By Smeg (Jul 10, 2012) (#76)
The list isn't too terribly surprising. The Guilty Gear series is surprisingly absent, and while I think Baten Kaitos is great, I always had the impression that Valkyrie Profile was Sakuraba's most popular work.
By GoldfishX (Jul 11, 2012) (#77)
Seiken Densetsu 3 is 3 discs of Kikuta in his prime, showing why the old Squaresoft sound team was the unstoppable force that it was at the time. I got the soundtrack as part of a bundle many, many years ago (we're talking 1999) and it just hooked me from the get go. Serious, but not too serious, moody, but still melodic and just totally unique all around. Oddly, while I like Seiken 2, I've never been able to muster up the same enthusiasm for it (never played Secret of Mana). And I've always found Soukaigi to be a little overrated.
Good list. When I remember to put my picks in, hopefully will skew it a bit. :p
By Judgment Day (Jul 11, 2012) (#78)
Smeg wrote:
The list isn't too terribly surprising. The Guilty Gear series is surprisingly absent, and while I think Baten Kaitos is great, I always had the impression that Valkyrie Profile was Sakuraba's most popular work.
Guilty Gear was always a good musical series, though I haven't looked or bought anything past Isuka. I think their best was around Guilty Gear X and shortly after. In a world where most soundtracks have a few hit or miss track selections, Guilty Gear X had almost no misses. They upgraded that soundtrack in their sequel (minus Character Selections and what not) which eventually became GGXX...that's generally the most coveted one, but I prefer GGX. Kinda like comparing Hell Frozen Over (which I like better) vs I Won't Do What You Tell Me if anyone's into wrestling. The original Guilty Gear should never be overlooked either.
By GoldfishX (Jul 11, 2012) (#79)
The only thing you're missing past Isuka is the Korean Guilty Gear XX#Reload soundtrack, which is way different from the regular series, but still really good (and easily the best produced GG album...tbh, it's one of the best metal albums I've come across, in terms of production).
The original GG soundtrack is still my favorite. It has some minor issues that make it sound thin (no doubt it's using compressed music that fit on the game disc), but the best performance overall of Ishiwatari's melodies. Both GGX Heavy Rock Tracks and the XX Soundtrack have nasty production issues, enough that I didn't vote for either of them in this poll. XX is a loudness war victim and is clipped pretty nastily. It's loud, but it's missing impact (and that main synth is annoying as hell). X is mixed really poorly with everything squashed into the midrange, the rhythm guitars absolutely crushed by the lead. The actual performance is better than XX, but...yeah.
There is BlazBlue music, which is the spiritual successor to Guilty, but I swear there's no low end to any of it and it just gives me a headache whenever I attempt to listen to it.
By Smeg (Jul 12, 2012) (#80)
#Reload Korean is amazing. I prefer GGXX to GGX for the live drums, but some of the older arrangements are still better. Isuka and BlazBlue both failed to make any impression upon me at all.
By Judgment Day (Jul 12, 2012) (#81)
I actually have Guilty Gear XX#Reload; I'm assuming that came out before Isuka. Meanwhile, yeah, those Heavy Rock Tracks and GGXX in general are a little on the loud side, and unnecessarily so.
The thing I didn't like about GGXX OST compared to GGX OST was that Arc System really should've made original tracks since GGXX was more of a true sequel versus the 8000 upgrades it received after its initial success. Plus, I think they abandoned a lot of variety tracks from X OST and basically rocked out on all of it, which in my opinion was a downgrade from the GGX incarnations of themes like Potemkin and Faust. And I get that Guilty has a ton of rock references, but I don't think they needed to go that route full blast.
Funny thing about GGXX is that it first arrived in the US market in an arcade format over at the old UCLA X-Cape Arcade in a well known Video Fighting Game Tournament called Evolution literally almost 10 years ago. Me and a friend saw the installation and played the game to test after everything was set up. So technically were the among the first to play that game in the US. My sparring partner got WAY better than me over time though.
Last edited by Judgment Day (Jul 12, 2012)
By GoldfishX (Jul 12, 2012) (#82)
Judgement, I've been following Evo forever. I almost wanted to go to the one last week, but I didn't have any seeding points for Marvel, so I didn't want to travel cross-coast to end up in a pool with a killer. They need to bring back Guilty Gear to Evo. Hopefully with the upcoming version for Live/PSN, the game will get another shot (BlazBlue scene is mostly dead, I can't say I think that's a bad thing). Accent Core was such a great step up for the series.
And yes, I agree...I think what you're trying to say is earlier Guilty Gear is more dynamic (louder and quieter parts), while XX music was full blast all the time. One reason I never liked the XX version of Dizzy or Testament's themes. Like I said, it rocks hard, but it clips, so it is loud all over the place, which makes it more fatiguing than energetic (as compared to a more contained loud...if that makes sense).
In general, I used to love fighting game music, but while I've been playing the games more recently, I haven't found the soundtracks anything worth writing home about. Street Fighter X Tekken...heh, they didn't even TRY with that one.
By vert1 (Aug 22, 2012) (#83)
I don't understand how Silent Hill 4 is on the list but no Silent Hill 2. How did that happen?
It's weird to see so many JRPGs listed and not see Super Mario RPG, Tenchi Sozo, and Breath of Fire. I also am surprised that no Donkey Kong Country soundtrack made the cut. And I don't get the love affair with Pink Sweets soundtrack. You figure people who are into the techno on that would at least have gotten Streets of Rage 2 into this list. That's one genre we can see clearly from the list that is not highly ranked by people here. It looks like it's pretty much all snes sound chip music, choir/strings/orchestral, or rock music. Why no one ranks Ibara's soundtrack or a Phantasy Star Collection: Sound Collection for you rockers? Why no Wander and the Colossus Original Soundtrack: Roar of the Earth for you orchestral music aficionados? o_o!?
edit: I don't mean to sound negative here. I take the list and people's submissions as ways of finding good soundtracks I haven't listened to than some absolute order. Writeups for soundtracks like what Jodo Kast did are very helpful for me (I just bought Snatcher Zoom Tracks off yahoo japan auction) and should be done by everyone (including myself). I just am a bit confused with the how things ended.
Last edited by vert1 (Aug 26, 2012)
By vert1 (May 10, 2013) (#84)
Wait a second. We all forgot about Axelay. REDO!!