Vagrant Story was primarily developed by the team responsible for Final Fantasy Tactics, with Yasumi Matsuno serving as director, producer, designer, and writer.

The story centers on Ashley Riot, an elite agent known as a Riskbreaker, who must travel to Leá Monde to investigate the link between a cult leader and a senior Valendian Parliament member, Duke Bardorba.

Vagrant Story is a solo action role-playing game, in which the player controls Ashley Riot from a third-person perspective while exploring Leá Monde and the catacombs underneath.

[1][2] Ashley can run, jump, and push crates and cubes to navigate around obstacles, adding puzzle and platforming elements to gameplay.

[2][3] In the field map, players may engage the enemy as soon as they enter Battle Mode, which uses a pausable real-time combat system, much like Square's Parasite Eve (1998).

Certain magic spells allow the player to affect multiple targets by using a small sphere positioned within the Battle Mode wire frame.

[2] Vagrant Story's crafting system allows the player to create and customize weapons and armor in designated "workshop" areas, inputting various ranges, strengths, and statistics.

Vagrant Story is set in the fictitious city of Leá Monde, while the kingdom of Valendia is engulfed in civil war.

Beneath the ground are an abandoned mineshaft and limestone quarry, the shadowy labyrinths of an "Undercity", and the dark Iron Maiden dungeon.

While Valendia and Leá Monde are fictitious, the game's scenery is inspired by real-life landscapes of the southwest of France, including the city of Saint-Émilion.

[7] The protagonist is Ashley Riot, a male member of the Valendia Knights of the Peace (VKP) in pursuit of a cult leader named Sydney Losstarot.

Under orders of the Cardinal, he pursues Sydney with a small army in his command and his captains: Samantha, Duane, Grissom, Tieger and Neesa.

[20] He encounters Guildenstern and his lover Samantha, and learns of the condition known as incomplete death and the Cardinal's true intention for his pursuit of Sydney: immortality.

[24] Ashley recalls his hidden battle skills and experiences "clairvoyance", seeing the progress of the Crimson Blades, which leads him to the Great Cathedral.

[31] While discussing the Gran Grimoire, a powerful source of magic, Guildenstern and Samantha discover ancient Kildean letterings carved throughout the city walls.

In a report received by the VKP a week after the Graylands Incident, the duke was believed to be murdered, and Ashley became the prime suspect, though he was never found again.

Vagrant Story is regarded as a mixture of genres, as it contains elements of role-playing in its battles and platform games when in the field map.

A team of five people was formed in September 1998, including Matsuno and the principal persons in charge of graphics and decorations, to realize the game's setting.

The storyline conceived for the game follows Ashley Riot's origins as a dedicated government agent prior to being the titular "vagrant" who is "involved in many incidents" after the events in Leá Monde.

[52] For the North American release, a 16-page comic-book tie-in with art by Steve Firchow, Clarence Lansang and Michael Turner of Witchblade fame was published by Eruptor Entertainment and Squaresoft.

[53] Sakimoto noted that during the initial phase, he composed "bright and cheerful" tunes similar to Final Fantasy Tactics, but Matsuno emphasized music that was "more deep and heavy".

Matsuno also advised him to listen to music from The X-Files for ideas on ambient scores, and Sakimoto pointed out influences of James Horner and Hans Zimmer in his compositions.

Sakimoto created themes for each character and monster, and made several changes in their melody to reflect their relationships, feelings as well as antagonistic views.

[62] 100,000 units were sold in the first 20 days of the game's release,[3] despite being overshadowed by other Square titles like Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Cross.

[65] The game's sound effects have been praised as "well done and impressive, straying from Square's synthed noise",[1] as details such as the background audio help create a believable world for the player.

[3] 1UP.com noted that the game's inventory was too limited for the vast number of customizations possible; this was considered particularly troublesome because some boss enemies are only vulnerable to certain types of weapons.

According to an interview with Joypad, a French gaming magazine, in 2004, Yasumi Matsuno claimed during its development that Ivalice, the game world he created when he joined Square in 1995, is a complex world with a very long history and the stories of Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy XII are said to unfold quite close on the Ivalice map.

Matsuno commented in 2011 that the plot elements of Final Fantasy Tactics found in Vagrant Story were meant to be intertextual reference to the Ivalice title as a form of "fan service".

[77][78] Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood referenced the game further in 2017 through the Return to Ivalice raid series, most notably by including an alternate version of the city of Valnain and Leá Monde as existing locations in its own world.

Kawazu mentioned that it is "the next natural candidate for such an update", although there would be difficulty in porting the game, because it was a title that already pushed the original PlayStation to its technical limits.