The Vagrant

The Vagrant follows Vivian, a traveling sellsword chasing her missing father's research through a hand-painted fantasy world, hacking through mysterious forests and haunted castles in search of a family secret. It's a direct, openly acknowledged homage to Vanillaware's beloved catalogue — Odin Sphere, Dragon's Crown, Muramasa — right down to the traditionally-animated art style and combo-driven combat rhythm, developed by a small Chinese studio and sold at a small fraction of what those games typically cost. Nearly 1,730 English reviews have settled it at 89% Very Positive, and reading through them reveals an unusually candid, consistent theme: this is an homage its own fans openly acknowledge falls short of what it's imitating, recommended anyway because of just how little it costs to find out for yourself.

An homage its reviewers name directly, and don't let off easy

Almost every detailed review in the sample makes the Vanillaware comparison explicitly and unprompted, and most aren't gentle about it. One reviewer states it as plainly as possible: this "couldn't obviously more be an Odin Sphere ripoff with far more fan service." Another, shorter review reaches the same conclusion in five words: "just a worse version of any vanillaware game." A third, more sympathetic review still frames its recommendation the same way: "it's a good stab trying to wedge itself into the space that Odin's Sphere, Muramasa and Dragon's Crown occupies," without claiming it succeeds at matching them. That level of consistent, specific, named comparison — not vague "reminds me of" language but the same three specific titles named repeatedly across independent reviews — is worth taking as an accurate framing of what this game is actually trying, and mostly failing, to be.

Value that keeps the goodwill alive anyway

What keeps the aggregate score positive despite that consistent critique is price. Reviewer after reviewer explicitly frames their recommendation around cost rather than quality on its own terms: "ITS $4 DOLLARS DUMBASS... Already worth $4," one writes bluntly in response to more critical reviews. Another sums up the calculation plainly: "you cant really beat one dollar." A detailed Chinese-language review makes the same point with more specificity, calling it "price-breaking" for the domestic market given the hand-painted art, satisfying combo system, and roughly 70 enemy types paired with 10-plus hardcore bosses on offer for under four dollars. This is a consistent, explicit pattern across the sample: reviewers aren't rating The Vagrant against Vanillaware's games on quality alone, they're rating it against Vanillaware's games adjusted for a fraction of the price, and by that adjusted standard, most come away satisfied.

Where the imitation runs thin

The specific gaps reviewers point to are consistent enough to treat as real, not just harsh opinion. Combat draws the sharpest criticism: one detailed reviewer calls it "very generic and not engaging enough," while another goes further, comparing the feel of landing hits unfavorably to "an old flash game." A specific, repeated structural complaint concerns pacing: several reviewers independently describe the midgame turning into "a huge grindfest" once potions and crafting materials stop keeping pace with what bosses demand, with one describing enemy health pools as feeling tuned for a cooperative mode that the game doesn't actually have, making solo encounters "slow" rather than tense. A separate, more mechanical complaint concerns controls: keyboard-only players report the run command's reliance on an unreliable double-tap rather than a toggle specifically undermines platforming sections that need more precision than the input supports.

What the numbers say about who finishes it

Global achievement data shows real engagement with the game's combat content specifically — the first tracked boss sits at 68.5% completion, still healthy for an opening encounter — but a much steeper decline toward either of the game's two endings, with the "normal" conclusion held by only 13.9% of the playerbase and the "good" ending by just 10.7%. That gap between strong early engagement and a much smaller share of players reaching any conclusion is consistent with the review sample's own account of a midgame that loses momentum well before the credits, even for players who enjoyed the opening hours enough to keep going.

A design choice reviewers disagree sharply about

Character design draws some of the most divided reactions in the sample. Several reviewers note directly that the protagonist and other female characters are drawn with exaggerated proportions, one joking that "every woman in this game just has these absolutely HUGE... tracts of land," while a separate, more pointed review frames the same observation as a serious critique of derivative, over-sexualized design choices layered onto an already-borrowed art style. Other reviewers push back just as directly, reassuring potential buyers that despite the character art "it's not" the kind of game that invites that assumption, and that the actual content stays within an ordinary fantasy-action frame. This review reports both readings as genuine, independently-arrived-at reactions from within the same sample rather than picking a side — it's a real point of disagreement among the game's own audience, not a settled matter.

A curious localization detail

One detailed Chinese-language review flags something worth passing along as a specific, concrete observation: despite being developed by a Chinese studio, the game's only full voice acting is in Japanese, with Chinese supported as subtitles only — a choice the reviewer describes as slightly jarring for a domestic release clearly inspired by Japanese art and game design traditions rather than made within one. It's a small detail, but a specific and checkable one about how the game presents its own cultural identity that an English-language buyer might not otherwise encounter.

Verdict

The Vagrant is exactly what its own most balanced reviewers describe: a sincere, visually beautiful attempt to occupy Vanillaware's specific niche, sold at a price that makes its real, consistently-named shortcomings easy to forgive. The art earns its praise on its own; the combat, pacing, and controls consistently draw the same specific complaints from reviewers who otherwise recommend it. Buy it for a few dollars expecting a cheaper, rougher cousin of the games it's openly imitating, not a rival to them.

Sources: Steam store page and appdetails API (release date, pricing, platform data); Steam's aggregate review data (query_summary totals, English-language sample); individually read user reviews across languages, both positive and negative, sorted by helpfulness and recency; Steam's global achievement statistics API; O.T.K Games/Thermite Games' own partner-events patch notes, confirming an Early Access launch in June 2017 and a dense update cadence through the 1.0 release in July 2018 and beyond into late 2019.