[PC PORT] Vagrant Story is playable natively on Windows and Linux! Now with a much easier Windows installer!

Some of you may have noticed that I rather casually announced my Merlose companion mod was available for the native PC versions of Vagrant Story yesterday, as though the existence of those ports was common knowledge. Apparently, not everyone got the joke! 😅

So, yes! Vagrant Story has a native PC port! And for those who already knew about it, I've made getting it running on Windows considerably easier.

The port is called rood-boi, developed by noprompt, built on ser-pounce's rood-reverse decompilation project. It's a native recompilation of the original PlayStation game, rather than traditional emulation.

It's still a work in progress, so don't expect a completely bug-free experience, but it's already playable and features some impressive graphical enhancements, including ray-traced lighting.

What's new?

Until now, my Windows build process relied on WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), which meant installing a Linux environment, potentially requiring administrator access and a restart.

Rather than keep making everyone jump through those hoops, I went back to the old PlayStation development tools, which had Linux and Mac ports but no native Windows versions, and built the missing Windows ports myself.

The result is a self-contained Windows builder: no WSL, no Ubuntu, no administrator rights, and no restarting your PC.

It downloads its own development tools, compiles the game from the decompiled source code and your own original game files, and produces a native Windows version ready to play.

There's a Linux builder too, and both can optionally build the game with my Callo Merlose companion mod included.

How to install

Download the latest Windows and Linux builders

For Windows:

1. Download rood-boi-native-builder-2026-10-15.zip and extract it.
2. Copy your unmodified US version of Vagrant Story (.bin and .cue) into the extracted folder.
3. Double-click Build rood-boi.bat and answer the questions.
4. Once finished, launch the game using play.bat, or play-callo.bat if you chose to include Merlose.

The first build takes approximately 30–60 minutes while it downloads the tools and compiles everything. Subsequent updates are much quicker: just run the builder again!

No copyrighted game data is distributed. You'll need to provide your own copy of Vagrant Story.

About the Merlose mod

The companion mod is entirely optional. You can play Vagrant Story normally, or have Callo Merlose accompany Ashley throughout the game, fighting, healing and casting spells autonomously, with her own equipment and progression.

You can find the full details here:

Two's A Riot: Tying Up Merlose Ends

Credits

Massive thanks to noprompt, the developer of rood-boi, and ser-pounce and all the contributors to the rood-reverse decompilation, without whom none of this would be possible.

My contribution has been bringing the PC port to Windows, making the building and installation process easier, and developing the optional Merlose companion mod.

This is still experimental software, so bug reports, feedback and suggestions are welcome!

And yes, in retrospect, perhaps releasing a mod for a PC port before properly announcing the PC port itself was doing things a little backwards. 😂

Future updates

I don't want to spam this subreddit with a new post every day so I won't. But for now I've a couple of things in the pipeline:

• Doubled inventory space optional mod; two versions. One that takes it from the container and a potentially more unstable one that uses free data on your save before taking it from the container for more overall space. -DONE
• A save conversion tool and guide, to walk you though coping your saves over to the game and also convert them for use in the above optional mod mod so you don't lose things. -DONE
• I've asked for permission to reverse engineer Zenith to the PC version of rood-boi because I feel like I'm playing a cut down, outdated version of the game without it. I know I don't technically need it, but I've major respect for the guy so I'm asking permission and will respect his decision. I'd like to respectfully request that nobody go try to pressure him though. It's his code and his decision.

It's funny, I built the mod, but only now, when looking at trying to add animations for her to use the 5 weapons she doesn't have animations for did I realise I couldn't just port over Ashley's because she's left handed! Shows just how observant I am! Anyone else notice this? It seems pretty obvious in hindsight as the shield on her model is on her right elbow too!

Screenshots showing off some of the new ray traced lighting effects at 16:9 aspect ration in u/noprompt's rood-boi pc port!

Since I'm posting anyway, I've been working today and there are new builds available for PC and Playstation versions:

• Stat-up items no longer crash the game with Zenith. max_stat_items in Merlose options.ini is now a choice: 4 (always +4), zenith (Zenith's best roll) or no.
• Merlose appears where she was missing: the Wine Cellar's first room, and on PC, rooms with no enemies (workshops, small rooms, the first room of Snowfly Forest).
• Spells can be changed again (unlearned default spells no longer fill her list).
• Workshop repairs fix her gear too.
• Her weapon is drawn when enemies are around and otherwise follows Ashley's lead, so it no longer unnecessarily drains the PP she's built up out of combat.
• Jumping uses her own jump and landing poses.
• Staves: she can now equip them, properly enabling a caster Merlose with their big INT bonus.
• PC (rood-boi) fixes, also sent to rood-boi:
  • saves are kept on Windows (they were silently lost after the first save)
  • no more crash entering the Lamenting Mother's room
  • a crash guard for spell effects (seen with a Hellhound's Fire Breath)

https://github.com/Daemeous/Twos-A-Riot-Tying-up-Merlose-Ends

I’ve been playing Vagrant Story on DuckStation Android at 4–5x resolution, and the blurry dialogue font kept bothering me. So I put together a small texture pack to make it sharper while keeping the original lettering’s style.

I used AI-assisted image editing to reconstruct the glyphs in small batches, comparing them with the originals along the way. There’s some interpretation involved, but I’m happy with how it looks in-game.

It’s a free beta for the USA version, SLUS-01040, tested on Windows and Android. It covers the dialogue font; I’d like to give the menu font the same treatment later.

One setting that mattered on Android: set both Texture Filtering and Sprite Texture Filtering to Nearest Neighbor. The README has installation instructions, including direct ZIP import on Android. You don’t need to patch your game image.

Downloads and installation instructions

If you try it and spot any odd lettering, spacing, or colours, let me know. A screenshot would help me track down what needs adjusting.

Hey everyone! I wanted to share a project that might be of interest to Brazilian fans of this masterpiece.

André Campos, from the Brazilian gaming podcast Jogabilidade, has created a Brazilian Portuguese localization of Vagrant Story. His work draws on both the existing English localization and the original Japanese text to create his own version of the game in Portuguese.

This isn't meant to diminish the existing PT-BR localization, which did a very nice job. However, this new localization strives to capture the nuances of the original text. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of André's work is how much care he puts into preserving those nuances while adapting certain terms specifically for Portuguese. For example, “Riskbreaker” becomes “Riscutor”, and “snowflies” become “nevélulas” — creative solutions that give these concepts their own identity in Brazilian Portuguese.

I think it's a wonderful way to experience the game from a different linguistic perspective, and I'm glad this project exists.

So, for any Brazilian fans here who would like to introduce Vagrant Story to friends who aren't comfortable playing games in English, we now have an excellent localization to make that possible!

You can find the translation here:
https://archive.org/details/vagrant-story-usa-pt-br-v-0.9-beta

I hope more people get to experience this incredible game!

What if Agent Riot wasn't an "I work alone" edgelord and actually brought his partner to work? - Now on Windows and Linux

What if Agent Riot wasn't an "I work alone" edgelord and actually brought his partner to work?

Two's A Riot: Tying Up Merlose Ends brings Callo Merlose, the VKP inquisitor from the opening of Vagrant Story, along as a fully AI-controlled companion.

Merlose follows Ashley, fights enemies, heals, casts spells, and has her own equipment and stats. You can customise her spell selection and develop her alongside Ashley throughout the game.

The mod is rebuilt for the native Windows and Linux ports of Vagrant Story. Both the ports and the updated mod are still works in progress, so expect some bugs while things are ironed out.

Download

Two's A Riot: Tying Up Merlose Ends — GitHub

Full feature list, installation instructions, compatibility information, and current development status are available on the GitHub page.

Two's a company. Two's a Riot.

Huge thanks to noprompt and everyone who contributed to making this possible.

• Original mod announcement and full feature list

Update

I made a short video commentary of it in action, killing the first boss and a few features. Please forgive the quality, I'm really not good at this kind of thing:

https://youtu.be/TI6-Opyg744

I've been working on a mod for Vagrant Story that brings Callo Merlose, the VKP inquisitor from the opening of the game, along as a fully AI-controlled companion.

This started with as a dream I had one night as a child playing this game 25 years ago where she actually fought alongside you. Now technology has made that dream achievable!

The mod is built on the rood-reverse decompilation project, which has made it possible to modify the game at a much deeper level than a conventional texture or data edit.

Features

• A proper combat companion: Merlose follows Ashley, fights enemies, heals, and casts spells autonomously. Enemies can target and defeat her, and she returns in the next room.
• Her own equipment: A dedicated menu lets you equip her using the game's existing equipment screens. Her gear is independent of Ashley's, persists in your save, and grows alongside his.
• Independent stats: Her stats are derived from Ashley's, with Strength and Intelligence swapped. Build Ashley for physical combat and Merlose leans towards magic, or reverse the arrangement.
• Customisable magic: Choose which of Ashley's spells Merlose can use, with support for up to eight assigned spells.
• Friendly targeting: Ashley's attacks won't target Merlose, so she doesn't clutter your target selection, but his healing, support spells and items can.
• Quality-of-life improvements: Her status is visible in the UI, rooms don't require you to defeat her to progress, and she can catch up if she falls behind.

What this mod is (and isn't)

This is a gameplay overhaul, not a story rewrite. The original plot and cutscenes remain intact, so Merlose won't be integrated into every narrative event. She sits out cutscenes and the prologue rather than replacing or rewriting those sequences.

Compatibility

• Game: North American version of Vagrant Story (SLUS-01040).
• Compatible with: u/Alphyn's QoL mod, Zenith 1.94, and Vagrant Story Randomizer 0.9.2.0.
• Hardware: Designed for the original PlayStation's 2 MB of RAM; developed and tested using DuckStation.
• Saves: Existing saves are supported.

The mod is built against your own game disc image. The repository doesn't include any of the original game's copyrighted data. Installation instructions and the current development status are available on GitHub.

Get the mod

Two's A Riot: Tying Up Merlose Ends — GitHub

Update: Easy install is here! Download the zip from https://github.com/Daemeous/Twos-A-Riot-Tying-up-Merlose-Ends/releases/latest, extract it, drop your Vagrant Story (USA) .bin/.cue into the folder and double-click "Patch Vagrant Story.bat". No programs to install, and your original disc image isn't changed.

Don't want the extras? Open "Merlose options.ini" in Notepad and change "yes" to "no" to turn off the +4 stat-up items or the choosable bonus wheel. Merlose herself is always included.

Other mods: these always go on first, and Merlose goes on last.

• Zenith: put the Zenith .ppf in the same folder and answer Y when asked.
• QoL mod: patch your disc with QoL first (its own .xdelta, following its instructions), then run the .bat on that disc. With QoL's Cross-confirms version, the choosable bonus wheel is left out automatically. QoL's classic-buttons version keeps everything.
• Randomizer: randomize first, then patch.

It's still in development, so feedback, bug reports and suggestions are very welcome!

And remember: two's a company. Two's a Riot.

Screenshots of it in action on a test save

I just posted recently, but I think this warrants a new post, because I remade it and I'm pretty sure now this is exactly what everyone wanted for over 20 years.

Made possible with the decompilation project.

The original decompilation github: https://github.com/ser-pounce/rood-reverse

The mod: https://github.com/eremtsov/rood-reverse/blob/qol-mod/MOD.md

Please, read the description.

The menu opens on L2+R2 and doesn't interfere with the default L2 menu. By pressing select you can assign the currently equipped weapon to any slot. The slots are saved on the memory card when you save the game.

The mod comes in two flavors. The default one features "modernized controls" - swapped X and Circle, Right stick camera control, inverted first person view and map controls. The full list of changes is in the description

The classic version features 100% vanilla game and controls with just the R2+L2 menu added.

Both versions are compatible with the vanilla memory stick saves. They should work on any emulator and probably on the actual hardware, but I have not tested it.

Enjoy!

Edit: The 3.1 "Shield" update is up. Now shields are saved to the slots as well as weapons and are automatically equipped. L2+R2+Start assignes the currently equipped shield to all one-handed weapon slots.

Edit: The "Zenith" update is up. Two additional variants of the mod are added, compatible with the popular Zenith Mod version 1.94. You first apply the Zentih patch, and then the mod on top. The mod itself does not contain any Zenith content.

EDIT: This version is made obsolete by the new version with an actual ingame quick menu! You can find it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VagrantStory/comments/1x333dv/vagrant_story_quick_weapon_swap_menu_mod/

The original decompilation github: https://github.com/ser-pounce/rood-reverse

The mod: https://github.com/eremtsov/rood-reverse/blob/qol-mod/MOD.md
After all these years...
Please, read the description to learn how to use it.
The patch itself is in the releases.

The mod also swaps the X and Circle for attack, action and confirm/cancel for western-style controls. It moves the camera movement to right stick to free up R1 and L1 for weapon switching.
If there's demand, I'll make a version without the X/Circle swap. Not sure what to do about the R1 L1, though.

i've tried this game many, many times over the years and always bounced off it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bncp_jDLs80

this time, i found this video and it explained enough of the basics that i now feel like i "get" the game. i've chained 8 attacks together and i'm learning the animations and menus and such.

this is exciting. it's fascinating seeing a game that has 3 very odd but discrete concepts slammed together: the isolation of diablo 1, the rhythmic combat of sekiro, and the rigid grid based puzzle movement of sokoban. and the faces are way more expressive than they have any right to be.

Hello guys. I just did a Vagrant story UI. I Hope you might like it :) Liking this post would help Me (maybe get a job for a remake hahaha) and we can Always talk about feedback.

Merci

As promised here are some more photos of Saint Emilion. Plus some more notes from the research I did while I was out there.

Photos 1-5: These were taken on a winemaking tour of a Chateau that still has cellars underground the town that date back to the 12th century. Crazily, excavation only stopped in the 19th century. Partly because of a realisation of how dangerous the work was - children as young as 12 carved giant blocks by hand for 10-15 hours a day by hand by candlelight. The bigger reason was a fear the town could collapse if it continued. Interestingly, there are details the game gets spot on. The ridges at the ceiling were designed to mimic stairs so workers could feel whether they were going towards the surface or deeper underground. The game also replicate the soot marks on the ceiling caused by candlelight and oil lamps. Finally it turns out there was a real life 'crimson order' in Saint Emilion. But they made wine rather than engage in skullduggery.

Photos: 6-11: I got up super early to replicate the sunrise scene in the game. Sadly it didn't work as planned but it still looks cool anyway and you can see how well the devs matched the colours. The big rectangular tower is a place called Tour de Roy and is a massive keep that supposedly was an inspiration for those areas of the game. Sadly the interior wasn't open on the days I was there and the tourist office wouldn't let me in.

Photos: 12-13: more detail from the underground cellars. The limestone was carved out in blocks by hand and sold to literally build the town and the nearby city of Bordeaux - which started life as a swamp. Notice the similarities of the design details with some that appear in the game. Archaeologists reckon they go down 5 levels deep but are still mapping them. They're also great for growing mushrooms.

Photo: 14: In my last post I mentioned visitors are banned from taking photos of the monolithic church and catacombs. Well a photo inside the monolithic church does exist in the wine cellars in this series. The real life catacombs next door were believed to be the home of the real life Saint Emilion. The story goes he worked in the court in northern France and realised he had the power to perform miracles - turn wood into bread and vice versa. He wanted to do something good so tried to join a monastery but was kicked out for having miraculous powers and not being liked. So he ended up as a hermit in a cave that's now the catacombs of the town named after him. People would come on pilgrimage and his cave was believed to have powers. Mainly curing infertility but there are some overlaps with Sydney's stort in the fame.

Turns out there are networks of those catacombs and we'll hopefully have a map of in a years time.
But one theme in all the carvings inside aroidn the theme of ascension - interestingly the name of the game's last stage.

Sorry for the long post but hope you enjoy!

Only took me 25 years but finally visited Saint-Émilion. Its been hard to find many exact places that are locations in the game. But I went on the tour of the Monolithic Church and catacombs. Sadly you can't take photos in those but they were awesome. Anyone know of any other places in the town to visit?

I'm playing Bravely default and I just noticed this hahah I guess is thanks to Akihiko's art direction/design, I'm loving this game!

I don't have a new video yet, but I've been decomping a little on my own, but also watching ser-pounce's repo and pulling updates.

I've decided to make my repo public:
https://github.com/JEschete/VS-NativePort

I've got audio working for the FMV the first time it plays, but overall things are still silent, and I've noticed the audio stream isn't fully closing, so that's on my todo list.

I'm going to be publishing videos periodically as they come to my other youtube account (don't want it on my personal), I'll post that next time I have something to show.

I need to look at the things I've decompiled myself and match things to how ser-pounce is doing it and contribute to his repo as much as I can.

Progress Images

I've been working on turning Vagrant Story into a native PC executable to get it running with no emulator, no MIPS interpreter, and the game's actual code compiled for x86. Once I get it running fully, then I'm going to look at 64bit compatibility.

It now boots. Publisher screen -> developer screen -> title screen with the logo, the rune backdrop, and SOUND / NEW GAME / CONTINUE, navigable with a DualSense.

None of this would exist without the rood-reverse project, an ongoing matching decompilation of Vagrant Story. "Matching" means the C they've written compiles back to byte-identical machine code against the retail disc, which is the gold standard for porting, and brutally hard work. At the commit I started from, it was ~60% of the code matched, ~34% fully linked. The menu subsystem and the title screen are both at 100%.

I didn't decompile the game any of the starting point, but I am working ahead of where they are.
What I've been building so far is the layer underneath the decompilation, replacing the PlayStation hardware with host equivalents, taking the Ship of Harkinian model as inspiration. Decomp first, then reimplement the hardware.

What "native port" means here (and what it doesn't)

The code is native. Decompiled C, compiled to a 32-bit x86 ELF.

You still need to provide the game assets through a legally owned version of the game. Like Ship of Harkinian requiring your own Zelda ROM, this needs your own copy. But, and this was a design goal, it doesn't need the disc image at runtime. The original disc's assets are extracted from the build's own output and serve those reads out of the extracted asset tree.

What's implemented

The whole PSYQ hardware layer, in C:

libgte (the geometry coprocessor) - verified bit-exact against real COP2 hardware. I built a PS-EXE test ROM, ran it in DuckStation to capture real register outputs, and diffed 891 vectors. Zero mismatches.

libgpu - a GP0 command-list rasteriser. Flat, Gouraud and textured triangles, CLUT texture sampling (4/8/15-bit), sprites, VRAM transfers.

libds - a virtual CD drive that reproduces the real command protocol (DsPacket -> command-complete callback -> per-sector DslDataReady -> DsGetSector), with sectors delivered at the vblank boundary where the drive interrupt would land.

libpad - writes genuine PS1 controller packets into the game's own pad buffer, so held/pressed/released, auto-repeat and analog-to-d-pad all get computed by untouched game code.

libapi - including a full PS1 memory card filesystem. It loads my actual save and the menus enumerate my actual inventory.

Plus an SDL2 window, and PS1 main RAM mapped at 0x80000000 so the boot path's hardcoded addresses (the allocator gets handed literal 0x8010C000, overlays load to their real addresses) all just work.

What does NOT work

No audio. The SPU is a silent stub. Everything calls into it correctly, it just doesn't make sound.

No intro FMV. It's an MDEC video stream and there's no decoder yet. Currently skipped.

NEW GAME doesn't start a game. It hands off to BATTLE.PRG, the actual game engine, and the long pole. It's ~35% decompiled, so that's a wall no amount of platform work gets around.

So: it boots, it renders, it takes input, it reads your save. It is not playable, and won't be until the engine decomp is much further along.

What will be possible once decomp is finished and it is fully ported

The reason to do it this way, instead of as an emulator hack or a binary patch, is that once the engine is decompiled the game stops being a fixed artifact and becomes an ordinary C codebase. Everything below gets cheap the moment that's true, and most of it is impossible before it.

Platforms

64-bit is the first one. The current build is 32-bit for a specific reason: PS1 ordering tables store 24-bit pointers, so every host pointer the game threads into a display list has to fit under 16MB. Getting past that needs a handle or offset layer rather than raw pointers. After that it's native Windows, macOS, Linux, ARM. A game this size runs comfortably on a Steam Deck or a phone.

Resolution and framerate
The rasteriser is mine, so nothing binds it to 320x240 or to the PS1's quirks. Higher internal resolution, perspective-correct texturing instead of the affine warping, no vertex wobble from the GTE snapping coordinates to integers. Or keep all of that, since it becomes a toggle instead of a constraint. Widescreen is a bigger job because the UI is laid out for 4:3, but that's a layout problem rather than a hardware one. Framerate needs the most care: game logic ticks at 60Hz and a lot of code assumes it, so uncapping means either interpolating the render or auditing a great deal of timing.

Load times
Effectively already gone. The virtual CD serves out of ordinary files and its speed is a config value rather than a spinning disc. Vagrant Story's constant room-to-room loading is one of the few things that really dates it.

Mods as code
This is the big one. Once it's C, a mod is a patch to a build, not a hex edit to a binary. Vagrant Story is an unusually good candidate for it: the weapon crafting and affinity system is famously deep and famously opaque. Can anyone say fast weapon swapping?

Quality of life
Remappable controls, rumble, save anywhere, faster text, and an affinity/damage readout that shows what the game is actually calculating. Retail bugs can simply be fixed once you can see them.

Assets
Texture replacement, higher-poly models, restored content if any is still sitting in the data. The pipeline already extracts everything from your own disc, so changing what gets handed to the game is a short step from here.

Preservation
The honest long-term argument. Emulators drift, hardware dies, and a compiled binary is a black box that nobody can maintain. A matching decompilation plus a working port means the game survives as documented, buildable source that someone can compile on hardware that doesn't exist yet.

Edit: FMV Loads now, had an issue with the display depth, but that is now working. Loading a save from the main menu isn't quite there. The previous menu examples were from shunting the data directly into the game state.

Edit 2: Video of it launching, I'm having to transmit controller input to WSL at the moment since WSL can't interface with the controller directly.

For those who would peer behind the veil—this site holds the raw 3D geometry of Léa Monde, cutscene locations and all. A little immersion-breaking but wondrous to behold.

https://models.spriters-resource.com/playstation/vagrantstory/

The battery on my PSP swelled, and here I was wanting to revisit this gem. So I searched on Amazon for an acceptable replacement.

To this day, no single game has inspired me so much (as a creator myself), and why is it of all Matsuno's games this one remains overlooked by SquareEnix for a re-release or re-master?

I'd be happy with a port. Fixing the loading screens for the Workshop would be ideal. Adding in all the cut content on a remaster would be superb (with the original available to play too--and grab Alexander O. Smith again to localise it; I'm thrilled to have had an *extremely* casual acquaintance with him over the years).

Such an incredible game and story. More people should have the chance to play it. And I'd love to not have to dust off an old console and get it working again just to play it.

Anyway. Back to playing!

Initially just wanted to do a quick colour study from one of my screenshots, but I got carried away. Really focused on trying to capture the atmosphere from this game which is so special. I first played the game recently and it's been very inspiring, I want to paint more moments that I enjoyed!

NG+12

Got the prestigious Grand Master Breaker Rank, a ton of Holy Wins and Arturos Gems, an Ascalon (Damascus Rhomphaia), Marlene’s Ring, Hand of Light, and 30 out of the 32 titles. What an incredible journey. So proud of all the work that went into these playthroughs of this incredible masterpiece.

Until next time, Vagrant Story 🤍

A lot of it comes down to the writing. With so many JRPGs that have a lot of these edgelord dialogue and "I'm a mean, silent type" characters, the flowery prose and literary guff was an absolute breath of fresh air. Cloud, Squall, Zidane, none of them are Shakespearian characters, and that's exactly the point.

It separates that world from the world we all are too familiar with, which is the point of videogames. The European inspiration is also unique. The city of Lea Monde itself was modelled entirely on the town of St Emilion in the south of France, and the period dialect fits the setting as well. I rather have the characters speak in that old English that fits that world than speak in current day lingo that does not belong in that game's world.

I really wish we can have a remake of this game one day and see how Lea Monde, the characters, looks with modern graphics.

- I dream of remaking this game with AAA quality. Just for every one who loving Vagrant story.