In depth equipment creation, interesting story, appealing art style, and lots of box puzzles; Vagrant Story rocks.
Sure, you might be able to see the characters' buttcheeks and the game is riddled with box puzzles... but Vagrant Story does it all right. The story and atmosphere of the game is dark and creepy, and full of surprises along the way. You play as Ashley Riot, a Riskbreaker with killer skill, weapon and armor crafting ability, and weird pants.
The cut-scenes and plot development is so good that players might often find themselves saying, "Wow... I wish games today were more like Vagrant Story." From the manga style text boxes to the characters' detailed facial expressions, Vagrant Story takes it to the bank in terms of quality. And just for the record, the monsters, weapons, spells, and animations are absolutely top-notch.
What more could you ask for? How about a really awesome combat system? Yeah! Well, Vagrant Story has that too. The enemies are lurking around the maps in real time and you often face off many enemies at a time for some very intense battles. The boss battles are also very epic and some require a decent amount of skill to defeat. The game is so full of secrets, power-ups, and exploration that is feels much longer than it really is. You could easily finish the game in less than 20 hours but if you wanted to get every possible secret in the game you could push near 80+ hours.
Vagrant Story is such a great game, even by today's standards, and once you play through it, you might find yourself wondering why there aren't more games of this kind of quality.