What are some good examples of otherwise fantastic games where the composer just completely fumbled? The only thing holding Tales of the Abyss back from being a top tier JRPG, with its unforgettable story, grand lore, riveting battle system and gorgeous art style, alongside Final Fantasy X and Dragon Quest 8, is its comically bland OST.
Just compare
?si=Dmutn7YmOl3B1_Hq
to:
 |
 Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
|
every Dragon Quest game
Found the he/she.
The Japanese version of this game has a kick ass opening song.
After playing Abyss, these tracks were my favourites:
?si=6RJaV69LSHrfONpT
?si=wVs3BzCjdQNpOS7o
?si=AD9Jx2s_gQp4d529
?si=NrcH_gaEE-Ij5EIa
?si=sY1FyC5m9AFfV0oM
?si=NC_hEOI9O87_Zzao
?si=-dXVYa9uRA40nAUL
?si=ysOOGHWFDFKZqIS7
and of these, i'd only listen to the first four or five outside of the game honestly
The vast majority of retro Unitedstatian games
this would imply that american games are worth playing in the first place
They were until about 2005.
>unforgettable story, grand lore, riveting battle system and gorgeous art style
Is Abyss really that good?
No, Abyss is like superficially better than Symphonia with the battle engine, but there's no depth to the systems and the game itself straight up blows. It's just the characters being fun/entertaining what carries it, and somewhat competent writing at times.
Also, the Motoo Fujiwara tracks in Abyss sound fricking horrible. Congrats to Bamco for getting someone "worse" than Sakuraba/Tamura.
>"worse" than Sakuraba
Sakuraba is so weird. He's perfectly capable of writing grand orchestral pieces (see all of the Valkyrie Profile Silmeria OST) but 90% time he goes for discordant keysmashes. To say nothing of his experimentation with the hip hops.
>Sakuraba is so weird. He's perfectly capable of writing grand orchestral pieces (see all of the Valkyrie Profile Silmeria OST) but 90% time he goes for discordant keysmashes
He has his high points but I agree the progressive noodling gets too indulgent in some of his works and he's better left to thematic pieces overall. I'd compare him to someone like Meguro who is solid when he has a focus.
Sakuraba's writing is a different type of progressive noodling from someone like Uematsu or Ito, Kozuka or Masuko who wear their influences on their sleeve to the point you can name the keyboard players and musical pieces they were pulling from.
I'm the Anon you replied to, I think Sakuraba's orchestral music is incredibly lacking/boring and the genre of music he's the worst at. Sakuraba's true musicality only shows up in his solo albums like Gikyokuonsou, Force of Light, etc and certain games like Baten Kaitos. I feel comfortable in saying that Sakuraba's work on the Tales series is phoned in compared to his other works, not only because he's admitted as much, but because I have many other contemporary works (e.g. tri-Ace work) to compare each one to. The only Tales soundtrack that really blew me away was SFC Phantasia.
But anyway, my point is that Sakuraba has skill and can be good, but it also doesn't help that he's incredibly busy every year. To put things into perspective: in 2008 he worked on the Valkyrie Profile DS spinoff + arrange album, Infinite Undiscovery, THREE Tales games, THREE Tales arrange albums, his third solo album (Forest of glass) + guest arranges for other stuff.
Have a cool Sakuraba live performance. https://youtu.be/8fn8QQ4VNF4
damn he's handsome
And the only thing he did of note that year was forest of glass, extremely sad!
>Got Vesperia super cheap on sale and am almost 10 hours in but the whole thing so far are lengthy cut scenes I find myself skipping more and more because everyone is annoying and then very brief exploration bits that seem super easy.
Extremely similar to Vesperia, Abyss is closer to it mechanically and in annoying cutscene territory and Symphonia is a much more primitive game but still retains the lengthy cutscenes & story segments.
After Vesperia the game design kinda splits off in different directions, these games and Legendia were the last hurrah from Wolf Team w/ Symphonia 2 and that game is very, very, very bad.
I enjoy this game but it's a bit of a slog on replays because of the MC being an insufferable prick for half of it.
It's a nice balance between Symphonia & Vesperia but like says the depth isn't quite there. It's better than Legendia for that's worse but Legendia looks like a hidden gem in comparison.
The voice cast is solid in the JP version, English is mostly okay but the gay power ranger JYB is also a negative alongside early Luke so if you're EOP you might want to use an undub just to to remove him or play the game on mute. I've never went full autism to the point I've looked into removing just his lines but I would if I didn't know Japanese and wanted to enjoy the rest of the English voice cast.
As for music, Sakuraba does do some of the soundtrack too, it's not bad bad but Sakuraba's schtick gets old here because this is where he started to fall off, after this point his only meaningful contributions to music are his classical/piano albums.
Tamura & Fujiwara carry Sakurabas bloated noodling corpse through this title.
what the frick does JYB and EOP mean? speak english
English Only Peasant
I have no idea what JYB is
nta, but i think jyb is Johnny Yong Bosch who is a very popular(?) english dub va
It is indeed Bosch, he's popular with dubshitters but his performance in Abyss is extremely poor.
Its too late now but if Tales got different composers I would not mind.
How do Abyss amd Symphonia compare to Vesperia? I really liked Phantasia and Destiny, but have had a hard time getting into others. I found Eternia / "destiny 2" extremely disappointing. Got Vesperia super cheap on sale and am almost 10 hours in but the whole thing so far are lengthy cut scenes I find myself skipping more and more because everyone is annoying and then very brief exploration bits that seem super easy. The world design is cool so I keep trying and hoping it gets better but losing faith. Are there any otherd in the series that focus more on combat and dungeons like the first two?
No, the cast are unlikeable buttholes. And no, it being "on purpose" doesn't make it better.
That's the best part. Frick sanitised family friendly generic ass characters
This game made me understand why does fiction tend to sanitize things.
The characters from Abyss are certainly more realistic than usual. For example, Luke is constantly bullied because he is an easy prey. He has zero self-steem, has the mind of a young a kid and basically cannot defend himself. Meanwhile, other characters can get away with being horrible pieces of trash on virtue of being pretty girls, guys with very strong personalities...
We have seen this all time in schools, even in workplaces. It happens, it's real life... and it's utterly repulsive.
And this doesn't mean that you should always exclude realism from your stories, but it's also a bet you're making, and sometimes the results won't be appreciated.
Attractiveness has very little to do with who is bullied and who is not. People who allow themselves to be bullied get bullied.
I think that most people would have bought luke's treatment by the party if luke was exclusively the one who nuked akzeriuth. Because he was manipulated there is a level of empathy players would expect but luke does not receive.
Abyss was for the arts, not the charts
Berseria did a much better job with flawed, morally grey protagonists than Abyss imo. They were also more likeable
I thought the FF12 soundtrack was pretty shit. Some people seem to like it though.
>I thought the FF12 soundtrack was pretty shit. Some people seem to like it though.
I love it but I'm fans of the composers and their previous work. It fits an ivalice title well.
I dislike both aspects of the original and the OST/reorchestrated mixes tho, weird choices for instrumentation on both. Kinda have to swap between them on the port to get the best of both worlds.
Depends on what you find more comfortable to play, if you can emu 3DS at a decent res and transfer over your saves I'd do that.
The PS2 version is A-OK though, not a tonne of differences in the port iirc.
on what you find more comfortable to play, if you can emu 3DS at a decent res and transfer over your saves I'd do that.
thanks anon, im probably going to be playing on original hardware so its likely to be a n3ds
as for save transfering... i doubt i can transfer my old PS2 save to my 3ds and i dont really recall much of the story anyways
ill probably do a fresh playthrough
Ah, I meant more save transferring between PC Citra and your 3DS, I do that with some games that I play on both.
Have fun, it's a fun title if you stick with it.
thank you anon
i hope ill actually finish it this time
should i play on the 3ds version or the PS2 version?
i think i played on the latter till my laser started shitting the bed, but i want to try and finish the game