@exodus man it is extremely chill. you lean the chair back as far as it’ll go and just ride the train. it doesn’t matter what any of it means. look at this forest for god’s sake. the whole thing is packed with stuff like that
I've listened to the music pretty much constantly for the last 20 years so maybe I should get around to it pretty soon.
@starsailor yeah this looks awesome, it’s next on my list of “A-tier” PSX RPGs to try after failing to get into Xenogears
@tapevulture if you treat it like a 600-page novel that you return to every now and then over a six-month period or something, it is a luxurious experience. but then you run the risk of being disoriented, because this game is disorienting. even the characters are confused about where they are!
in 2000, square had their “summer of adventure” where they released chrono cross, legend of mana and i think threads of fate. it’s a good game to play over the course of a summer, which is how i originally did it. but also . . . playing it an hour before you go to sleep in the winter is a nice thing too. and you’re just in time for that!!
I love the greens and blues of the Fillmore forest in Actraiser.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KIHCnWqUX-0/maxresdefault.jpg
ok i’m into this thread. and having described forests from the mana series in my previous post, i feel compelled to share evidence of what i assume everyone already knows:
dang!!
with music:
Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP
@TheBeigeKnight the forest looks good but i especially like that HUD. what’s it for
@tapevulture It is a PC game. I’m not aware of it being on any other platforms.
@TheBeigeKnight i meant what does the HUD do haha
@MegaSigil YEAH! I remember playing the demo of this on a PlayStation Magazine disc and being very much blown away by the music in the forest area. It stuck with me for a while, and is always the first thing I think about when the game is brought up.
I really love Mystic Forest from Nights into Dreams. At the time, thanks to Sonic, I was all about ruins and greek-like columns casually laying around in landscapes. Mystic Forest had all of that, and to make things dreamier, a strange traffic/car theme mixed in with it, a long with a small mini-game involving guiding a lost self-driving car back into a garage. It was strange, and I loved it.
The music was also fantastic, which is sort of a given with Nights.
On that same note, as flawed as Journey of Dreams was, the actual Nights-like gameplay areas were still pretty fun, and Memory Forest felt super cozy with its blending of house/apartment-like structures into the trees and other areas.
The music was also extra sleepy and cozy feeling. I could have a coffee, read a book and take a nap there.
side note but I‘m jealous of all you “coffee and a nap” people. I have difficulty sleeping at the best of times, and I can’t absorb caffeine, so that's a double whammy!
Also yeah, that nights forest was being demo-ed at whatever kiosk where I played knights for the first time (toys r us or best buy or something) and I really got that feeling of there being a bigger world, and it was real exciting! Especially walking around with those abandoned(??) cars in the forest, it just felt like... this is a place where something happened!
@tapevulture Oh my bad lol, the bottom left is time of day, the big bar is your hunger/endurance meter and the bottom right is a thirst meter. The thirst meter probably shouldn’t be empty like that, I think this is from an early version of the game.
Great picks everyone! Tomba and Nights are ones I would have posted. Also, I haven‘t thought about Sword & Sworcery EP in so long… I can’t overstate how important video game and IRL forests are to me. As a teen I started making a “forest game” of my own… Basically every fantasy RPG has a decent forest, doesn‘t it? FFIX was a good pick, FF7 had great forests too, I like the eerie FF7 forest theme…
Practically every area in Pikmin 1 & 2 is an epic forest.
Pardon my frantic forest forum posting. Also sorry they’re mostly gonna be Nintendo ones…
King's Field IV Holy Forest is super chill...
https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/690527-king-s-field-the-ancient-city-playstation-2-screenshot-one.png
Ellinia Forest
https://media.playpark.net/MapleStory/uploadimages/ellinia.jpg
Mushroom Hill Zone Act 2
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1UHFlebMl4A/maxresdefault.jpg
Quiet Forest
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JDAKdc7Z6JY/maxresdefault.jpg
Viridian Forest
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/J1yJQAk3ej0/hqdefault.jpg
Animal Forest
https://imgur.com/a/AcoU5Hy
Forbidden Woods
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/Zelda09/Walkthrough/07/007.png
Mysterious Forest
https://www.zeldaspalace.com/images/la/soluce/0102.jpg
Tazmily low poly n64 version
[URL=https://i.imgur.com/JrawtnV.png]
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/JrawtnV.png[/IMG][/URL]
Mushroom Hill Zone is a good one!!
I’m also a sucker for any “jump through the trees” style area, like Strider for PC Engine or Legend of Kage or Exile
I’ll admit these are not the best forests, but they make me imagine what it would be like if you could do that in an actual forest.
The forests in Red Dead Redemption 2 are quite striking.
@exodus Playing Strider, gracefully jumping, galloping down slopes as mushrooms sprout up behind, bears resemblance to gameplay of Ookami, also by Capcom. :j
shout out to @bankbank for their remix of this stage 1 theme from Legendary Axe
I came to post basically all the ones that everyone else has posted*. But here’s one that I really liked from Nier: Automata. This is one of my favorite part of the game. It’s probably a 15 minute or so sequence that builds the music up very slowly as you progress from a walk in the wodds with your robo-buddy into more and more chaotic combat.
The second time you play through the game, the hacking track cuts in and out of the “real world” action and does a great job maintaining consistent mood.
*Here is my me too post: FF9's Evil Forest, Link to the Past's Lost Woods, Sonic 3's Mushroom Hill Zone (and Sonic Mania's Press Garden Zone), Gran Turismo's Deep Forest Raceway. Look, they are all considered good forests for a reason!