Star Ocean 1's Time Travel

You know what’s pointless about Star Ocean 1?

...Besides just Star Ocean 1, as a whole, that is.

What’s pointless about Star Ocean 1 is its inclusion of time travel into its narrative.  What purpose does it serve?  What does it accomplish?  What is it about involving time travel in SO1 that improves or deepens the course of its events, opens new opportunities for storytelling, adjusts it in some way that has a positive or at least significant effect?  Why is it there?

I mean, SO1 already is about a Star Trek Federation-esque away mission on an RPG fantasy planet.  There is thus already a substantial technological difference between the space-faring futuristic Earth that Captain Ronyx and his first officer Ilia are from, and the standard RPG magic-using fantasy world that they find themselves involved with here.  This isn’t like their mission was on some advanced sci-fi planet and suddenly they find themselves in its distant, medieval-ish past--the main setting for the game is already centuries and centuries behind Ronyx and Ilia’s cultural standard, so in terms of the star-faring science fiction basis that Star Ocean 1 shamelessly lies about possessing, the time travel angle is redundant; the time period gap between future Earth and fantasy world Roak already exists in as great a capacity as it can without dialing things back to Stone Age settings.

Nor is the second most obvious possible use for the time travel accomplished: focusing on the gap between standard, present-day Roak, and its past.  What I mean by this is, well, if you take the science fiction angle out altogether (which Star Ocean 1 almost does on its own anyway), then the most obvious use for the characters traveling to Roak’s past is to set up a contrast between Present Roak and Past Roak, and/or to make use of elements of Roak’s past in a way the story needs, and/or to make a plot point of the changes to Present Roak caused by altering Past Roak. But none of this is accomplished successfully, either.

See, the problem is, so much of Star Ocean 1 takes place on Roak’s past, that it completely nullifies the ability of the time travel to have any meaning.  Not only does there not really seem to be much noticeable difference to the audience between the settings of Present Roak and Past Roak--much like in Tales of Phantasia, the standards of civilization between time periods seem almost interchangeable--but, more importantly, we don’t get enough exposure to Present Roak to form the expertise or attachment to know or care about the differences.  Star Ocean 1 spends almost as little time on planet Roak during the present as it does on anything related to the science fiction premise that it and its sequel falsely promise--at least 95% of this game is spent in Past Roak.  We don’t know enough about present-day Roak for the fact that we’re now in its past to matter to us, particularly not when its past is not especially different in appearance from what tiny snippet we saw of its present anyway.

And that gets in the way of the other 2 potential uses of the time travel in relation to Roak, too.  First of all, making use of the elements of the planet’s past can’t be done in a way that has any meaning to us, the audience, because from our perspective, the time period we spend all but 5% of the game in IS the standard time period.  Like...imagine you were an alien who knew nothing of Earth’s history.  Now imagine you land on Earth during the Renaissance, but only spend 5 minutes there before going back in time to the heyday of the Roman Empire, and then you spent a month traveling all about the city and through its territories.  Would you encounter all kinds of monumental figures, groups, landmarks, and objects of tremendous cultural significance to the people and culture of Earth that you initially encountered (the Renaissance)?  Yes, of course.  But would you have any capacity to recognize this, to realize the importance of these figures and icons of a culture that would be such a founding part of the modern day (Renaissance) life on Earth?  No!  Because you were only on Earth during the Renaissance for 5 minutes, so what importance any of this Roman Empire time period stuff has on the Earth that you initially made contact with is totally lost on you.  Star Ocean 1 doesn’t give you the time in Roak’s present to give you enough context for the major figures of its past to matter to you as you encounter them; you’d react exactly the same to it all as you would have if you’d just started in that time period to begin with.  Likewise, the lack of familiarity with the state of Present Roak means that any concern about altering the present by messing with the past isn’t going to enter your mind; you wouldn’t know the difference between 1 version of Present Roak and any other, anyway.

Time travel serves no emotional, character-specific use in the game, either.  If it’s not used for a major, sweeping function like we’ve talked about so far, time travel can be useful as a way of connecting to/expanding/resolving characters’ stories, instead.  The event in which Cornet travels to the past of Kururu’s memories and witnesses her mother’s fate in Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, or the time loop of Avril in Wild Arms 5, are examples of time travel utilized in a personal, character-oriented way.  But none of Star Ocean 1’s present characters have any greater personal connection to the past they travel to than any other given resident of Roak might.  Nothing about their journey to yesterday has more significance to Roddick’s and Millie’s personal development than a standard RPG quest would.

The time travel certainly has no practical purpose as an actional story device, either.  You look at Chrono Trigger, Radiant Historia, The Magic of Scheherazade, AeternoBlade 1 and 2, and various other RPGs that use time travel, and it’s a regular, functioning device.  It’s frequent, because it’s a recurring aspect of the story.  Going to different time periods as they search for ways to save their planet’s future--going to different time periods to even find out that the future needs to be saved--keeps time travel a constant function of Chrono Trigger.  Jumping back and forth between timelines in Radiant Historia, utilizing the tools of causality and gathering the best possible allies regardless of when they lived in The Magic of Scheherazade, rewinding and looping time as a form of power to accomplish Freya’s objectives in the AeternoBlade games, these all mean regular use of time travel, regular justification of its presence in these games.

But Star Ocean 1?  You travel to the past near the beginning of the game, and then you travel back near the game’s end.  That’s it.  It’s not an active storytelling device that’s doing something.  It’s not even as active an element of the game as it is in Tales of Phantasia, and this rant I’m writing originated from a stray thought about how pointless and barely present time travel was in that title.  Namco’s flagship RPG only escaped being the subject of scrutiny today by my remembrance that its Enix-spawned brother failed even worse in this same arena, at around the same time.

So I ask: why bother involving time travel in Star Ocean 1 at all?  What was the point?  If the game’s setting already created exactly the same contrast between the sci-fi premise and the fantasy reality that’s consistently Star Ocean’s blunder, and if the present of the planet isn’t unique enough from its past to draw attention, and we aren’t given enough time in the present to have the context to make the elements of its past noteworthy, and if the time travel itself isn’t a living element of the storytelling...why is the time travel there at all?  Had Ronyx and Ilia landed on Past Roak to begin with, and Roddick and Millie just happened to live in that time period instead, not a single, solitary part of the game’s events, cast, themes, ideas, or substance would have changed in even the slightest way.*  And while I’ve never prescribed too strongly to the infallibility of Chekhov’s Gun--I find the notion rather obnoxious, in fact--I do think that time travel is a major, loaded enough narrative device that if you’re going to use it, you need to be doing so for a reason.













* The same, now that I think about it, can largely be said for the science fiction element of the game, too.  Not quite as much a non-element as the time travel, but still, nixing the faux-Federation altogether would have required very, very little change to be made to the game.  Really, Star Ocean 1 is only a basic, uninspired fantasy RPG adventure, and it just seems like someone clumsily tacked a couple extra things onto to try to sell it as something entirely different.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake's Profanity

When it comes to SquareEnix, there are 2 things that you’ve been able to rely upon for the last 2 decades.  First: if the game was developed by Square, then there will be no human being on the planet who will understand the causes for a product’s success or failure less than the people making every creative decision about its franchise.  Second: if Yoko Taro or Silicon Studios aren’t there to hold SquareEnix’s hand the whole way through, then the English version’s voice acting is going to be at least a couple steps behind the industry’s standard.  Now, admittedly, Final Fantasy 7’s remake seems to have bucked the first of those laws, being the first creation related to Final Fantasy 7 that Square has made since 1997 that is not stupid, pointless crap.  And I’ll have some more to say about that in depth, in future rants.  Today, however, we focus on the fact that the second maxim is still in effect.

FF7R’s voice acting is fine overall, in most cases; wouldn’t say many of its performances stand out at all, but they’re serviceable enough, which is frankly more than you can usually expect from SquareEnix.  I daresay that Aeris’s vocals are, in fact, even good!  And I don’t exactly know why they decided that Biggs was going to be Topper Harley, but as a lifelong Hot Shots! enthusiast, I can’t deny I love Biggs’s voice work.

But these people have got to learn how to cuss, ASAP.

Hearing someone in Final Fantasy 7 Remake curse is embarrassing.  It’s like each and every one of them sees this single word of profanity as their chance to show off what a big kid they are.  It’s like this is their first time with the word.  It’s like they thought they were reading lines for a children’s holiday special and they’re completely thrown off their game by the existence of profanity in the script and are suddenly trying really hard to turn it all around with this 1 word.

No, you know what it’s like?  It’s like a straightedge, shy, suburban middle school kid trying to seem cool and worldly in front of his peers by clumsily, obviously interjecting obscenities into his speech.  It is so awkward that you just desperately want to tell him, “Stop trying to curse; you are just so bad at it.”  I’ve been in that situation before,* and it is remarkably similar to the way that Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and Aeris swear in Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

And no, it’s not a big problem right now (although it’s also not totally innocuous, either; it’s just jarring enough to interrupt immersion a bit and it’s kind of a problem for Barret’s rough-and-tumble attitude).  But let’s not forget that 1 of the cast members of Final Fantasy 7 is Cid Highwind.  

Cid Fucking Highwind.

The deacon of dirty words.  The prophet of profanity.  The Christ of cussing!  He’s like what you’d get if you handed Quentin Tarentino a character’s script to edit and told him “it’s okay to stop holding back for the sake of pretending that you’re artistic.”  If you ran a censorship beep over Cid Highwind’s dialogue, it’d sound like R2-D2 singing scat.

If SquareEnix’s vocal coaches do not learn how the verbalizing of a 4-letter word works, just what is going to happen when the game gets to Rocket Town?  What happens when FF7 Remake’s inability to curse more believably than an Amish adolescent meets the pope of potty mouths?  This has the potential to reach dangerous levels of cringe.  This is a level of embarrassment from the audience that could threaten the world itself.  The act of hearing Cid Highwind’s lines run through the filter of FF7 Remake’s voice acting might very well be enough to collapse the average person into a cringing fetal position, evicting their souls from their earthly bodies in a desperate attempt not to have to process just how stiff and unnatural it sounds.

I beg of you, SquareEnix, for the sake of the lives of hundreds of thousands of players!  Find it within yourselves to relinquish your long-cherished standard of remaining 2 steps behind the rest of your industry in voice acting.  Learn how to say a goddamn swear word, before it’s too late.

















* I’ll leave it to your imagination which side of that painfully clumsy middle school profanity interaction I was on.  But given that I’m some dork in his late 30s still obsessed with RPGs and writing rants on Blogger about them, unironically, you probably won’t have too much trouble guessing.

General RPG Music Lists 2: Hither, Thither, and Song

Well, now that we've broken in this little series with the first type of music you hear most in an RPG (battle themes), let's move along to the second: environmental tunes!  These are the songs that play the role of establishing the various settings you travel through in an RPG.  From dungeons to caves to forests to sewers to trippy and yet somehow, by this point, extremely mundane crystalline structures built within the open, shimmering cosmos, Setting music can be found everywhere, and its single, inestimably important job for the game's atmosphere is to establish the hell out of whatever place you're traipsing through and maintain the mood called for by the game's events.  This is the only kind of music you may hear about as much as Battle music, but while Battle music usually only needs 3 - 5 different ditties to cover all its bases, Setting Music has to be as numerous and diverse in its offerings as the game's own locales.

Which means we're kinda in for a long one, today.  To make it a bit more fun, though, let's make a little adventure of it, and join a sight-seeing tour as we follow a generic RPG party as they make their way through their quest.

Note: I do not in any way care about what the actual name of any of these tracks is. I organize the songs I listen to by their function, essentially what I'll remember them for. So if you really love the Phantasy Zenyth 43.277 song, "Tranquil Splendor of the Green Dream (Your Throat's Filled with Spiders Refrain)", which played in forest areas, then just assume that I call it Phantasy Zenyth 43.277 Forest, as that's the game of origin and its actual function.

Also Note: This wasn't an issue last time, in which every category had at least 1 A+ song, but going forward, if a musical category doesn't have any residents that quite meet the A+ criteria, then I'll just instead say my piece about my personal favorite of the lot.



Well, we've been thrown into the thick of things right off the bat.  But hey, learn by doing, right?  How lucky for our protagonist Hiro Gai that he happens to live not 2 miles away from the world's only tutorial dungeon!  Ooh and aah as he learns, for the first time in his 16 years of life, what the concepts of "Attack" and "Defend" are, and discovers that his every earthly action is governed by a duo of mighty goddesses known as "A Button" and "Direction Pad."

DUNGEON

How else could we start our melodic world tour for this genre, if not with 1 of the titular halves of that which ultimately all game RPGs trace their ancestry back to, Dungeons and Dragons?  Plenty of games besides our imaginary one here outright begin in a dungeon (Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Jack's scenario in Wild Arms 1, etc), and even if a game doesn't, it's a pretty safe bet that it'll at least be heading into 1 soon.  Abandoned temples of non-specified worship, ancient civilizations' ruins, labyrinths, towers, actual dungeons, and just any hostile man-made environment a little too generic to be called anything else, the Dungeon is the foundation upon which exploration and adventures are created.

As a result, I don't really have many thoughts about the guidelines for this particular style of music.  Generally, of course, a song is going to fit the bill if it gives the feeling of a dark, perhaps creepy, perhaps wistful, perhaps archeological building, but quite often, a dungeon's more defined by its presence in the narrative (an enemy's stronghold to be conquered, a resting place for a revered legacy, etc) than by its own inherent qualities, so this kind of music tends to go all over the place in terms of mood.

B+
- Phantasy Star 4 Air Castle

A-
- Ara Fell Hidden Ruins
- Izuna 2 Wind Corridor
- Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Enigma
- Skies of Arcadia Ancient Temple
- Skies of Arcadia Valuan Base
- Wild Arms 1 Dungeon
- Wild Arms 2 Dungeon
- Xenoblade Chronicles 1 Agniratha
- Ys 1 Dungeon

A
- Atelier Iris 1 Iris's Resting Place
- Secret of Evermore Hall of Collosia
- Secret of Evermore Ivor Tower Maze
- Xenogears Dungeon
- Ys 1 Shrine

A+
- Pier Solar and the Great Architects Garden Ruins
In addition to providing possibly the greatest boss battle music in RPG history, Pier Solar and the Great Architects gifts the player with this beautiful tune that perfectly captures the ancient, wistful loss within the ruins of a small pocket of an erased history  Just truly, utterly beautiful!

- Shadow Hearts 2 Neam Ruins
A lovely theme to go with exploring the sacred, undisturbed ruins of antiquity.  Not much I can say about this one, honestly; it's just really, really pretty.



There's more to dungeons than just stone walls and a monster-based ecosystem whose food chain dynamics are frankly baffling.  If you possess a sharp eye, an agile wit, a hearty helping of perseverance and luck, or, as our esteemed Mr. Gai here, a strategy guide from a higher plane of existence, you might just find your way into special caches within a dungeon filled with treasures beyond your wildest dreams!  As long as your imagination has difficulty conjuring up much more than $40 and a Potion, that is.

TREASURE ROOM

Vaults, caches, secret stashes, the Treasure Room music is an uncommon, but not unknown, tune meant to depict a single spot that's difficult to access and exists for the sole purpose of rewarding you for finding it.  While it does occasionally have an actual role in a game's events, such as Chrono Trigger's sealed rooms in 2300 AD relating back to the Kingdom of Zeal, this is generally more of a gameplay thing.  Most RPGs don't feel the need to bother with a whole other song just for a room designed to be ransacked, but a decent number do.  Hell, with the Millennium series proudly promoting their secret rooms as a signature feature, they'd better have a separate tune for them.

Treasure Room music doesn't really have any rules that I can think of.  A pleasant, upbeat song like the Millennium series uses would seem like the most obvious go-to, but at the same time, a calmer, more serene offering can better convey the idea that this is an untouched secret of the ages you've uncovered.  And of course, a plot-related Treasure Room has to work within its context.  So it can kind of go all over the place, in terms of musical style.

B+
- Startropics 1 Treasure Room

A-

A
- Chrono Trigger Sealed Door
- Mass Effect 2 Hock's Vault
This song does a great job of conveying the secret heist aspect of Kasumi's Loyalty Mission as you make your way stealthily through that jackass Hock's private collection of priceless artifacts.  I really like the cool, sleek gravity of the song; it may be more of a situational Treasure Room theme, but it's still my favorite.

A+



Having successfully made it to the heart of the dungeon and retrieved its treasures, which somehow have remained undisturbed for the last 1000 years in spite of being located within 5 miles of a thriving city, and protected by the demonstrably weakest monsters on this planet and a single logic puzzle so simple that an iguana might consider it an insult to her intelligence, Hiro Gai now returns to his hometown.  Get your cameras ready, folks, you won't want to miss getting a shot of him getting congratulated by his lifelong pal, Ves Frennd, for his success, and berated by their mutual acquaintance, Lah Vinteress, for putting himself in danger.  Remember, we're observers only, so restrain your instinct to point out to her that the "danger" he faced was basically just him bullying some slimes and imps who literally couldn't hurt a bunny rabbit on their best day.

TOWN

Towns, villages, cities, metropolises, even just a friendly camp of nomads, sooner or later in an RPG, you're gonna be headed to a settlement for supplies, new weapons, new quests, or a 3 second go at an inn bed.  If it's not the first setting within an RPG, there's something like a 90% chance that it'll be the second, and Town music is there to...well, usually to suck, honestly.  I've already spoken my piece about Town music before, and the likely difficulties that Town music represents for a composer, so no need to repeat myself.  But every now and then, you happen across an RPG composer that accomplishes the impossible, and actually creates a generic village tune that's enjoyable to listen to!  Here's what I've found.

B+

A-
- Legaia 1 Town
- Wild Arms 1 Town
This is a catchy one, managing to combine the desired feeling of civilization's safety, the bustle of everyday village life, and a genuinely enjoyable tune, all into 1.  This is the Town theme that other games should aspire to mimic.

A

A+



With their first conversation in our presence having thoroughly established Ves as an affable buddy archetype and Lah as defined entirely by her ownership of a vagina, it is Hiro's priority now--as it will be for every town he visits--to peruse the local supply retailers for new equipment and healing items.  Go ahead and follow him in, folks, and don't forget: while Hiro makes his purchases, you can make your own from our souvenir vendors, and pick up a great reminder of our tour today!  Equip yourself with an "I Found 100 Golden Spiders, and All I Got was a Big Rupee and This Lousy T-Shirt" while supplies last!

SHOP

This one's easy.  Shop music plays at locations devoted to buying stuff.  Weapons, curatives, spells, class changes, armors, survival tools, maps, food, toys, just actual garbage...the merchandise may vary greatly, but the specifics of the location don't.  Shop music is for shops.

Shop music tends to be upbeat and active, but inoffensively so, kind of just a variation of elevator music.  As such, it rarely stands out--for every 1 Junes jingle (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4), there's at least 100 Shop songs that you'll never, ever remember or care about.  It can up the ante and get a little more aggressive in its capitalistic themes, of course, but at that point, it usually starts getting repetitive and annoying--probably the most essential, perfect representation of Shop music, to me, is that of The Magic of Scheherazade, and I fucking hate that thing.

B+

A-
- Rakuen Midnight Tea Shop
Unsurprisingly, the 1 and only great Shop music I've encountered is A, a creation of Laura Shigihara, and B, really just not like Shop music at all anyway.  Good, appropriate theme for a tea shop in a fantasy land, though...quiet, pleasing, reflective.

A

A+



Once he's finished single-handedly propping up the local economy, Hiro's next stop in town will inevitably be the local church, where he'll give a run-down of everything he's done lately to the local priest.  You may remember that glowing cube we saw him touch at the beginning of our tour, in the dungeons?  That's right, the one that grants him immortality, as long as God doesn't lose his soul's memory card.  Well, due to a fascinating natural phenomenon that scientists call "arbitrary time-wasting bullshit," there are no glowing cubes to be found in human settlements, so Hiro has to check in with the local clergy to achieve this same saving effect.

Now don't worry, tour-goers, we'll be continuing along very soon.  If you thought Hiro didn't waste time with his sleeping habits back at the inn, wait 'til you see him summarize every detail of the last few days of a journey packed with world-changing events and personal revelations.  We'll be out of here in another 15 seconds, tops.

PLACE OF WORSHIP

Cathedrals, synagogues, churches, mosques, temples...the Place of Worship music is that which plays for a religious building that's in active use within the community (unlike the more numerous abandoned temples within the purview of Dungeon music).  The stereotypical organ piping a dragging, dreary ditty of divinity is generally what you can expect here, which makes Place of Worship music yet another type of RPG song that tends to be boring and same-y.  Yeah, I'm sure it makes me both a philistine and a heretic, but church hymns and organ music sounds, to me, even less distinct from 1 to the next than John Williams's works, and unlike Williams's single song reiterated hundreds of times, this one wasn't enjoyable to start with.  And to take a break from bashing my own religion's musical trends, even the pieces for this RPG setting that try something other than halfheartedly imitating church hymns tend to be kind of meandering and dull.  Still, it's not impossible to pull off a quality Place of Worship song, as what's below proves.

B+

A-
- Dragon Quest 8 Savella Cathedral
- Final Fantasy Mystic Quest Shrine
It's repetitive, sure, and pretty simple, but this is still a really pretty piece, and decently soothing.  Good music to relax to.

A

A+



Well, it looks like our intrepid young Hiro Gai has been summoned to the castle for an audience with the king!  Shall we see what His Majesty wants from our adventurer?  Go ahead, everyone, walk on in--you'll find during this tour that the strong majority of kings have an open door policy for any random citizen who wanders by, and the 2 guards at any and every castle gate are largely decorative.

CASTLE

As well as fortresses, keeps, and so on.  Castle music refers to strongholds filled with soldiers and, usually, the royalty who rules the land.  Well, the ones belonging to good guys or neutral parties, that is--enemy HQs are a different matter.  Castle music tends to involve a lot of bluster and fanfare (trumpets figure heavily into this category), as they're most of the time trying to impart a sense of the military might and/or the supposed glory and right to rule belonging to the aristocracy.  As such, this is another category that doesn't have a whole lot of really great tunes, because the message it's trying convey is usually pretty straightforward and surface-level.  Still, it beats the theme of "RETAIL SURE IS FUN BOY-HOWDY" at least, and every now and then a castle's got a story to tell through its music that can be pretty neat.

B+
- Sailor Moon: Another Story Castle

A-
- Legend of Dragoon Castle

A
- Suikoden 1 Dragon Fortress (Link avoids unnecessary intro)
Classic, elegant, and almost mournful; I don't know how a lovely, elegant piece like this got paired to a fortress of people who raise dragons, but I love it.

A+



Oh, no!  It looks like during the span of that single, 7-text-box-long conversation with the king, Lah has been kidnapped by the underground-dwelling Glorblucks, and brought all the way into the very heart of their territory!  Good thing Ves was there to witness it and let Hiro know.  Bunch up your pant legs as high as they'll go and prepare to get a lot less attached to your current footwear, folks, because we're following Hiro and Ves on their rescue mission into the sewers!

RPG Land Tours would like to take this opportunity to remind all our valued clients that we have a firm no-refunds policy.

SEWERS

Sewers are a bit of a head-scratcher, as RPGs go.  First of all, while they aren't as frequent as, say, caves, forests, and mountains, they're still way more common a setting for an RPG to visit than seems realistic.  I mean, besides settings like under the sea, outer space, and entire other dimensions, sewers are probably 1 of the places that you may visit in a game, yet will never enter in real life--and unlike places like the bottom of the ocean and orbit, it's not so much physical and logistical barriers keeping you out so much as it is personal choice.  They are, as Jontron once said, the farthest from plain sight that anything in a society is.  Yet somehow, it seems like 1 in 3 adventuring parties are going to have some reason to go traipsing about in them.

The other puzzler about sewers is the music.  Sewer music is peppy.  It's upbeat!  Sewer music more often than not is having a good time.  Sometimes it's a quirky, cutesy little theme implying some sort of tip-toeing mini-adventure, like in Chrono Trigger, sometimes it's pumped up and ready for hearty adventure, as with Lunar 1, and sometimes, such as Romancing SaGa 1's Sewer theme, it's got the feeling of a carefree day at a goddamn water park.  I don't know if maybe the majority of composers in Japan were just really wowed by the bonus stages in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games from the 90s, but only like 25% of the time do you find a piece of Sewer music that is even close to having enough seriousness to be an accurate mood music for a period of time in which you're stomping through thousands of human beings' piss and shit.

Still, I suppose the only reason I've got any entries for Sewer music below is because of the wildly incorrect mood this genre shoots for, so I can't complain.

B+

A-
- Lunar 1 Sewers
- Ys 2 Sewers

A
- Romancing SaGa 1 Sewers
Whoever composed this piece may have been under the impression that traversing sewers is less about trudging through fecal catacombs and more like an unending water slide, but damn it if it isn't fun, even a little emboldening to listen to.

A+



What better time could there be to take advantage of the amenities the king has provided for Hiro Gai and his allies than now, when he needs a shower more than any other time in his life?  With Lah Vinteress lying on the couch recuperating, Ves Frennd studying their maps, and Hiro making full use of the facilities, we've got an opportunity to take a look around this building that the king has designated as Hiro's headquarters, and take a little rest ourselves.

Once Hiro's done and he and his friends are on their way, we can all take turns in the shower after our sewer ordeal, too.  Not to worry, we won't get in Hiro's hair--in spite of the fact that he'll spend 5 cumulative hours of his total quest time specifically dedicated to pursuing a complete collection of decorative furnishings for it, he's only going to actually visit this place about 4 times, for less than 10 minutes each.  We could honestly make a case for squatter's rights if we wanted.

HEADQUARTERS

The headquarters is the home where a protagonist would hang his hat, if he ever unequipped it.  It can take a variety of forms.  It could be a home, a mansion, an extra-dimensional pocket space, a mobile fortress, a dorm, a town (sometimes stationary, sometimes mobile), a castle, a room at an inn, a spaceship, or something else entirely.  Whatever form it takes, though, there's a 90% chance that you can customize it to some degree, from furniture to wall decals to recruitable occupants.  From Breath of Fire 2's Township to Pathfinder: Kingmaker's capital, from Baldur's Gate 2's stronghold to the Suikoden series's castles, from the room in Sweet Lily Dreams to the Railroad's HQ in Fallout 4, headquarters are favorite features of RPGs new and old, Indie and mainstream, on both sides of the ocean.  The idea is that this is both a safe haven, and a base in which the heroes plan their next move, and from which they launch their operations.  In this regard, although a home can easily qualify, it's not the same as just where the protagonist lives, as "home" tends to be a place left behind quite early in an adventure.

Headquarters music can have a wide functionality, depending on the kind of base it's meant to be and the kind of story it's in.  The music can be boisterous and encouraging for a military base in a game mostly about large-scale conflicts, quiet and intimate for a personal home in a personal story, mildly upbeat for a room whose purpose is mostly in its customization, quiet and frantic in a headquarters for a group at constant work to defy incredible odds...Headquarters music is highly malleable, in much the same way and for many of the same reasons as Specific Town music (see below).

B+
- Deus Ex 4 Headquarters

A-
- Wild Arms 2 Valeria Chateau

A
- Dragon Age 2 Home
This is a really thoughtful and carefully-made piece, I think.  It deftly captures the comfortable, familiar feeling of being in one's home, perhaps sitting in front of the fireplace on a quiet evening...and yet, it also has a distinct, inescapable loneliness to it, capturing the loss that Hawke has suffered through the course of Dragon Age 2.  She lives within the rightful home of her family, and yet that only underscores the fact that her family is broken...her parents and brother dead, her sister taken from her.  Somehow, this song manages to capture both the comfortable, secure familiarity of the home she won, and the haunting weight of her loss of the people that it was all for.

A+



And we're off!  Now that Lah has fully recovered, she and Ves have joined our intrepid Hiro Gai as he ventures forth on his quest from the king to save the world!  And we'll be along for every step of the way!

And what better way to introduce Hiro and ourselves to the wonders and joys of this grand, remarkable world of adventure than a long, largely unremarkable set of plains almost indistinguishable from each other?  Nothing grabs the attention of a fresh expedition more than an uninterrupted sea of monochromatic grass!  Keep those cameras ready, everyone, you won't want to miss all the nothing we're going to be seeing for the next few hours!

FIELD

Plains, certain valleys, grasslands, rolling hills, prairies, and the like, the Field music is meant to accompany a sustained trek through expanses of easy territory.  The mood of the Field is generally one of a brisk, eager pace, adventure while the adventure's still young enough to have novelty, in which the terrain doesn't offer much to challenge a traveler (monsters notwithstanding), and the plot is in transition from 1 moment of importance to the next.

Which does not, in truth, lend itself very well to stirring, memorable music.  In terms of where Field music generally sits in an RPG's story as a whole, it's kinda like asking something great from the part of your daily routine that's you leaving the house and walking to your car.  Still, a few games have managed to do something pretty cool with this setting.

B+
- Anodyne Field
- Lagoon Hobbit Valley

A-
- Ys 1 Field
I like this song for its energy.  It's got some depth, not just a single mood the whole time, but generally it's a great, peppy piece that you can feel the act of marching forth to, full speed ahead, through the hills and dales, sword swinging all the way to beat back the various beasts looking to make you a meal (which means this song's gotta work extra hard, since in Ys 1 you don't so much swing a sword at enemies as you do slam yourself bodily into them and hope that you rate higher on the Mohs Scale than they do).

A

A+



With the rollicking plains behind them, our heroes have arrived at their first ecosystem of actual interest: the dark, dank, damp jungle!  Hiro and his friends will need to pass through this dense tropical forest if they want to make it to the distant city of Plotsburg in time to save the world!

Please make sure to watch your step, stay on the path, and keep your hands to yourselves, folks.  While Hiro will somehow never face anything more dangerous than some monsters slightly stronger than the ones in the last area, we're not so lucky to have the narrative's divine favor ourselves, so for us, this is just the normal kind of jungle, where every single thing in it is toxic, predatory, or both, and wants desperately to kill us.

JUNGLE

Jungle music has it tough.  As a general rule, it's expected to portray a full, vibrant array of natural life, but that which is so busily, actively at work that you don't get the chance for the sweet, quiet beauty that Forest music (see below) enjoys.  Adding to that is another obstacle: the instruments that Jungle music seems to be expected to mostly restrict itself to (for some reason) tends to be stuff that we associate with less technologically advanced tribes--basic percussion, some reeds, and so on.  And there's nothing wrong with those, of course, but they have a tough time coming up with a really compelling tune by themselves.  Small wonder that a lot of RPGs just flake on themes for their jungle settings and go with a bunch of ambient sounds of insects and rustling shrubbery and such, rather than an actual piece of music.  The situation being what it is, I have yet to encounter Jungle music that meets my standards in RPGs.  That's not to say it can't be done, but so far it's only been Super Metroid and the bronies who have managed this feat.  Hopefully, however, I'll someday have something to put into this category.

B+

A-

A

A+



Having navigated their way through the dense jungles with the timely help of their newest party member, Mid D'laydge, and his skills with inexplicably anachronistic firearms, our party of adventurers now enter a cavern said to be the only way of passing through to the next territory on the journey.  If you look to your left, you'll see 1 of the more spectacular landmarks of the RPG cave, a pile of guano!  And if you look to your right, you'll see Mid struggling against every instinct he has to shoot Hiro and Ves in the back of their heads as they crack yet another joke about how washed-up and broken he is at the ripe old age of 28.

CAVE

You may not actually encounter an outright Dungeon.  The suite of locales you find yourself visiting may be missing a Forest, a Field, a Mountain, a Sewer, or any of the other usual suspects of the RPG setting.  You may never show up at a Town with its own unique theme.  But 1 thing's for damn certain: if you're playing an RPG, you're gonna go spelunking sooner or later.

Caverns, mines, tunnels, the Cave music covers all those holes in the walls and floors of nature that you're inevitably gonna grope your way through during an RPG's course.  The name of the game here is darkness and literal depth: the Cave song should make it clear that you're deep within the organic hollows of stone and earth, working your way through the stalactites and stalagmites of a solitary subterrany.  You might think that this wouldn't lend itself well to very appealing music, but honestly, the solitude, and the fact that cave locations often possess the beauty of crystals and/or the serenity of slow or pooled water, gives this type of music a surprisingly decent rate of success at beauty.

B+
- Startropics 1 Cave

A-
- Arc the Lad 4 and 5 Cave
- Final Fantasy Mystic Quest Cave
- Ys 2 Cavern of Rasteenie

A
- Ara Fell Cave
- Final Fantasy 4 Cave
- Final Fantasy 5 Cave
- Final Fantasy 8 Cave
- Neverwinter Nights 2 Crystal Cave
- Rakuen Morizora's Cave

A+
- Xenosaga 3 Mine
Beautiful, soulful, and elegant.  The echo and depth clearly establishes it as Cave music, and everything else defines it as the shining, golden standard of the level of beautiful tranquility that the depths of the Earth can impart to us.



The cave's led all the way to the middle of the mountain range separating the previous kingdom from the next.  Looks like the next part of our heroes' journey is going to be scaling these lofty peaks.  Why, you might ask?  Well, as 1 great adventurer once put it, "Because it is there!"

You may notice that this is also the rationale behind about 80% of all of Hiro's actions, in fact.

MOUNTAIN

Cliffs, peaks, summits, volcanoes, and all that jazz, Mountain music is there for all your background needs when it comes to scaling very high pieces of rock.  Or, for that matter, going through them--while Cave music is its own thing, plenty of mountain areas in RPGs contain quite a few cave systems of their own, but since they're attached to the larger land form, they just share the same theme as the outside of the mountain.  Mountain music, like Field music, is often given to a feeling of energy and adventure, except to a more intense degree, since climbing narrow trails along cliff edges, scaling craggy walls of stone, and running through caverns with lava pooling around here and there is all a far greater adventuring exertion than just frolicking through a meadow.  Basically, if the adventurous nature of Field music is what you listen to on a pleasant morning jog, Mountain music is what you listen to during an actual workout at the gym.  As such, it's got a much better success rate at creating great tracks, being more committed and all-in on what it's doing.  The mountain is the boss battle of settings, and it's got music to back that up.

B+
- Crystalis Mount Sabre
- Final Fantasy 9 Volcano
- Pokemon Generation 4 Mount Coronet

A-
- Anodyne Cliffs
- Chrono Cross Fossil Valley
- Suikoden Tierkreis Mount Svatgol
- Terranigma Mountains

A
- Dragon Fantasy 2 Dragon's Horn Mountain
For a lighthearted homage to old-school RPGs, DF2 sure has a great and engrossing soundtrack.  A lot more piano-y than you'd expect for music about ascending a mountain, but this piece still works as an accompaniment to a marathon trek up and down a perilous peak, and it's got a really cool blend of sounds, both smooth and pleasingly choppy in turns.

A+



Well, would you look at that!  Hiro and company went so far up the mountain that they climbed right up into the sky!  How fortuitous; being able to run and hop along the top of the clouds will let them get where they're going in a jiffy!

Go ahead and follow along, folks, nothing to be worried about.  These clouds are as solid as any ground you'll find down below--more than some, in fact!  You're going to find that basic laws of physics tend to take a backseat to the laws of what looks cool, in Hiro's world.

SKY

Whether you're wandering around a floating temple, trekking through a passage of unusually tangible clouds, or just doing something so mundane as plain old flying, an RPG is sometimes going to need Sky music to remind you, as though you could forget, that you're hanging out in the stratosphere.  It'll typically be music that feels exciting and freeing, connected as it is with the idea of flying and escaping the bonds of gravity.

B+

A-
- Baten Kaitos 2 Diadem Cloud Passage
It's cool, fun, and keeps your energy up for running through the clouds.  What's not to like?

- Romancing Saga 1 Trials of Elore

A

A+



Now isn't this typical?  The weatherman never said anything about precipitation today!  But then, these meteorologists never bother considering whether or not some group of heroes is going to be running across the tops of clouds for miles, then using an ancient magical device to transform themselves into snowflakes so they can drift down from the skies safely to the ground.  Can you believe these weather quacks go to college for this stuff, and can still overlook something so obvious?

At any rate, now that they're back on solid ground, it's time for Hiro and his friends to continue their quest.  Be sure to take in the pristine beauty of nature as we go: the snow-capped hills, the frozen rivers, and the solemn, adamant determination of Lah Vinteress to die of exposure before she'd ever change into something less flattering.

COLD

Most of the time we think of settings in terms of just the Where, and that's because that's usually the major, substantial quality of them...but there are settings that are defined by How, too.  It's the latter that we're interested in, here, for there's a significant category of setting music for RPGs that's based on the quality of a place, rather than its actual location: Cold music.  This is the kind of tune that plays for locations blanketed under snow, or frozen with ice.  The actual geographical location can vary--you're as likely to find Cold music playing in an iced-up cave as you are a snow-capped forest or a stretch of plains in the midst of a blizzard--but the general approach for the song is the same: make the place feel cold.  That may mean a song that calls to mind rushing wind and struggling steps through freezing flurries, a soft and serene song invoking the pure and simple beauty of fresh-fallen snow, or a chiming, echoing song conveying the still artistry of a place glazed with sparkling ice.  Either way, Cold music is out to define an environment by its temperature more than its more tangible qualities, and the result can sometimes be lovely.

B+
- Borderlands 2 Frost Bottom
- Octopath Traveler 1 Frostlands

A-
- Alundra 1 Kline's Nightmare
- Final Fantasy 10 Mount Gagazet
- RPG Maker Snow (I first heard this in and associate it with a Cold area in the Laxius Force trilogy)
- Skies of Arcadia Ice Dungeon
- Ys 2 Ice Ridge of Noltia

A
- Dragon Fantasy 2 Snow
- Millennium Series Snowy Mountain
- Okage: Shadow King Pospos Snowfield

A+
- Secret of Mana Ice Country  (Could only find an extended version)
This song holds a special place in my heart as the first game tune to convince my mother, so many years ago, that video game music could be legitimate, that it had the potential to get great and to be beautiful.  Even without that fond place in my heart, though, I think it's still safe to say that this is an objectively lovely, elegant song that sublimely portrays the crystalline forest and snow-dusted clearings it was created for.



Out of the snowy region and back to more temperate environs, we now follow our heroes as they come to a quiet bend of river.  Well, we've made good time this morning, and we're all probably a little tired from the trek.  What do you say we take a moment to rest and relax?  If you've packed a lunch or a picnic, feel free to dig in, or take a nap.  True, there's no nearby town, no roadside lodging, no wayfarers' camp or traveling quest-giving salesmen, but mark my words, Hiro Gai is going to put his journey to save the world on hold here for at least a few hours. 

How do I know?  Well, you see, as a tour guide, I've been trained to pick up on certain geographical clues for predicting protagonist behavior.  Do you see that small corner of the river, where that 1 fish keeps leaping out of the water over and over?  That's what we in the business call a "Fishing Spot," and if I know my heroes, Mr. Gai is going to delay the world's salvation until he's minigame'd himself a complete collection of every indigenous ichthyoid in this whole region.  Get comfy, folks, we're gonna be here a while.

FRESHWATER

Rivers, ponds, lakes, streams, waterfalls, creeks, estuaries, and so on; Freshwater music depicts water, whether bodies or in motion, in land-locked settings.  As far as RPGs go, water settings tend to have a much stronger musical presence in a game's events when they're ocean-related; running and stationary freshwater areas frequently share their music with other generic areas (typically Field or Forest music), rather than get their own.  Still, non-saltwater settings have their own atmosphere which merits some musical representation, too.  Freshwater music tends to be either A, peaceful, tranquil in a comfortable, warm way, even as it maintains a musical flow that represents the movements of water, or B, energetic and playful, meant to form a mental picture of navigating river rapids and such, often through the application of annoying minigames.

B+

A-
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles River Belle Path
- Tales of the Abyss River
It's calm, slow, and pretty, but at the same time, has just that hint of waning energy.  This song makes me visualize a sunny afternoon spent on the banks of a slow, steady creek, fishing and enjoying the breeze.  Which is something I'd find boring as hell in real life, of course, but conceptually, it's a very pleasant thought and song.

A

A+



With a sack quite impossibly filled with every type of fish in a quantity of 99 each, and assured that they somehow will not start to smell at all even over the full course of his journey, Hiro Gai has finally resumed his quest to save the world.  His next stop will be the bog which this river feeds into.

Although swamps and the like look like places of death and decay, they are, in fact, ecosystems positively teeming with diverse and interesting life, countless tiers and hinge points of animals and plants all interconnected in a beautiful, robust, yet surprisingly fragile complex web of life.  We'll be passing by remarkable specimens with every step we take, folks, and I suggest you keep your cameras at the ready and full of film if you want to capture the marsh's striking biodiversity...because by the time Hiro and his cronies are done passing through, every single type of organism in here large enough to have looked at them wrong is going to be endangered or extinct.

SWAMP

Marshes, bogs, glades, quagmires, and so on, Swamp music is for all those muddy, squelchy places that combine forest and/or field with retained water.  Swamps are another setting that have it tough, generally, because our overall (incorrect) perception of areas like this are locales that are dark, gloomy, scary, and frequently aligned with the idea of death.  And while RPGs are more than happy to musically turn a goddamn sewer into a day at a water park, they're generally less adventurous with exploring what the marshlands can be.  As a result, most Swamp music tends to be heavy, slow, and disquieting, or at the very least, more of that ambient nature-sounds stuff like Jungle music gets saddled with so often.  So, not a lot of really good music gets made for this setting.  Still, sometimes an RPG will try a little harder, put aside certain biome prejudices, and focus on different qualities of this setting, which can make for some more compelling tunes.

B+

A-
- Phantasy Star Universe Ukishima Islands
It's not easy to combine a cool, calming tune with an upbeat, adventurous, cheerful tempo, but PSU manages it in this piece, and it's both fun and encouraging, and reassuring and relaxing.

- Xenoblade Chronicles 1 Satorl Marsh Night

A

A+



As the ground they tread becomes a little less mushy, Hiro Gai, Lah Vinteress, Ves Frennd, and Mid D'Laydge transition from swamp to forest, and rejoice that they shall soon arrive at Plotsburg, and finish this long first leg of the journey.  But what's this?  It seems they're being followed by a shadowy figure!  Observing their every move, it's clear that this ominous entity is up to no good...unless it's just someone who joined our tour late.  Let me check the attendance list.

...Nope, everyone who paid the cover charge was already present and accounted for.  This guy's definitely a villain.

At any rate, watch your step for roots, logs, and the like as you go, folks.  Don't worry about falling a bit behind the hero group, we won't get lost.  The forests Hiro encounters on his quest will be, by and large, remarkably straightforward and linear with their paths.

FOREST

Next to battle themes, Forest music is, I think, my very favorite type of music in RPGs.  There's something about the woods that calls to us, as a species (or at least, it does now; a few hundred years ago, untamed natural splendor tended to scare the dickens out of locals, if European folklore is anything to go by), and more than any other setting brings us a sense of serenity, and oneness with the natural world.  Although you could quite reasonably make the argument that other environments are better or more quantitative displays of Mother Nature at work unimpeded, the temperate groves, copses, thickets, woods, and forests seem to be the places of the world which we most and easiest associate with nature and the web of life.  This brand of RPG music seems to be the opportunity that composers take in their soundtracks to go all in on the shady, pleasant, peaceful perfection of a forest, and the end result is some of the most calming, joyful compositions you can find.

B+
- Final Fantasy Mystic Quest Forest
- Pokemon Generation 4 Eterna Forest
- Xenosaga 3 Old Miltia Forest

A-
- Final Fantasy 10 Kilika Woods
- Phantasy Star Universe Mizuraki Forest
- Shin Megami Tensei 4-2 Fairy Forest
- Tales of Legendia Forest
- Tales of Phantasia Mystic Forest

A
- Final Fantasy 6 Forest
- Final Fantasy 9 Evil Forest
- Legaia 2 Forest
- Romancing Saga 1 Mazewood Forest

A+
- Chrono Trigger Forest
This is my favorite RPG song.  As in, of all of them.  This is the ultimate expression of serenity and unity with the natural world, containing a melody that embodies the enduring peace, the entrancing mystery, and the sublime beauty of the forest better than any other has or could.  It's insane to think that this flawless work of art only plays in 2 locations (3 if you separate time periods) in the entire game, and each of them only a single area's size!  Could've been the greatest waste of potential in RPG history, really, but thankfully, everyone who plays CT seems to manage to stick around in Guardia Forest long enough to get caught up in and being appreciating this greatest of RPG tracks.
FIX

- Mario and Luigi 4 Dreamy Somnom Woods
How do you make Forest music even more serene, inviting, and lovely?  Make it music about a dream forest.  Adding a layer of mystery and a sense of being wonderfully lost, mixed with the drowsy weight of being in dream, makes for a song that's enchanting even by Forest music standards.



After narrowly surviving their run-in with Hiro's long-lost brother Baadt, who has apparently decided that the only way to save humanity is to end it (you'll find, in this world, that a surprising number of people are very unclear about the definition of the word "save"), the party continues on, dispirited and brooding.  Hiro in particular asks himself, over and over, how it could come to this.  Who could have predicted that his brother's lifelong hobby of delivering heavy-handed, unnaturally vague exposition with a sinister smile would have led to this?

On the plus side, they've finally arrived at Plotsburg!  At last, Hiro's quest to deliver the Quantonic Legendium Crystal can be completed, and the world can be saved!  How fortunate that the extremely fragile, 1-of-a-kind gem has managed to avoid being broken, chipped, or even mildly smudged over the course of a continent-spanning trek through rough terrain which involved life-threatening combat encounters at an average of every 10 - 20 paces while transported within the backpack of a not-entirely-cautious teenager. 

SPECIFIC TOWN

The Specific Town song is basically Town music that's unique to 1 particular city in a game, rather than most/all of them.  Sometimes a town gets its own song because of its importance to the plot, sometimes it qualifies because it's a settlement with such a strikingly different setting/aesthetic that it just wouldn't function without its own appropriate background, and sometimes it's just of such a different scale than the other cities visited in the game that it requires a different atmosphere in its melody.  Whatever the case, the Specific Town music covers a wide range of possibilities both urban and rural, and plays a major role in defining 1 particular city setting as significant to a game.

Of course, it's a lot easier to compose a decent-quality song when it's not saddled with the unreasonable responsibility of covering all possible bases for a good dozen different communities in an RPG, and that's why there's a lot more below than there is for the more generic Town music, much in the way that there were more Event Battle songs in the last rant than more generic ones.

B+
- Breath of Fire 2 Dologany
- Cosmic Star Heroine New Rhomu
- Horizon 0 Dawn Meridian
- Icewind Dale 1 Kuldahar
- Icewind Dale 2 Kuldahar
- Pokemon Generation 7 Seafolk Village
- Pokemon Generation 8 Stow-on-Side
- Tales of Vesperia Aspio
- Tales of Vesperia Yormgen
- Whisper of a Rose Rowmo
- Ys 1 Zepik Village

A-
- Anachronox Votowne
- Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscuras Quintara
- Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden Neo New York
- Borderlands 2 Flamerock Refuge
- Icewind Dale 1 Lonelywood
- Icewind Dale 2 Targos
- Lufia 2 Narvick
- Neverwinter Nights 2 Port Llast
- Skies of Arcadia Valua City
- Suikoden 3 Alma Kinan
- Xenogears Shevat

A
- Breath of Fire 4 Windia
- Dragon Fantasy 2 Tsundarian Encampment
- Dust: An Elysian Tail Aurora
- Final Fantasy 12 Eruyt Village
- Grandia 1 Ruku Village
- Knights of the Old Republic 1 Ahto City
- Legend of Dragoon Hokes Village
- Octopath Traveler 1 Stoneguard
- Okage: Shadow King Highland Village
- Radiant Historia Alistel
- Suikoden 1 Elven Village
- The Witcher 1 Murky Waters

A+
- Breath of Fire 5 Middle Layer
Serene, calming, and beautiful, and yet with a note of longing, even melancholy...this tune is just wonderful.

- Star Ocean 3 Whipple Village
I don't know if I'll ever hear a better, more soulful piece to represent a small, quiet (yet not peaceful) village hidden within the earthy environs of the forest.  The timing of this track to the game adds to its perfection, too, as there's a tone to this music that contains the suggestion of beginnings, the implication that we're at the outset of a journey grand and spectacular, and that all that is to come is born of this first, vital stop in this village, a hidden niche of a nation that's a small corner of a world that's an unknown, infinitesimal fragment of the universe.  Certainly 1 of my absolute favorites, this one.



As it turns out, Hiro Gai's quest is not yet over!  It seems that the world-saving ritual using the Quantonic Legendium Crystal will require 1 more sacred component, which he must now fetch from the middle of the nearby desert's oasis.  Bad news for him, but good news for our tour!  Incidentally, folks, seeing as how we have yet to see a single civilization actively destroyed before our eyes this adventure, I'm going to strongly advise that no one sit out Hiro's trip to the desert from the comfort of Plotsburg.  Trust my tour guide instincts on this one.

The desert is a harsh yet strangely beautiful setting, we'll find, notable for its heat, hardy flora and fauna, and a turn-around of the clothing dynamic that we witnessed in the cold regions before.  Lah Vinteress's skimpy and previously impractical traveling attire is now quite comfortable and reasonable, and it is now Hiro, Ves, and Mid who stoically suffer for being too prideful and stubborn to change out of their favored outfits, which fully cover them.

DESERT

Dry wastelands with little in the way of flora and fauna (although that's not all that accurate in real life, if nature documentaries are anything to go by), deserts are a minimalist setting by nature, and their music in RPGs often reflects this.  Desert music tends to be more distant in its style and components, made to reflect the ever-present yet somehow faraway intense, dry heat of the desert's air, sand, and winds, as well as its silence.  That, or some rendition of that traditional Arabian musical style.

Either way, though, Desert music usually amounts to little more than serviceable background noise, decent at creating its atmosphere, but without many melodic ambitions.  As a result, much like Jungle music, there's nothing of this type of music that I've yet found in RPGs that I like enough to keep for myself.  But also like Jungle music, there's still hope for RPGs' Desert music, because the bronies have proven that there are ways to make Desert music really work.

B+

A-

A

A+



Oh, no! This is why I advised no one to stay behind in Plotsburg, everyone--we were well overdue for 1 of the towns that Hiro and company have visited to get utterly destroyed in some calamity.  Watch out for broken glass and twisted rebar while you pick your way through the rubble, and out of respect, do your best not to kick any of the little girls' dolls strewn about--ruined villages are always absolutely littered with children's toys, so that the heroes can't fail to find 1 and enhance the dramatic power of this scene that much more.

Luckily, however, the 1 member of any given village guaranteed to be clinging onto life at least as long as it takes for Hiro to return from his errands is also always the single person in the village whose death could have stopped the quest in its tracks.  It looks like the elder has been holding out here just long enough to tell Hiro that it was Hiro's evil brother who did this, and that there's still a chance to save the world, even without being able to perform the Quantonic Legendium Crystal's ritual.

...And yes, that does mean that the entire journey up until this point was sort of pointless.  To be honest, RPG Land Tours wouldn't have a product to sell if hero groups didn't spend most of their time dithering about, whether intentionally or not.

WRECKAGE

Wreckage music encompasses the songs played within settings that have been relatively recently destroyed, or settings containing wreckage of present note.  This most often means cities, villages, and so on that have been totaled by some natural disaster or villainous temper-tantrum, but it can also encompass something smaller, the crash site of the original Normandy in Mass Effect 2, for example, or something larger, like the overall wasteland of civilization to be found while traversing through most Fallout games.  There's a distinction in play, however, between Wreckage music, and the music for more typical RPG ruins: the latter are basically relics of bygone civilizations that don't really have much emotional significance, while Wreckage music refers to the ruins in a game whose relatively recent disaster invokes (or is meant to invoke, at least) a significant emotional response.

Wreckage music is pretty straightforward in what it's going for.  It's out to communicate loss and, potentially, despair.  You walk into this setting, and you're supposed to feel the weight of the staggering loss that this place represents.

B+
- Alundra 2 Ruined Village
- Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled Ruined City
- Fallout 4 World

A-
- Deltrarune Empty Castle Town
- Legend of Dragoon Ruined Village

A
- Fallout 3 World

A+
- Knights of the Old Republic 2 Jedi Enclave Ruins
The weight, the melancholic memory, the gravity of what has been lost...combined with the cerebral and emotional substance of all that occurred within and all that still yet will occur here.  This track is a magnificent one, seamlessly doing double-duty between being the greatest of Wreckage music and also appropriately underscoring the heavy revelations and events that occur near the end of the game within these ruins.  Utterly masterful stuff!



With the knowledge that their next goal lies across the sea, Hiro and his friends' next stop is the beach.  How lucky that Plotsburg simultaneously bordered not only a dense forest and an expansive desert, but also a beach facing the ocean in just the right direction to draw a straight line between it and Hiro's destination.

Be sure to take in the sights and get your pictures quickly, everyone--building a sturdy craft to take him and his friends safely across the perilous seas may seem like a task that would require quite a bit of time, not to mention far more crafting knowledge than Hiro's party collectively possesses, but as it turns out, the great god Narrative Convenience has seen fit to rearrange time, physics, and probability to such a degree that Hiro will have his vessel by the end of a 2-minute construction minigame.

BEACH

The background theme to the shores of an RPG world tends to come in 1 of 2 varieties.  Either Beach music is, A, not music so much as it is just the ambient sound of waves with like maybe 4 total notes interspersed almost at random in there, or B, the bright, warm, but ultimately insubstantial tune you'd expect from a vacation resort's beaches.  Which, as with a handful of other locations we've seen thus far, doesn't generally make for particularly compelling melodies.

B+

A-

A
- Anodyne Beach
This...is not your typical beach music.  It's haunting and soulful, and the melody takes its time.  Which, honestly, DOES kind of fit a beach, if you look at the setting in a different light, with an emphasis on the ceaseless tide coming in and out, taking and depositing the detritus of the world, gently but inexorably wearing down all the matter it comes into contact with.  Sea life comes to the beach to either create life or to die, beings caught between the land and ocean but never fully at home in either base their lives around it, and life decays as far as it can while being cured in saltwater.  Really, when you think about it, our perception of the beach as some bright, pleasant, desirable destination is a pretty artificial invention; Anodyne's the one that's got it right with this slow, ethereal song here.

A+



In a flagrant, shameless affront to the very basics of nautical travel, Hiro Gai has managed to successfully traverse the raging seas in a wooden 1500s-era-esque vessel manned by exactly 4 individuals, none of whom had so much as set foot on a raft prior to this journey.  It won't be long now until they reach their goal, and can finish their quest to save the world!

At least, in theory.  In practice, building the boat reminded Hiro of his unquenchable thirst for insultingly simplistic, crudely programmed minigames, so his crew's going to be dropping anchor in the middle of the ocean for a while to take part in a diving-for-treasures minigame.  And, of course, so will our RPG Land Tours cruise ship.  Now's a good time to get in some whale-watching, or do a bit of fishing!  Just make sure, if you do, that you don't accidentally hook Hiro himself while he's down there, or any of the treasures he's unearthing...the last thing we want to do is anything that will extend how long we're gonna be stuck here while this idiot digs for that 1 randomly-generated pearl with a 1/4096 chance of appearing in any given attempt.

OCEAN

For a setting that takes up the majority of the surface of most given RPG planets, the ocean actually has very little attention paid to it in the music department.  The thing of it is, most of the time, transactions occurring at sea are just crossing it on a ship, and that usually just uses a song specific to the vehicle, which is a type of music I'll cover in a later rant.  So there's not usually much of a call for there to be Ocean music at all.

With that said, it's far from a total unknown.  There's plenty of occasions where being out at sea is more a song in and of itself than a tune designated to a ship, and occasionally there will be a situation in a game wherein characters will be swimming within the ocean, or traversing its floor.  At the surface level, Ocean music tends to be bracing, with a clear give-and-take to its melody that calls to mind the tides, while its depths are given to music that's calmer, more serene, deep and encompassing--it's likely no surprise to you, given my tastes thus far, that this is my preferred version of Ocean music.

B+

A-

A
- Whisper of a Rose Underwater
Cool, meditative, and undeniably marine.  You really feel the sensation of walking along the sands and reefs below the waves here, the inherent serene paradox of being surrounded by flourishing life in action and yet peacefully, beautifully alone.

A+



And finally we arrive at Finale Island, home of the secret laboratory that has been researching alternate ways to save the world, just in case some moron with a chip on his shoulder about existence decided to go and ruin things for everyone by burning down Plotsburg.

Careful of all the electrical and fiber-optic wires strewn around everywhere, and don't get distracted by the dozens of holographic displays around every corner!  And for your own mental well-being, try not to think too hard about the fact that an isolated laboratory has invented and perfectly manufactured computers, robots, holographic displays, and trans-dimensional travel, on a world whose most advanced civilization has only just figured out how to cobble together a barely functional toilet.

SCIENCE

Science music covers a reasonably wide array of locations.  Obviously locations like laboratories and other places of research qualify, as do learning centers if they're more specifically devoted to scientific learning.  But beyond just study, Science music also covers settings which represent an application of higher research and knowledge, usually in a distinctly technical sense.  So, say, the inside of a giant robot that you have to crawl through, a massive reactor providing power to a city, and a factory for producing killer robots and/or mutated monsters would all typically qualify, too.

There's no particular trend in Science music that I can really pin down.  Sometimes it's very synth-y, or has a heavy mechanical beat, or uses other means of instruments or construction to convey the scientific mood.  But just as often, Science music doesn't even bother to don these obvious trappings, and instead is designed more to convey the mood, methods, and morality of the experiments or manufactures performed in the location, which means Science music is too variable to really pin down with a generalization.

B+
- Borderlands 2 Wildlife Exploitation Preserve

A-
- Undertale Core
- Wild Arms 1 Gate Generator
- Wild Arms 3 Laboratory
- Xenoblade Chronicles 1 Mechonis Field

A

A+
- Dark Cloud 2 Lunatic Wisdom Laboratory
This is so insanely good.  There's such simple, classy substance in its elegant tone, creating something that feels epic and yet soothing at the same time.  Any RPG could count itself lucky to have this tune play for its most plot-significant location.



Having arrived at Finale Island and spoken to the leader of the researchers here, the High Elder of Science, which is apparently a thing that somehow happens in RPG worlds' scientific groups, Hiro and his friends have learned that the secret to saving the world is surprisingly simple: take a bunch of Quantonic Legendium Crystals and just smack a single, giant monster in the face with them enough to kill it.  Yes, even the calamity that threatens this world periodically, a horrifying manifestation of mankind's sins and follies, is just as flesh-and-blood and capable of being physically harmed as any given random encounter rat or goblin.  If you ever decide to take our tours again in the future, folks, you'll find that it's a surprisingly common theme that manifestations of evil that represent humanity's terrible, indefensible acts of violence are, themselves, usually overcome just by heroes happening to be better at said violence.

At any rate, in order to acquire more of these crystals, Hiro and his friends will have to journey into an entirely different dimension, from which the Quantonic Legendium Crystal originates.  Hiro, a man who has spent his entire life living in a roughly medieval-era city in which a horse-drawn wagon is considered the height of modern technological convenience, has shockingly few questions about the prospect of entering into and exploring an entirely different reality.

SPACE/DIMENSION

Extra-planetary settings are the domain of the Space/Dimension music.  RPGs are frequently fond of including travels to settings either cosmic or outer-worldly, so it's not unusual to have 1 wherein its protagonists at some point walk on the moon, or find themselves exploring a bizarre other dimension altogether, even while being ostensibly a fantasy game.  Mind you, another world and/or another dimension that are fairly normal places don't count as Space/Dimension settings--they just fall into the regular, appropriate setting musics.  Space/Dimension music is for decidedly cosmic and/or other-worldly locales.

As a result of this, Space/Dimension music is another melody type that tends to be pretty varied.  While the Space side of it is usually fairly reliable, with synth-y bits and pieces frequently incorporated into the tune that 70s and 80s cinema firmly cemented into place as the go-to audio theme for the cosmic, alternate dimensions and the like are more defined by what kind of bizarre landscape they consist of--a jarringly weird, disorienting mix of purple and pink glops unlike anything found on Earth will doubtless have a song with it that sounds perplexing and quizzical to some degree, for example, while another world that's a strange but pleasing array of blue pods sitting atop spires, like a world of mushrooms made of sea glass or something, would probably sound strange but calming, and even beautiful, to match the decor.

B+
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Dark World

A-
- Hololive CouncilRys RPG Time and Space
- Paper Mario 2 X-Naut Fortress

A
- Final Fantasy 9 Terra

A+
- Xenosaga 3 Abel's Ark
Yuki Kajiura's job was to create music that would perfectly embody the vastness of an inter-dimensional space, the elegance and beauty of a crystalline structure traveling the limitless cosmos, and the sublime divinity of traversing a location that is basically the eye of God Himself.  And she nailed it.



With the return to our normal dimension, our tour and Hiro's quest are closing in on their mutual end, everyone.  He's got 8 shiny new Quantonic Legendium Crystals in his backpack.  He's sat through Lah's confession of her affections, and been completely surprised in spite of it having been so painfully obvious that our tour's hottest-selling merchandise have been Team Lah and Team Shut The Hell Up And Get A Second Character Trait hoodies.  He's had a cathartic, absolutely-no-marketably-homoerotic-undertones-we-swear wrestle with Ves, and reassured his best friend of his valuable contributions to the team as meat-shield.  And he's gotten some final sage advice from Mid, who has long since given up trying to convince anyone that being over 20 years old is not the same as being geriatric.

There's only 1 more piece of unfinished business to attend to before he leads his friends to the final conflict: he's gotta head over to the nearby laundromat and run the crystals through a spin cycle or 2, and get those eldritch mustard abomination stains out.  Ethereal or not, you can't save the world with crystals tarnished by the smears of some arcane horror's lunch.  Little does Hiro know, however, that there's still 1 loose end waiting to be tied up, and he's lying in wait for our hero right at the change machine...

MISCELLANEOUS SETTING

Miscellaneous Setting music is the catch-all category for the stuff that won't quite fit anywhere else.  Music specifically created for a kitchen, or a laundromat, or a multi-dimensional lounge in which a secret lab's scientists cooperate with alternate reality versions of themselves during their smoke breaks that will appear before you as a joke related to Schrodinger's Cat, it gets tossed in here, at least until such time that a location type it applies to becomes so commonly used that it deserves its own category.  Also, the music for any location which covers a broad enough area that multiple categories of settings are incorporated within its scope gets put in here, too.

B+
- Anodyne Windmill
- Borderlands 2 Gluttony Gulch

A-
- Final Fantasy 7 Remake Collapsed Expressway
- Kingdom Hearts Series Hollow Bastion
- Pokemon Generation 5 Route 10
- Rogue Galaxy Gulza Sanctuary
- Shadowrun: Dragonfall Feuerstelle

A
- Neverwinter Nights 2 Mulsantir Gate

A+
- Nier: Automata Copied City
Beautiful and thoroughly unnerving, just as the Copied City itself is, this song perfectly captures the growing anxiety of traveling through the perfectly replicated, yet repellently wrong and alien representation of humanity and civilization created by a mind so close to, and yet forever impossibly far from, understanding the human race.  A mind defined by hatred for that race, the hatred born of familiarity and the hatred born for the alien and unknowable.  This song is elegant and pleasing, even as it burrows within your chest and disturbs you.



Huzzah!  Hiro's brother Baadt has been soundly defeated once and for all, and then offered the olive branch of a place in Hiro's party--because the best time to completely change your group's combat dynamics is half an hour before its greatest battle, and because the best man to trust with your life is the guy who you've instantly forgiven for murdering an entire village because he said he was sorry after you beat him within an inch of his life.  With this final matter behind them, and the new Quantonic Legendium Crystals freshly laundered, neatly folded, and smelling of mountain breeze, our heroes, and the ostensibly repentant mass murderer they've allowed to tag along, turn their eyes to the last leg of their journey.

This is it, everyone, the final destination for Hiro Gai and his friends, and the final stop on our tour!  Behold the Bad Fortress of Hurty People, a giant, crystalline structure which houses the forces that threaten Hiro's world.  Use up your remaining film, take this last opportunity to visit our mobile gift shop stand, and watch your step--beautiful though they may be, the logistics of living in and traversing through a building made entirely of interlocking crystals are charitably described as a nightmare.  Enjoy the show, pay attention to our route through this castle because we will have to evacuate it later when it starts coming down around us, and thank you for choosing RPG Land Tours for all your sightseeing needs.

RPG Land Tours: You'll see everything but a refund.

FINAL DUNGEON

The Final Dungeon refers to the last overall area of the game.  Duh.  It's frequently some sort of cosmic or trans-dimensional kind of place that would have fit into the Space/Dimension category otherwise, or a basic tower or fortress that otherwise would just be a Dungeon location, but it can be virtually anything, really.  The job of Final Dungeon music is pretty straightforward: be strong, impart feelings of both confidence and anticipation, and create a general atmosphere of this being the greatest and final hurdle to clear.  A little introspective vibe for the long and involved journey it took to reach this place is also a nice touch, though not always necessary. 

B+
- Golden Sun 3 Apollo Sanctum
- Planescape: Torment Fortress of Regrets
- Super Mario RPG Factory
- Ys 2 Shrine of Solomon

A-
- Golden Sun 1 Venus Lighthouse
- Machine Knight Shaft's Airship
- Octopath Traveler 1 Gate of Finis
- Star Ocean 3 Spiral Tower

A
- Final Fantasy Mystic Quest Doom Castle
- Lufia Series Fortress of Doom
It's just a pretty damn cool and epic song.  Dunno what else to say about this one; you really feel the weight of the finale upon you when you listen to it.

- Ys 1 Darm Tower

A+



NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Apparently Youtube is extremely unreliable.  If you notice that any of these links are dead, I'd be much obliged if you left a comment to let me know which one(s), and I'll address it as best I can.