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Impressive game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: July 31, 2000
Author: Amazon User

If your a strategy fighter fan, then you have found your dream game. Vangaurd Bandits is definately the finest grid fighter ive played. The story involves a young boy and his followers of friends and family as they do their best to over throw the evil lords armies, and take back the land that has been stripped from them. Battle is done between giant fluent moving attack robots. each character handles a scecialized bot. Making for great variety. The story line is very complex and sometimes dull, but the fighting trully takes brains and quick thinking. If you like using your mind as well as a 30 foot sword, this is by far your game.

Has its flaws, but all in all, a great game.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: March 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Being a fan of Working Designs, I must admit that I was a bit biased when I first played this game. But all personal preferences aside, this game is one that no RPG/Strategy fan should miss! Think Final Fantasy Tactics meets Front Mission 3 meets Brigandine. I personnally did not like Brigandine, but I must state a resemblance in the battle scenes. The standard game consists of sprite-based mechs, called ATACs, moving about a 3-D polygonal field. Once you enter a battle, the veiw switches to a fully polygonal, 3-D action scene. The different attacks are interesting to watch, but there is an option to turn them off, in case they get repetitive. Beleive me, they WILL get repetitive, until you learn new attacks. The battle system is quite smart, using stats like agility, mech ability, weapon, and relative position to determine damage and percent of success. The music gets repetitive, but the intro and title screen songs are CD quality, and fairly catchy. The story scenes between battles use text-based conversations, and, although they're helpful to the story, they tend to be quite boring and will have you tapping the controller, waiting to get to the next battle. If you do take the time to read the conversations, you will find a compelling story about a young boy and his friends trying to bring peace to the world. Common story, but it has enough plot twists and player-based decisions to stand out from the crowd. There are five different endings, almost 60 missions, and 32 different ATACs to see. You'll have to play through the game many times to see all the missions, ATACs, and endings. The game itself is very similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. If you liked FFT, I'm sure you'll like Vanguard.

One of the Best games ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: June 26, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is one of the best fantasy games I've ever played! It's graphics arnt anything to brag about but it has a great story! If you like games with multiple endings and a great story buy this game!!

Working Designs has done it again

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 13, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Vanguard Bandits is the best strategy game this year. The battles require much more strategy than other Strategy RPGs because of VERY limited healing abilities and multiple ways to attack and incapacitate you. The characters have great personalities and the story, though not epic, is told very well translated in a way only the guys at Working Designs could do. Add in 5 different endings and you get a game that I definitely recommend for any Strategy RPG gamer.

Very Addictive once you get started

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I actually missed this game when it first came out and actually bought it about a month ago. This game makes a pretty poor first impression. The first few battles are coma inducing boring because you can't really do much. Also the storyline is sort of iffy at the beginning since they try to jam a whole bunch of stuff in your head at once, and you'll probably get confused. However once things get going this game is really fun. The game has been compared to FFT a lot, but the actual battle engine is more like Front Mission 3. It even has the same mini-cut scene when you attack. They characters taunt each others during the cut-scenes which can be really funny, but it is hard to see both the taunt and the attack sometimes. You gain new abilities by upgrading your stats, and equipping gems to your ATAC (Giant Mec) The stronger the skill the more AP (Action Points) it costs, and the more FP (Fatigue points) you use. When your FP reaches 100 your character is frozen for one turn, and can't dodge which can be rough. Overall battles aren't overly complicated, but they are very amusing and can get pretty intense toward the end. You'll start to get obsessed with getting certain characters to get their ultimate attacks. Most of the ATAC's look the same, but their are enough unique ones to keep it interesting. This game has three seperate storylines for you to go through. The storyline you get is based on certain requirements that you fufil in the game. All three are of medium length so it's a pretty long game if you add them all togather. It also has good replay value since their is 5 different endings, you will have to go through the game again to get them all (although one you may not want to get). The storyline is interesting, its not ground-breaking, but its pretty good, and can be funny at times. Its fun to see different characters become allies and enemies depending on your choices. Overall I think this game is very fun and should be in any Strategy/RPG fans collection.

Great game WD, but hate the interruptions.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: October 14, 2000
Author: Amazon User

For the Strategy/RPG enthusiast, I bring you one of the latest titles in the genre. Its called Vanguard Bandits. Vanguard was an alright game. It included some pretty sweet mechs called ATAC's (my personal favorites: Ultragunner and Toreador) and you had to stop someone from taking over the world with the evil equivalent to the games hero mech, Ultragunner, known as the Zulwarn that got its energy from the blood of people. Sounds kind of common, doesn't it. The new feature of this game that I call the ultimate, yet good looking, interruption. This is the 3-D battle sequences. This game contains a turn-based battle system, and when you choose your attack it shows how your opponent chooses to defend, fades into a 3-D battle sequence, fades back out and continues to do this for every battle. If they were going to do this, why didn't they just make it a Xenogears style battle screen. Oh well, it is a great game and I recommend it to any Strategy/RPG enthusiast.

Very, Very Addictive!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

When I first got this game i thought it wasn't going to that good, only getting around three stars from. It is a very fun game if you can get past some of the characters,(a little fat boy who drives a mech thing), and the annoying music. But, you will find yourself humming the tunes! The battle system is similair to Final Fantsy Tatics and Vandal Hearts, but you are in knight looking mechs. This game is also very addictive, you will be in your room for DAYS! Buy this game, but buy Final Fantsy Tatics first.

Pretty good, once you get a feel for it.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 12, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is one of those games that can be very difficult to get into. While the battle system at first glance is fairly simple. once you begin to get to some of the more advanced options it can get fairly confusing, and the manual is (like almost every PSX manual) very unhelpful. However, once you get into the game it is a fun, addicting little strategy game. It does a good job of presenting you with a number of different challenges.

The Storylines are fairly good (the Empire storyline is easily the strongest one). Overall, probably not as good as Front Mission 3 if you want mech-based S-RPG gameplay, but very worthwhile in any case.

AWESOME!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game rocks. It looks like you're watching cartoons in the battle scene. This game is even better than Final Fantasy Tactics. The game has better stories and music. I hope they make a sequel to it.

An average game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: July 11, 2000
Author: Amazon User

If you happen to like this kind of strategy game, I'm sure you'll find Vanguard Bandits worth the purchase. If you get into it, it's got plenty of replay value - there are fifty-six missions total, but you can see the credits after less than half that, leaving other plot branches to be explored after multiple playthroughs. Again, though, it'll probably bore the majority of consumers half to death. I suppose the best way to put it is that the PlayStation now has its own Albert Odyssey - a game that will be enjoyed by some, disliked by others, ignored by a great many, and have very little significance in any kind of long-term sense. Which is no sin, of course, particularly in the eyes of those who wish this genre weren't about to quietly take its leave of the gaming scene

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