March 26, 2014
Time to pimp some music again
This blog has recently lacked discussion of JRPG music. Partly because I have been playing some games with rather average/forgettable soundtracks (let me not talk about Tales of Innocence again). Partly because I am so focused on playing games and learning Japanese (if they are Japanese games). Partly because I don’t really have a ton to say.
However, after starting up Ar tonelico 2, I remembered how much I enjoy listening to that soundtrack when doing image analysis at work. I don’t know how best to describe the mood of the soundtrack, but it’s very “up” – like moving and energetic and stuff. In a very melodious way, of course. Lots of singing, though. I personally love vocals in video game soundtracks.
Another melodic and awesome soundtrack is the one for Bravely Default. At some point when I actually finish the game, I will talk about my issues with the game, but music was definitely not one of the issues. The character battle themes (or the music that starts playing when a character does a special move) are great. I can’t decide which of the four is my favorite yet, even after 1000+ times of hearing each of them. (Not an exaggeration, by the way.)
Ar tonelico 1 also has a great soundtrack, though I don’t think it has as much singing in it as the later ones. The soundtrack also seems smaller than the later games? I haven’t really listened to the tracks outside of the game, though.
Of course I can never say enough times how much I love the Valkyria Chronicles soundtrack. Despite being relatively small for a decent-length JRPG (only some 50 tracks), I can’t think of a single throwaway track. A more thorough discussion of this soundtrack is probably somewhere else on this blog. Nevertheless I only recently played and beat the game, and I have to say a certain vocal track was 100x more impactful in the game. Otherwise the music can clearly stand on its own. It could also totally be inserted into Final Fantasy Tactics without too much issue, though the happy tracks would probably have to be omitted. Maybe because I don’t have as much fondness for Final Fantasy Tactics as I do for Valkyria Chronicles, but while the music in FF Tactics was good (and I’d probably like it more if I went back to listen to it), I just don’t think I can ever love it in the same way.
March 25, 2014
I’m loving myself some PS2 Gust
Except I’ve run into a bit of bad luck the past few days with different games freezing on me. I don’t think Atelier Iris 2 ever froze on me, but Atelier Iris froze on me once late in the game. Atelier Iris 3 froze on me one time randomly after exiting my workshop (I had just saved right before that). Ar tonelico froze on me the first time you see the song “Ar Tonelico”, which if I say more will be a spoiler. Ar tonelico 2 froze on me today during a screen transition as well, and I was only about 1-2 hours in (and thus switched to playing Atelier Iris 3). The last three freezes have occurred in this past week, but I’ve also been putting a good amount of hours into these games.
I’m just over 20 hours into Atelier Iris 3. It’s not really a great game (the first two are significantly better) but it’s amusing enough and kind of soothing to play. I have a tendency to listen to podcasts while collecting all the items and slashing things in Alterworlds. The game is still too quest-heavy for my tastes, but finally something cool happened in the plot today. Even before today I was enjoying the interactions of the main cast. I think that’s why I don’t mind dungeon crawling so much in this game compared to something like Dark Cloud.
I also got Misha’s first ending in Ar tonelico and I am currently working on her second. Even though Misha will still be my preferred girl (I’ve dived up to level 7 in Aurica so I feel safe making this statement), I am definitely interested in doing Aurica’s path. I’ll be using that save file from before you make the choice, since I don’t think I need to rehash the beginning any time soon. The beginning wasn’t bad but the later parts are just so much better! Also, maybe the final bosses will really have me using my full arsenal of song magics, but right now I barely go through any of them and usually just use each Reyvateil’s first song. Anyway, I got the first ending at around 25 hours. If my PS2 allows me to play more of the game, I think I’ll get the second ending around 40 hours. So far going for that second ending has brought up a lot of interesting things and has already been worth my time. Of course, while the gameplay is fun, I really play this game for the characters and story.
I hadn’t heard as many nice things about Ar tonelico 2, but so far I am intrigued. I found myself pleasantly surprised by the battle system changes. I didn’t expect a ton at first since the graphics quality is not great and my experience with the Atelier Iris trilogy made me think not too much would change. However, I was immediately challenged by the quick battle system, which I will fail to describe adequately. Basically you have a certain amount of time to hit buttons to make your characters attack in real time. That means a character can perform multiple attacks in one turn if they can finish one attack before the timer runs out. So far I believe each character has three types of attacks, which can be performed by hitting the appropriate right-side button (aka square or X) with the left-side directional buttons (aka up or down). In the defending phase, you protect the Reyvateils by hitting the appropriate character’s button (such as square) at the right time as the attack hits. I’m terrible with timed hits and you need to be able to hit both square and X at the same time if necessary. I’ll probably get better at it but at some point if I just keep failing I might even have to drop the difficulty! Which seems crazy since I usually think of doing that only for action games. I guess I need to invest in some rhythm games too.
The other major impression was Cloche’s introduction. She is definitely a character and brings out a lot of life in the other characters, including the main character Croix, who looked to be boring otherwise. He certainly seems smarter than Lyner (the charming idiot main character of Ar tonelico). I’m sort of amused that Croix’s already traveling around with a “harem”. Compared to other games where girls seem to be lacking, Gust games don’t care if everyone but the main character is a girl. And later on (one day I will get to them!) Gust even makes the main characters female. As long as Gust games cooperate with my gaming systems and don’t crash too often (they tend to have a lot of save points so crashing doesn’t make me lose too much progress hopefully), I plan to keep playing them. Though I don’t think I’ll catch up any time soon…
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