Game soundtracks have a lot of pressure on them to suit theme and context. They have to be immersive but if they’re too complex they can be distracting, it’s an interesting balance to manage.
Perhaps a hot take, I’ll say that Sonic Adventure Battle 2’s Escape From the City (City Escape) is a great song. Oh yeah the spicy part… It’s really distracting in the level… because it’s too good. When you’re running through you will get to another area where the music changes to something regular and then it comes back later… only to get cut off again. The implementation could have been a lot better, but nonetheless a very fun game and level.
The Final Boss Track in FFX definitely sounds nothing like anything else in FFX, kinda has a stank to it, but it fits the character perfectly and feels very “2001” in a good way. It sounds straight out of Dynasty Warriors 2:
Lost Painting from Symphony of the Night kinda fits this prompt. It’s not completely inappropriate, but it’s so different from the rest of the soundtrack that I think the area(s) it’s used in needed to be even more off the wall crazy. Like weird balloon pods and giant angel torso archers and wizard of oz companions trying to kill you are all on the right track for sure. But the scenery around you is still regular brick castle (even if it is upside down). The music demands like clouds or tree branches or something more abstract like plain geometric shapes as its basic building blocks for the level platforms.
That’s such a good track, and I totally agree.
I think a lot of it must come from composers not mixing enough with the art and level team to make things more cohesive. I guess if everything was made in parallel you have to be really on top of that. Saying this, the rest of the tracks fit well so you’re bound to have one.
Oh is that the one in the caves? Whether or not it’s the one I’m thinking of, I specifically remember one or two tracks in that game feeling antithetical to the level archetype but still being great.
I feel this way about a ton of of the field zone music in FFXIV, which often does a poor job of conveying the atmosphere and ambience I think is crucial to good MMORPG field zone music, but the most glaring example has to be the daytime music for Lakeland:
The song makes perfect sense for the context in which you first encounter it: a mobilization of defenders to protect a town bordering the area, but…it stays there even after that’s done! The zone itself is gorgeous and sort of ethereal in many ways, and this up-tempo battle music is just utterly jarring for it
This is a really good example. These things break my immersion a lot of the time, which is already thin for an MMORPG. I end up realising that I’m listening to a song and watching a screen rather than playing a game.
I watched this Morrowind retrospective from PatricianTV that had an interesting section about soundtracks. They explain the strengths and weaknesses of the Morrowind OST and as an example points out a failing of the Elder Scrolls Online OST by comparison.
There are several mounts that were ground-only originally that can now fly, yes. They also still sometimes make mounts you would expect to be ground but can actually also fly
I don’t know if I’ll be put in gamer jail for this, but this has always felt a little too emotional for its context. Why does it sound like Donkey Kong’s up late trying to solve a murder?
Grandia Xtreme battle theme fits as a Grandia track, but I feel like it would feel weird in any other franchise.
It rules so hard.
I think Yuzo Koshiro and the other composer for SOR3 just wrote an album and Sega was like “Hey so we have this game coming out and no music”
There’s a super famicom JoJo game that plays the sickest track when you’re just walking around in the beginning, but it feels a little illegal to be able to control your character while it’s playing.
