MIDI Week Singles: "Dreams of the Shore Bordering Another World" - Chrono Cross (PSX)

"Dreams of the Shore Bordering Another World" from Chrono Cross on the Playstation (1999)

Composer: Yasunori Mitsuda

Record Label: Digicube SSCX-10040

Game Developer: Squaresoft

This song came up earlier while procrastinating from doing my homework and I thought, "Why have I not written a post about this song yet?"  I had no good answer, you y'all're getting to listen to this today!

Despite the fact that I don't feel that Chrono Cross was a particularly good sequel to Chrono Trigger, it was a good game that had a great soundtrack.  This track is used as the overworld theme once Serge crosses over to the "Other Aruni."  It's beautiful as a stand alone piece, yet has that special something that allows it to be played over-and-over as theme while your characters traverse the world.  I also really enjoy the simplicity of track, that it is performed by five voices: violin, piano, guitar, bass and a voice; especially during a time when I felt a lot of music from video games were trying to layer too many voice because the hardware at the time allowed more than limited number previously on the 8 and 16 bit consoles.

In the end, if you ended up having a negative view of Chrono Cross, at least give the soundtrack a try, great tracks like "Dreams of the Shore Bordering Another World" fill the entirety of the album.  You might be missing out otherwise.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Reached The Shore And Saw It Come

Emulator Hour: Xenogears (PS1)

Seems like a sufficiently villainous goal

You know, in my endless pursuit of nostalgia, I've come to the conclusion that the Playstation 1 actually had a lot of really great games.  Back in the great CD Burn-off of '01, I acquired quite a few excellent RPGs from Square.  In fact, I think the rate of US release for Square really increased around that time.  'Only in Japan' was no longer a phrase to frustrate the RPGphile.

Xenogears - it's been twelve years since I played through the first disc, but I still remember it like yesterday.  Would I do it again?  Maybe.  I think I'll just read a plot summary instead.   This is a very good plot summary, full of love and criticism.   You know, I played this game yesterday for barely an hour, and I've had its image in the back of my mind all day today.  I think this may be due to the sheer number of hours I put into it twelve years ago.  This  game is long-  50 hours on one disc!  (of two)

Playing Xenogears is like watching 300 episodes of some Shonen Anime.  You know - the kind whose story just keeps getting bigger and bigger, new twists, bigger bad guys, greater powers.  Xenogears is epic, sweeping, daring and strange.  The music is good, the environments have character, the battle system is fun.  All in all, a great jRPG from 1998.  

 But, there's no getting around it:   Xenogears starts to drag after while.  Then it proceeds to drag on for a very long time.  After a point, it's hard to say what is dragging the most, the story or the gameplay.  You start to notice the encounter rate is maybe a bit too high.  Or that the story simply takes too long to reveal things that it has been hinting at for a long time.  On the one hand, I like that the game takes its time with the story.  On the other hand, when two things are dragging at once, it really takes its toll.  This game is in dire need of an editor.

And yet... I would still consider playing it through again.  Or at least trying.  Boy it would be nice if I shorten some of the gameplay though.  It feels weird to say so, like some kind of betrayal of my young self, who loved long games.  But it's true, and I don't think it's just me being old. I think that Zeboyd games were onto something when they made monster encounters manual.  Or Chrono Trigger with the encounters being featured on the screen, sometimes avoidable, sometimes predictable, but not hyper-persistent and random.   There are so many times when I'd like to explore a little-- hell, even hear some more of the music play out, but I know I'm going to hit a random encounter every five seconds.  In an already long game, this is just too much. 

So, ultimately I'd say Xenogears:  play at your own risk.  If you like jRPGs, particularly 90s era RPGs, Xenogears is a great game.  Compelling, unique and mysterious.  But it takes like 50 hours to get through the first disc, and it can really drag.

It's really tough to encapsulate Xenogears in just a pic or two.  But here's a cast shot.

 
P.S.  I decided to read through the Let's Play Xenogears article rather than play through the second disc.  It was enjoyable and entertaining, with music links for each scene, and a pretty funny sense of humor.  I can only recommend it as a cop-out for those of us unwilling to dump another 20 hours into this game.  

P.P.S.  Xenogears gets a lot of criticism - the same criticism I also levied against it.  So here's an article from Joystiq coming to its defense.  It really is a great game!   Mostly.

Game Scores: Final Fantasy USA - Mystic Quest (SNES)

If you're like me, then you might have been one of the many people who initially scoffed at Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.  I mean the cover of the game touted that it was an "Entry-Level Role Playing Adventure."  Entry-Level?  I'd been playing RPGs since Dragon Warrior.  I didn't need to have my hand held while fighting off monsters on my way to save the world.  I only played it because the game belonged to The Kid, although I can't remember if I bought it for her or she bought it herself.  Well, as it turned out, it was a pretty decent game and what surprised me the most was the music, which is why we are all here today.

I acquired this soundtrack over 10 years ago while buying something on eBay and this came as a "bonus gift."  It was one of five video game CDs to choose from and the only one that I had played, so I figured why not?  After listening through the whole CD, I discovered that I recalled the music more than I thought I would and that I actually enjoyed the music as well.

The music composed for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was not written by then Squaresoft mainstay Nobuo Uematsu, but instead by Ryuji Sasai and Yasuhiro Kawakami.  To give you an idea of where this soundtrack is coming from, previous works from these two composers include Final Fantasy Legend III (Gameboy 1993) and Tetris (Arcade 1988).

So what makes this soundtrack surprisingly good?  We'll get there later, but first, let's start off with the main theme for the game which is played during the opening titles and is used for the overworld theme.

It's poppy.  It's bouncy.  It's upbeat.  Not really what you would expect from not only a Final Fantasy game, but from a game in a series where the threat of global destruction or evil overlordship is just on the horizon.  In almost any other J-Pop RPG, this theme might work, but upon first listen, Final Fantasy doesn't come to mind.  Is the song bad then?  Not really, just not something you would at first expect.

Now onto another theme heard throughout a large portion of the game.  This track is titled "Beautiful Forest."  Upon listening, I tend to find all the elements in the song needed to drum up the idea of a serene forest.  There might be enemies here, there might not.  Not too much to worry about.  There's probably also beams of light streaming through breaks in the trees.  Most likely a fair amount of moss.  You get the picture.

Ready for an adventure that sounds a lot cheesier than it actually is (kind of like that sentence)?  The track "Fossil Labyrinth" exemplifies this sense of adventuring in a questionable place then picks up the pace a bit as you get to the magnificence and awe portion of your exploration and finally, like any good RPG loop, you're dropped off again at the beginning of the track.  All of this occurs within 41 seconds.  You can't even microwave a Hot Pocket in that time without it catching on fire.

By now I hope that you're able to see where I'm coming from when I say that the music in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is actually quite good, considering it's self label as an introductory RPG for beginners.  The final track is an arranged track that is found on the OST (Original SoundTrack), although the song itself is final dungeon music (Last Castle), this specific arrangement is not.  And, while I usually don't go for remixes of music from video games (not including orchestral arrangements), as this song is officially sanctioned and because of the song's quality, I am perfectly secure in my liking of this next song:

So, if any of today's tracks have intrigued you, I highly encourage you to give the whole soundtrack a listen to and if you feel additionally inclined, give the game a play.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

In Defense of Buying Final Fantasy VII (Again)

D'Octopotts will probably be one of the first persons to tell you that I am part of the camp that finds Final Fantasy VII to be one of the most overrated games in video game history.  So, why is it then, that I bought the game when it first came out on PC back in 1998 and again less than a week ago?  Why did I also buy Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII on the PSP?  Why have I started to wait for the price to drop over at Amazon?  I will tell you why.  Because despite having played FF VII three times, I have yet to beat it, the world intrigues me and I really like the music (no shock there).  My last play through (2006) I was, at what I think was right before the final battle with Sephiroth.

Let's start where all stories that end up being either way too long or too vague start, at the beginning.

Coming off of the high that was Final Fantasy III (III in the U.S., VI in Japan as we all now know), I was exceedingly excited about Final Fantasy VII, although sad that it was only coming out on the new fangled Playstation and not on the N64.  I remember sitting in D'Octopott's room as he started the game (I don't know if it was the first time he booted up the game, but it was the first time I saw it).  I'm sure most people reading this would remember the opening.  The breathtaking visuals.  Uematsu's score.  It was all there.  I never saw D'O complete the game, which is what lead me to buying my own copy for the PC when I bought my own laptop post high school in the fall of 1998.

I don't remember how far I got during that first play through.  I do remember becoming lost shortly after acquiring your first airship from Cid, the Tiny Bronco.  There was something about finding a sword, or a guy who could make a sword. . . I don't remember.  I found myself going back to Cosmo Canyon because I didn't know what else to do or where to go and I really liked the theme for the area.  So I wandered around, fought enemies and listened to music.  I eventually made it to just after the snowboarding scene, then something happened, possibly life-wise, I don't remember, but I stopped playing as I'd lost interest.  And, I was irritated that Cloud and Co. had tried to stop a legitimate attempt to destroy Sephiroth's asteroid and save the planet, all because said company wanted to save the materia (history/memories of the Ancients) instead.

In 2004 I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and even though I hadn't finished the game, I felt I knew enough of the main story and the characters to know what was going on in the movie.  I watched it twice.  Once with D'O and his roommates and once in a Japanese language class I was taking at the time.

Jump ahead to 2006, four years later and I found the FF VII discs and loaded them onto my computer.  Playing commenced.  This time I made it through the game up until fighting Sephiroth at the end.  I was stalling because I didn't feel that I was at a high enough level.  That, or I just wanted to get above a certain level although I don't remember what level that was.  Then I moved from Sacramento back to Davis and have since lost one of the discs and I no longer have the computer/hard drive that my save files were on.

In 2008, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII was released on the PSP.  At first I wasn't too interested, possibly because of the lackluster reviews for Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII and because I had no way of playing the cellphone release of the other prequel Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII.  Then the reviews started pouring in that Crisis Core was actually a good game that helped expand the lore of the FF VII universe.  So I bought Crisis Core and loved it.  I loved playing out events that were hinted at or briefly mentioned.

For a couple of months now I've had Final Fantasy VII sitting in my cart in my Steam account (along with 24 other games) periodically (daily) checking to see if there was a price drop.  Last week, there was a 50% off drop on FF VII and knowing that Conklederp would dig some nostalgia and me wanting to finish the game (finally), I decided that $5.50 was an okay price to pay for a game that I enjoyed on a certain level (certain story elements, music) and genuinely wanted to finish.  So everything that you have just read went through my head in a manner of seconds before I clicked the "purchase" button.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Ghosts That Linger

P.S.  I'll come out with a First Impression of the game later although it will probably be more about the transition from PS1 to it's current iteration on the PC.  I may even talk about why I feel that FF VII is one of the more overrated games, but that topic may be over done at this point, so perhaps I won't afterall.