy RPG.

The translation of the game is fantastic, as should be expected from any Working Designs title, and the pop culture references and potty humor is kept to a nice minimum throughout the game, which was pleasant. Andrew especially amused me with his gigolo-style antics. He didn't seem to amuse any of the ladies, however.

I also received a copy of the official Working Designs Strategy Guide with the game, and I must say it was very nice. I did have a few issues with it -- the 'Plot Thickens' pages seemed to be more filler than anything else, although it was fun to see the Quality Assurance man riff on the game, and I found that the game itself was considerably easier than the strategy guide was making it out to be. One of the missions said that it was pretty much impossible to make it through without losing at least one party member. Well, I made it through without losing anyone, including Zeira the freak, so I guess the game-testers need to be fired. Wink, wink. In fact, I made it through the entire game without losing a single character, and the last boss was almost a joke. Other than that, though, the Strategy Guide was an invaluable reference, especially when it came to raising the proper stats so that my characters could get the killer attacks.

If anything, the problem with Vanguard Bandits is that it's a touch too esoteric. It's a rather generic strategy RPG, and finding the two other story arcs is more of an exercise in luck than anything else (well, the Ruin arc is pretty easy, but how is one supposed to know how to get to Kingdom?). Good thing the game is damned amusing. I spent two days straight doing nothing but playing Vanguard Bandits and occasionally eating, and even when a savefile munge made me have to repeat two of the hardest battles in the game, I came back for more. That's always the sign of a good game.

I imagine that if you didn't have the strategy guide, quite a few of the missions would be seriously difficult. Even so, some of them were very challenging for me, although it tended to be the ones made out to be simple in the guide. Funny, that. If you're careful, though, you should be able to make it through the game with no character lost; that may entail a few save-and-cheat maneuvers, however. More difficulty comes from getting some of the story arcs, notably the Empire.

The controls in Vanguard Bandits are standard strategy fare, which is nice, and the ability to turn off the 3D battles for sake of speed is very, very nice. Configuring your ATACs could have been a touch easier, since it doesn't tell you just what the stones and amulets you're about to equip do, which is something of a pain for those of us without instruction books. The game itself plays very smoothly, however, and the load times are never unbearable. I did have one savefile munge, but that could have been from a power outage that I had during the game rather than a problem with the game itself. If you're a fan of strategy RPGs, mecha, or good translations, you can't go wrong with picking up a copy of Vanguard Bandits. With it's serious replayability and entertaining plotlines, Vanguard Bandits is a very fine example of the strategy RPG genre.