Annual Summary 2021

Phew.

It’s been a hell of a few past years.  While no cake walk for most of us, I actually think 2021 has been a worse year for me than 2020.  This has generally come from working in a corner of the retail industry that’s experienced a massive increase in business thanks to last year’s shutdown, while being just as short-staffed as everyone else is at the moment.  It’s been an absolutely exhausting year for those of us back in the basic workforce, even by the normal standards of being in the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, and it’s only been in the past couple weeks that my job has begun to even approach normalcy through this entire year.  Yeah--the Christmas season is 2021’s Easy Mode for me.

As a result, of course, I haven’t played nearly as many RPGs as I wanted to this year.  Frustrating, especially considering that quite a few of the games I did get to were very long ones.  Sometimes it was worth it, at least, like with Horizon 0 Dawn, but it sure as hell wasn’t always--The Legend of Legacy might have the lowest Rewarding Experience/Time Spent ratio in the history of RPGs, video games, or even just pastimes as a whole.  I actually intentionally took on a couple of games that I knew were extremely short solely to try to make up for how much time I spent on stuff like the Laxius Force trilogy, which worked out pretty well, as they turned out to be some of the better games I played this year.  At the very least, though, I still maintained a decent spread of RPG experiences, getting a couple oldies, a couple new titles, some mainstream, some indie, major series titles and 1-offs alike.  Sci-Fi, Sci-Fi Survival Horror, Standard Fantasy, Semi-Sorta-Sci-Fi-Fantasy Survival Horror, Humor, Post-Apocalyptic Robotic Dinosaurs, and Pokemon But Somehow Worse Than Usual, I covered a lot of aesthetics and genres, too.  If I can’t play as many RPGs as I’d like to, at least I can keep a decently varied diet of the ones I do get to, I figure.

Anyway, here’s what I played this year.  You may notice that for a couple of them I’ve given links to the RPG--I’ve decided that in cases where finding a game is more complicated than the first result of a web search, I’ll provide the link to where I found it, in case any of y’all are interested.



Celestian Tales 2
Etrian Odyssey Nexus
Horizon 0 Dawn
Journey to Kreisia
Laxius Force 1
Laxius Force 2
Laxius Force 3
The Legend of Legacy
The Outer Worlds
Pokemon Generation 8
Quantum Entanglement
Symphony of Eternity
System Shock 2
Too Fast RPG



And as you can see, somehow, through it all, I was still stupid enough to keep playing Kemco titles.  What I wouldn’t GIVE for Nintendo to put a few more RPGs into their 3DS shop...dead console or not, the 3DS fits into my pocket and the Switch doesn’t, so the former’s what I can bring with me to work to play on those rare occasions when I actually do have a moment to myself.

In spite of my monicker, though, RPGs aren’t the only pastime I have.  And as is my wont at this time each year, I shall now tell you about all the other stuff I’ve gotten up to, because every now and then I like to test my readers’ patience and commitment.


Anime: This year I (finally) watched Kill La Kill, which I feel like was absolutely everywhere some years back, and it’s...alright.  Decent, in its weird way.  I don’t think I ever did get a handle on what exactly it was or wanted to be, but I liked the act of watching it well enough, and Mako’s a laugh riot--it’d be worth the full watch just for her, really.  I also watched Steins; Gate at the recommendation of a friend, which turned out to be pretty neat, interesting, and thoughtful.  It’s neat to see an anime take a more scientific and exploratory interest into the modern theories of reality and time travel than the usual sensationalist approach--Steins; Gate felt at times like the minds behind it were on the same wavelength as classic sci-fi short story authors like Asimov and his peers,* while still being more than capable of excitement, action, and tear-jerking emotion  Lastly (sadly didn’t see as many animes as I had wanted to, either), I caught Non Non Biyori’s new, third, final season, and it was as solid and lovely as those seasons that preceded it.  I’m sorry to have to say goodbye to this quiet, fun, silly, compelling love letter to rural Japan and childhood, but it was really nice while it lasted.

Books: Actually, this was a good year for me in the literature department. I finally feel like I’ve gotten back on the Proper Book Reading horse, and am satisfied with how many I read this year.  Granted, they weren’t all good ones--I started the year with The Cat Who Sang for the Birds, by Lilian Jackson Braun, and was reminded once again of why I only trust Agatha Christie for mysteries, because while TCWSftB is generally inoffensive as a story, it’s also boring, lacks substance, and is less a mystery than it is an excuse for Braun to just aimlessly write about small-town life in Michigan and a possible worship of house cats.  Which is great if that’s your thing, but I think generally when people read a mystery novel they want the mystery to compose maybe more than 5% of its total content.  But then I proved my own policy of only trusting Christie for mysteries wrong by reading The 13 Problems, and finding out that even she can have an off-day as an author, because the book’s basically just a Mary Sue for Miss Marple.  Miss Marple’s a bore in her best moments, but The 13 Problems is almost insufferably tedious with her, possessing the same sort of unreasoning, 12-year-old-fangirl-esque infatuation with one’s own creation that makes shonen anime such routinely tiresome garbage.

Speaking of 13s, I also read Diane Setterfield’s The 13th Tale, which is pretty decent, at a friend’s recommendation.  The gothic style is just not for me, but I can at least recognize that it’s a good specimen of such.  I also read Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by recommendation, this time from my sister, and it was really good!  So good that I then later in the year read the next book in the series, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, which, while maybe not quite as compelling and fresh as its predecessor, was also quite enjoyable.  Good stuff if you like classic fairy-tale stuff and old-school children’s stories’ narrative approach.  I’m sure I’ll be looking into the next story in the series soon

Wow, this is getting way too long for such an unimportant rant section.  Let’s speed it up.  Gave Agatha Christie another chance with Murder in Retrospect, and she restored my faith with a story so excellent that it surpasses even her usual quality.  Then she surpassed even that with The Hollow, which might be my third favorite work of hers I’ve encountered thus far.  I read Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer and was thoroughly unimpressed; felt like a paint-by-numbers mimicry of Shakespeare.  I also ran through High Rhulain, by Brian Jacques (shut up, I loved the Redwall series as a kid), which seemed surprisingly subpar, and Into the Land of Unicorns, by Bruce Coville (shut up, I loved unicorns as a kid, and also right now), which was pretty cool, and a series I’m planning to continue.  Had a really weird hankering for Star Trek: The Next Generation content, so I ended up reading some of the books they wrote for the show, those being Here There be Dragons by John Peel (Okay and basically nothing more or less) and Sins of Commission by Susan Wright (decent for its character portrayals, but overall kind of bland and weird in that the plot that you think is going to be the important one just turns out to be a tiny crumb on the side that basically gets resolved off-screen).  Finally, I reread Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, which is as excellent, brilliant, enlightened, and personally revolutionary to me now as it was 20 years ago.

Non-RPG Video Games: Not much this year that wasn’t RPGs.  I kept up with Super Smash Brothers’s new characters, in spite of every instinct I had to drop the game entirely when they put Sephiroth, SEPHIROTH of all fucking wastes of space, in a slot that could have gone to literally any other video game character ever conceived.  I also experienced the new Doki Doki Literature Club content, which I found really touching and strong...while also a huge bummer, because it really sells just how much the player’s presence as a romance visual novel protagonist ruined a genuinely good, healthy, meaningful thing for the rest of them.  Monika wasn’t a monster before we entered the picture.  Lastly, I played System Shock 1, although that was more because I thought it was an RPG, which, even to my own lax standards, it really just kind of isn’t.  It’s alright, not really my kind of game, but I can respect it for what an influence it clearly had on the medium.

TV and the Like: I did it.  I finally did it this year.  I grit my teeth, pulled up my Big Boy Pants, and bit the bullet: I watched the final season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.  It was fun, and magical, and I appreciate how hard the show’s creators were obviously working to touch all the bases they could to bring resolution to the show while also referencing its long and wonderful history, and incorporating as many of its signature elements as they could 1 last time.  I started watching MLPFiM as far back as when its fourth episode had aired, and I loved it from the start.  It’s altered me in a positive way, and it was a profound feeling to finally close the book on this show’s part in my life.

I also watched the third and fourth seasons of The Flash this year, and I’m still enjoying it, although I do see where a lot of its detractors are coming from when they say the show starts falling apart after Season 2.  I checked out the second season of Love, Death, and Robots and was disappointed; the episode with the ice planet and the augmented kids was the only one that’s particularly good.  Additionally, I continued watching DC Superhero Girls, and I eagerly await the next wave of episodes, because it’s just ridiculously fun and clever!

I did do some watching that wasn’t just continuing something I’d already started previously, too.  A coworker introduced me to Community, and I really enjoyed it--very funny and often even pretty wise, in spite of Dan Harmon’s signature need to occasionally use it as no more than a vehicle for gratifying his raging egomania.  And lastly, I watched Netflix’s new Carmen Sandiego reboot, and it is...legitimately, sincerely, wholly awesome.  Seriously, this show is easily in my Top 10 greatest cartoons of all time.  It’s got a strong and fun overall story, compelling characters, an appealing fixation on geography, history, and culture around the world, great writing, engaging humor, stunningly gorgeous visuals, emotional nuance and interesting themes, and maybe most importantly, the people in charge of the show clearly have a dear and comprehensive love for the Carmen Sandiego franchise.  They made a spectacular creation that stands as its own work, while also paying frequent and far-reaching homage to all Carmen Sandiego works that came before them.  If you use this rant as a recommendation for just 1 piece of media to experience, make it...ugh, well, okay, make it Quantum Entanglement, but if you take a second recommendation from me this year, it’s absolutely got to be Carmen Sandiego.  This show is such an amazing gem that I actually forgive Netflix for the Cowboy Bebop live action remake, just because they also made Carmen Sandiego.

Other Crap: I still write rants, I still spend quality time with my family and my pet, and I still work.  Oh dear God do I still work.  So yeah, that stuff took up a fair amount of my time, too.  Not much to report in that regard; just plugging along as usual.  Oh yeah, actually, I guess 1 new thing is that this year I’ve started to experiment with a book of French recipes once a week or 2, and that does actually take up a bit of time now.  Results can be pretty decent, though.


Alright, enough of all that non-RPG crap.  Let’s get to the main event: the crap that IS RPG-related!



RPG Moments of Interest in 2021:

1. I watched Ecclesiastes’s Let’s Play of Final Fantasy 7 Remake this year.  I don’t count it as an RPG I’ve played just yet, in the sense that right now I’m assuming I’ll count all the installments of it as a single whole entity and thus I haven’t really “finished” it yet, but I am caught up with it at the present time.

2. Speaking of: there’s a point in Final Fantasy 7’s Remake in which Cloud goes to check out what all the noise is about in the apartment next to his, and has a sudden vision of the next-door resident being Sephiroth, only it’s just Cloud seeing things.  As a result, Ecclesiastes and I concocted this scenario where it actually IS Sephiroth, who’s legit renting the room next to Cloud’s, and Seph’s like, just sitting on a shitty couch, beer in hand, stained white wife-beater loosely pulled over his standard villain outfit, watching TV, while Cloud’s next door furiously pounding on the wall and hollering at him to turn that shit down, and Sephiroth just raises the remote and determinedly turns up the volume on a public-access local fishing tournament, leading to Cloud marching over to beat the shit out of him.  I know that it loses a lot in the summation and that it’s dumb as hell, but the whole concept was so hilarious to me that I almost hurt myself laughing over it.

3. There is a sidequest in Journey to Kreisia in which you assist a man by finding half a dozen mail-order brides who were lost in the shipping process.  And the brides are sheep.

Kemco, when I criticized you in the past for having games that possess no memorable or unique quality, this was not the solution I had in mind.

4. The Laxius Force trilogy has so many different boosts, debuffs, and status ailments in it that my previous disbelief over Witch Hunt’s having 28 now seems charmingly naive.  Aldorlea Games has got a serious thing for status conditions, y’all.

5. Finding out that SaintBomber (creator of Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle) is back and as great as ever was a very wonderful thing.  Seriously, this practically made my damn year.

6. Symphony of Eternity’s protagonist is named Kreist.  I’m not sure how you’re supposed to pronounce that, but I think Kemco might be trying to cash in on the religious crowd?

7. You know, I have seen over 1000 different RPG towns, possibly closer to 2000.  So the fact that I was sincerely impressed, almost awed, by Meridian in Horizon 0 Dawn says a lot.  I may have been unexpectedly less entranced by H0D’s overall setting of robot dinosaurs than most, but damn if they didn’t make up for that with how striking the city of Meridian is.

8. In the Murder on Eridanos DLC of The Outer Worlds, I like the fact that enough attention was placed to detail that the Grand Colonial’s rooms all have a little candy on the pillows.  But what I LOVE is the fact that the robot’s room has an energy canister pristinely laid upon the pillow instead.

9. It’s weird to me that there’s a Wilderness Exploitation Preserve in The Outer Worlds, because Borderlands 2 already has an area named almost exactly that (the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve), and both are, I think, intended as a mild jab at corporate mentality and destruction of all it touches.  Is this an homage?  It seems awfully small and obscure a thing to pick to reference Borderlands 2, though.  Did Obsidian just not know about the one in Borderlands 2?  Seems like an amazing coincidence if so.

10. I know that criticizing Kemco is like shooting fish in a barrel when the fish are suicidal and already holding guns to their heads, but it still leaves me dumbfounded that at the end of Dragon Sinker the main antagonist reveals that the heroes’ victory is meaningless because he’s produced offspring that will grow up to terrorize them all just as he has, and the heroes’ response is to...call it a day, congratulate themselves, disband, and go on home to live their own lives for a while, providing Junior ample time to grow up and start causing problems.  Hey, why do today what you can doom the world’s population by putting off until tomorrow, right?

11. This isn’t actually RPG-related, but holy hell, did Netflix produce the live-action Cowboy Bebop because it saw Crunchyroll’s High Guardian Spice as a challenge to see which incompetent, fumbling corporation could more grotesquely disrespect anime?  I mean, considering that this is the same medium that proudly includes Yugioh GX, Love Hina, that one show about the fully adult woman who becomes a maid so she can gain access to the home of an 8-year-old she wants to bang, and Naruto, you wouldn’t think it would even be possible to insult anime’s dignity.  But damn it if Netflix and Crunchyroll aren’t going to fiercely compete their hardest to do so anyway.

12. Speaking of anime, big applause to Kill La Kill for having the courage to answer the question that Chrono Trigger was too cowardly and shortsighted to ask: What if Lavos was a ball of yarn?

13. Can we please just fucking stop naming RPGs “The Legend of”?  Please.  I’ve played a game called The Legend of Legacy, now.  I’ve had enough.  We need to move on.


Quote of the Year
Runners-Up
“Anyone thinking like me?”
“About the holes?”
“It’s like something needs to be inserted in there.”
  --Random and Sarah, Laxius Force 3

"I don’t really have time to be playin’ around with some stimulator.
But, just to be polite, I guess I’ll take it for a spin.”
  --Yuffie, Final Fantasy 7 Remake

"Wow!  Who knew being the Savior would make me so popular...?”
  --Yusis, Journey to Kreisia

Winner
"You may have saved a dog...but would you do the same for humanity?”
  --Unknown, Etrian Odyssey Nexus


Best Prequel/Sequel of 2021
Winner: Celestian Tales 2
As a continuation of the first title, Celestian Tales 2 is exactly what it should be.  It continues each of the Companions’ character arcs very well, not just picking up exactly where CT1 left off, but rather starting at a point where the characters have reached in the past 10 years that have separated the titles.  And for each of them, that point is a natural one which you can easily understand how they got to, and a good beginning state for the continued development that they’ll go through in CT2.  The story and lore are much the same; it’s gratifying and organic to return to the world of Celestian Tales and to see how it has continued on in that decade between games and be able to see and hear how the protagonists’ influence has been a part of that advancement.  Some franchises might clumsily overfill a text file with a surplus of details of every single little detail that happened between games, forcing players to swim through a murky sludge of over-explanation that leaves them more lost than they started (looking at you, Xenosaga 3)...Celestian Tales 2 gets the job done with environmental storytelling, an effective catching-up intro sequence, and some relatively natural dialogue reminiscing and NPC statements here and there.  And the game also effectively capitalizes on the open plot threads left by the first installment, and lets the plot seeds it planted bloom, continuing the Suikoden-esque story of the series through a good, solid game.  Celestian Tales 2 is exactly what the sequel to Celestian Tales 1 should be.

Runners-Up: Etrian Odyssey Nexus; Laxius Force 2; System Shock 2
I can’t say that LF2 is a good RPG, but it does represent a step up from its predecessor in terms of basic story and cast quality, and it expands on the story that the first game began and deepens the stakes of the conflict, so, strictly in terms of being a sequel, it’s good.  Similarly, System Shock 2 builds off of its predecessor’s approach and style, and enhances them.  EON wants to be a celebration of the Etrian Odyssey series which incorporates story elements and characters from all its predecessors, and it does so adequately, while still being its own story.  They’re all solid continuations of their franchises.


Biggest Disappointment of 2021
Loser: Celestian Tales 3
Celestian Tales 3 is a game that does not exist, and what’s so damn disappointing is that it probably never will.  From what I’ve read and gleaned, apparently some dickwad publisher bought the IP after the first game, only barely allowed the second title to be made, and has absolutely no interest whatsoever in finishing the story of the Companions out in the trilogy that CT had been intended to be.  Damn shame; I really was invested in this tale.

Almost as Bad: The Legend of Legacy; Pokemon Generation 8
I went into The Legend of Legacy with no expectations whatsoever, and somehow every nonexistent one of them was let down immensely.  Even no expectations still comes with the belief that you won’t be trapped in a game for weeks and weeks solely because you have to stat-grind nonstop for every unrewarding step forward you take in an utterly empty plot.  As for Pokemon Generation 8, well, it’s a tremendous let-down as the following act to the excellent Pokemon Generation 7, but, as I’ve recently mentioned, even by typical Pokemon standards, it’s absurdly worthless.


Best Finale of 2021
Winner: Horizon 0 Dawn
H0D's finale is a grand clash against the dregs of the terrible past--both the past of a civilization and of a species. It's got a climactic 1-on-1, a battle alongside against an invading army, and a final confrontation with the protagonist being assisted by her closest allies.  All of that is followed by a heartfelt ending in which Aloy finally finds that for which she has always been searching, and in a truly beautiful moment, discovers that what was wanted of her was to be curious, willful, and compassionate...the 3 traits that have defined Aloy, the traits from which her responses in the most important moments are chosen.  What a way to close out a great game.

Runners-Up: The Outer Worlds; Quantum Entanglement; Too Fast RPG
The showdown with the villain in TFRPG is great, and I’m probably reading too much into what is mostly a funny little joke game, but I actually really feel like the ending had some real meaning to it as an observation of us as gamers and just members of society in general.  Even putting that aside, it’s a funny, nice happy ending that I enjoy.  Quantum Entanglement’s final dash is exciting, its consequences and decisions poignant, and its ending (the best one, at least) consistent to the rest of it: a touching display of love that transcends any single existence.  Finally, while I feel like the final mission of The Outer World feels rushed, and I saw the revelation regarding Earth coming from a mile away, it’s a solid conclusion to this tale of humanity at odds with its own social creations, and the ending is a satisfying clip-show detailing what came of the adventure and the player’s actions that gives you just the right mix of closure, and desire to see what will happen in the future.  I really don’t understand why more games don’t make use of this Fallout-style approach to endings; it’s such a perfect and effective way to close out and tie a bow on an adventure.


Worst RPG of 2021
Loser: Pokemon Generation 8
Okay, Game Freak.  I didn’t think this was a thing that needed to actually be explained to you, or literally anyone else on Earth.  I would have thought that this was the kind of thing so basic, so intrinsically understood by the simple act of existing as a human being in contact with other human beings, that the only time you would have to ever say these words aloud would be to explain this basic narrative premise to, I dunno, a race of sapient alien rocks.  Except I’ve seen Steven Universe, so I know even they would automatically get what you apparently don’t grasp.  So here you go:

If your aim is to craft a story-based piece of media, then you need to ACTUALLY WRITE THE FUCKING STORY.

It’s just so lazy.  I’m no stranger to RPGs that were made with absolutely no effort put into their stories and characters--I have played a Dragon Quest title before, thank you very much--but Game Freak really just discovered new lows to sink to with this one.  Usually the problem with a lifeless, uninteresting story is just that the plot in and of itself is boring and pointless, not that the game refuses to share it with you.  Pokemon Sword and Shield actually bar you from being a participant in the very game you’re playing until its last moments, its creators intent on not even telling a story to begin with, and that, to me, is more deserving of scorn than any standard fault of mundane writing.

Almost as Bad: Journey to Kreisia; The Laxius Force Trilogy; The Legend of Legacy
JtK is a low-energy cliche story in which nothing stands out as interesting or different; it’s just standard Kemco fare, an assembly-line RPG that asks for $10 and gives nothing in return.  TLoL is somehow even less than that; it’s like if someone wanted to make a Romancing Saga title, without any of the complicated moving parts of event timing and non-stationary actors, without an understanding of how to balance the nuances of combat and stat growth to keep it from being too tedious, and most of all, without any real story or characters to speak of.  Playing The Legend of Legacy is more tedious and unrewarding a task than struggling to file someone else’s taxes in a language you don’t speak, while Ricky Gervais stands over your shoulder and reads aloud a script of Who’s on First rewritten by Xenogears.

And finally, The Laxius Force trilogy is...not terrible, in some regards, and there are even certain simple elements to its long story that I think are done pretty decently (such as how daunting a task finding and stopping the main villain is as the heroes exhaust 1 possibility after another and keep coming up short, while having just enough successes that it doesn’t feel frustratingly fruitless).  But at the same time, LF suffers the fatal flaw of having 3 out of its 4 most important cast members be a guy who’s an entirely unlikable asswipe, a lady who’s an entirely unlikable idiot, and another lady who’s an entirely unlikable asswipe and idiot--all with character arcs which are not compelling at all, or just lacking development altogether.  And the last of the 4 vital heroes gets saddled with a romance that acts as the most defining angle of her character story, a romance which made it very easily onto my list of the worst in the genre.  I’m not saying the games are great otherwise, I think the plot and the methods for telling it are best described as amateurish, but I probably wouldn’t have seen them as actually bad if we hadn’t had to put up with Random, Sarah, and Wendala as most of the major vehicles for moving the plot forward.


Most Creative of 2021
Winner: Quantum Entanglement
QE is a strikingly unique and fresh examination into the concept of the Self, and the idea that love could be so powerful that it transcends iterations of existence.  It’s a fresh and compelling love story told in a game staged in a unique and interesting manner and setting, all culminating in an inventive climax that’s less about opposition and conflict (typical of RPGs, and most adventures, for that matter) than it is about the legacy and consequences of a different, but also transcendent love story.  The humor is quirky and refreshing, the characters unique, the premise unlike almost any I’ve encountered before...I’ve played more than 400 RPGs now, and Quantum Entanglement is a pleasant reminder that there’s still new and innovative experiences to be had with RPGs, even for a veteran to the genre such as I.

Runners-Up: Horizon 0 Dawn; System Shock 2; Too Fast RPG
The idea of “tribals hunting robot dinosaurs” isn’t so meritorious itself, but Guerilla Games’s ability to create an actually legit, compelling lore for this being the state of the world in H0D certainly is.  As is just how deeply and well they went into developing that world, creating backstory setups for the narrative states they wanted to start at, creating new yet reminiscent cultures in this world, and finding a way to make a post apocalyptic scenario fresh and engaging again.  H0D isn’t just very creative, it also puts a fearsome amount of work into the structure of its singular creation.

System Shock 2 doesn’t seem all that unique and inventive to me in the year 2021, but I can recognize that fact to be evidence of just how much it subtly changed the landscape of game development--because so much of what followed it, so many of the narrative conventions of first-person RPGs (and other FP ventures) followed in its footsteps.  Beyond that, it’s a decently creative story in its own right of a sci-fi survival horror disaster of competing cosmic monstrosities, too.  As for Too Fast RPG, sure, it’s just a (literal) quick gimmick mostly there for laughs, but hey, humor is an exercise in innovation, too (one might make a good case that comedy is 1 of the mediums most demanding creativity, in fact), and I reckon it takes an inventive mind to come up with something like TFRPG, joke game or not.


Best Romance of 2021
Winner: Gabby x Marine (Quantum Entanglement)
As if there were any doubt.

Runners-Up: Atral x Elida (Horizon 0 Dawn); Junlei x Parvati (The Outer Worlds)
They may only be NPCs tied to a sidequest, but Atral and Elida’s variation of the Romeo-Juliet/Pyramus-Thisbe/Buttercup-Bright-Mac trope is still a fairly moving story of love and loss that I felt in my big old softy heart.  As for Junlei and Parvati...well, honestly, we only really see Parvati’s side of their romance in any great detail, but darn it, what more do you need to see than Parvati’s adorable starry-eyed adoration?  Parvati is the ultimate cinnamon roll, and seeing her crush develop into an honest romantic relationship--being able to help encourage its development, in fact--is a sweet, simple joy.  I also like it for...well, its simplicity, I guess.  We’re so used to seeing romantic love develop in RPGs under epic circumstances of world-saving journeys, intrinsically tied to grand happenings and heroic acts, that it’s sort of refreshing to get involved in 1 that’s just a simple, straightforward, everyday case of developing feelings, going on a date, and deciding to be in a relationship.  The normalcy of Parvati’s feelings and how she acts on them is ironically rare, and it was nice to see.


Best Voice Acting of 2021
Winner: Horizon 0 Dawn
The question of whether H0D or The Outer Worlds has superior vocal work is really going to come down to preference more than anything, I reckon.  For me, the tiebreaker is which game has Keith David in a major role.

For real, though, H0D’s spot-on with all its acting, and I can’t think of anyone in it that didn’t turn in a solid performance.  Aloy’s actress noticeably helped cement her character, quite a few side characters like Gildun and the narrator of the Vantage Point logs were just great, and everyone, even minor NPCs having ambient conversations as you pass by, seems to be given an actor devoted to creating a personality for their role.

Runners-Up: The Outer Worlds; System Shock 2
When the majority of your story’s told through audio logs and the demanding, threatening orders of a psychotic AI, it’s important that your voice game be on point, and SS2’s got its act together.  The Outer Worlds’s acting is high quality, with some especially good performances by the actors for Parvati, Phinneas, and Felix.  Nothing more to say, really; voice acting is either a boon or an embarrassment for a game, and for these works, it’s a definite plus.


Funniest of 2021
Winner: Quantum Entanglement
As great as it is for its moving love story, its dark and unnerving concepts, its creativity, and its effective elements of horror, Quantum Entanglement is just as notable for its constant, endearing banter, wisecracks, and wordplay, much in the same way as Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, only even more so this time around.  The frequent chuckles that Marine and Gabby’s back-and-forth produces is just what the game needs to keep you in a good frame of mind as you explore a literally and figuratively dark setting for the means of survival and escape--and the humor’s even got a purpose within the game’s own context, too, which is a rarity.**  Good, funny stuff.

Runner-Up: Too Fast RPG
TFRPG may be a humor RPG built upon 1 joke and 1 joke alone, but damn it if it doesn’t know exactly how much and how long to milk that single gag.  The same game that kept Korone in stitches from start to finish also had me chuckling through its course,*** and kudos to it for that.


Best Villain of 2021
Winner: Ted Faro (Horizon 0 Dawn)
Because when you’re a true fucktard, ruining the world once just isn’t enough.

Runners-Up: The Board (The Outer Worlds); Demon King (Too Fast RPG); The Ex (Quantum Entanglement)
Between Ted and the Board, the careless, sociopathic ultra-rich certainly have figured strongly into the problems humanity faces in the RPGs I played this year.  But hey, I’ve heard it said that the best villain is the one that can be found in real life, and what’s a truer-to-life monster whose evil we all suffer from than a corporate CEO?  Well, conceivably a violently deranged ex-lover who’s still in enough of a position of power over us to freely abuse, harm, and terrify us, but Quantum Entanglement’s got that angle covered with chilling effectiveness.  Seriously, I may personally despise Ted and the Board far more strongly, but QE’s Ex is the only villain this year--or in the past several years, for that matter--who actually frightened me.

As for Demon King, he’s got the sympathetic villain thing going for him, and this time it’s not even of the misguided sort.  Guy’s legit in the right.


Best Character of 2021
Winner: Parvati (The Outer Worlds)
...Okay, fine, not really, but I totally love her the most and really want her to win.  Screw personal depth and development (of which Parvati has plenty, mind you, just maybe not enough to legitimately win); can’t I just give her the crown for being such a warm, adorable sweetheart that must be protected and loved at all costs?

...Ugh, FINE.

Actual Winner: Marine (Quantum Entanglement)
Not that there’s anything to actually complain about in giving Marine her due.  She’s a wonderfully-written, nuanced, fun, interesting character who feels pleasantly real and yet no less a heroic figure for it (if anything, she’s all the more impressive).  Her growth is largely in relation to her love for Gabby asserting itself and growing, but that’s no flaw in a romance, and in and of herself she’s a likable, faceted character.  Saint Bomber has a gift for the creation of interesting and highly endearing characters, and Marine’s 1 of his best, to be sure.

Runners-Up: Aloy (Horizon 0 Dawn); Gabby (Quantum Entanglement); Lucienne (Celestian Tales 2)
In the first CT, it was Ylienne and Isaac whose stories and character growth were by far the most interesting to me, but as CT2 moved forward, Aria and Lucienne became the stars for me, the latter most of all.  While every major member of the cast of Celestian Tales has their own arc and time to shine, it’s Lucienne’s grappling with the guilt of being complicit with her uncle’s downfall, and her difficulty with and frustration in caring for and being shackled to the child who (completely beyond her control, of course) is the reason for Lucienne’s woes, that impresses me most.  Solid character writing there.

...And we’ll never see her arc conclude.  Or Aria’s.  Or Ylienne’s, Isaac’s, Camille’s, or Reynard’s.  Damn, it just kills me to see a promising franchise die before its time, sometimes.

Aloy’s a pretty great protagonist, and I like the way she can go through several arcs of development through her journey, yet at the same time stay very true to the beliefs and personal codes that define her.  She’s exactly the kind of person that the spiritual-and-yet-not-reverent Horizon 0 Dawn needed to have as its central figure.  As for Gabby, she’s pretty much right up there with Marine in terms of quality--if there’s any proof of just how talented a character-writer Saint Bomber is, it’s that he could create not just 1, but 2 highly appealing, interesting, deep, and dynamic individuals in the same game who are exactly alike enough to have great chemistry, and yet also exactly dissimilar enough to have great chemistry and be their own distinct people.


Best RPG of 2021
Winner: Horizon 0 Dawn
Every now and then, the hype for a popular game is, indeed, accurate, and that’s certainly the case with H0D.  An epic, purposeful story of searching to understand oneself by one’s origins, as an individual, as a culture, and as a species, with great themes of tribal culture, beliefs and spirituality, a game with a love of the natural world and with a talent for telling stories after their fact, following a compelling protagonist through a carefully, masterfully, and lovingly crafted world whose lore only gets more interesting as you delve deeper into it...Horizon 0 Dawn is an excellent RPG, from all angles.  I mean, hell, you know you’ve got a winner when you can take an idea like “hunters vs. robot dinosaurs” and work out the details well enough that said idea actually becomes an intellectual and well-reasoned conclusion with a lot of deep concepts behind it.  Horizon 0 Dawn is a damn triumph, and that’s all there is to it.

Runners-Up: Celestian Tales 2; The Outer Worlds; Quantum Entanglement
I’m gonna say it, and I don’t care what you think of me: I may objectively recognize Horizon 0 Dawn as the greatest game I’ve played this year, but the one I love the most is without any question Quantum Entanglement.  Saint Bomber knows how to play one’s heart perfectly, the game’s got an intriguing premise, it’s amazing for how well it can generate a frightening mood through no more than RPG Maker assets, I’m a sucker for a great romance, and the damn thing is so intelligent and fascinating to consider.  Quantum Entanglement has its heart, mind, and soul in perfect alignment to affect its audience on a profound level, and it’s fucking great.

The Outer Worlds is a great RPG, with several appealing characters, a good setting and premise that are interesting to explore, and a highly worthwhile purpose.  Even if it doesn’t have the power behind it to live up to the Fallout level of quality that it clearly reaches for, it’s a damned worthy attempt, and it certainly surpasses several of the other works it most significantly patterns itself after, such as Borderlands and, in some regards, Firefly/Serenity.****  Finally, Celestian Tales 2 is a strong continuation of an already solid RPG, and I’ve really enjoyed its story that manages to both be personal, and a larger tale of the events that shape a nation over the course of a decade.  I don’t think I’ve had a really decent Suikoden-esque RPG to enjoy since Suikoden 3,***** and it’s been nice to have that gap filled a bit with Celestian Tales.


List Changes
Greatest Romances: I have not yet added Gabby x Marine to this list, but only because it occurs to me that it’s probably high time I expand it.  Although rest assured, Marine and Gabby would be worthy of the list even if I didn’t; hell, I could revert it back to a mere 5 entries and they’d still be making the cut with room to spare.  But yeah, expect to see this old gal make a return come the new year which properly displays this year’s winning couple.
Greatest Vehicles: This one’s not changing, actually, but I’d like to use this moment to air my grievances about that fact.  Horizon 0 Dawn absolutely should have made it onto this list.  But nooooooo, Guerilla Games had to go and rob itself of the victory.  Here we have a game full of awesome titanic robot animals that you can take control of...and the only 3 you can actually ride are just some stupid basic bitch quadrapeds.  Yeah, because when you show me a game with giant awesome mecha-versions of sabre-toothed tigers and grizzly bears and fucking tyrannosaurus rexes with shoulder cannons, the only one I want to ride atop is a goddamn tin horse.  How novel.
We could have been riding giant mecha-gators across the fields and plains, guys.  Could’ve had a goddamn alligator android as our steed.  A titanic steel crocodilian at our beck and fucking call, and they blew it.  Shame on you, Guerilla Games.  You stole seventh place from yourself.******
I swear, if I don’t get a rideable robot snapping turtle at least in the sequel...
Most Annoying Characters: I think I may have to expand this list next year, too.  Because while the gatekeeper of that list, Lita from Atelier Iris 1, is still more irritating, there is no goddamn way I can accept having a list of the most annoying dipshits in RPGs that doesn’t have Pokemon Generation 8’s Leon on it.
...Wendala of Laxius Force, too, for that matter.
Most Needed Sequels: Celestian Tales 1 + 2 have been added; Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch has been removed.  Sorry, Mark, you many meme-mentioning main man.
Pokemon: Worst Pokemon list expanded to 7 places, with Alcremie and Appletun being added.  Wooloo has been added to the Best Pokemon list; Dialga has been removed.  Sorry, you dramatically designed dragon distinct to Diamond.



And that’s 2021 in the bag.  It’s been 1 of the tougher years I’ve had, and I daresay the world at large had a rough go of it, too.  Hopefully it’s been decent enough for the rest of you, but either way, here’s hoping that 2022 will be a bit smoother.  At the very least, I think I’ve got things lined up a bit better going forward for more time to play RPGs, so maybe the rant I post a year from today will have a few more subjects to consider.

As always, I’d like to close the year out with some heartfelt thanks.  Thanks to my sister, and to my friend Ecclesiastes, for being constant, helpful, and incredibly patient editors, sounding boards, and ideas-men, without whom this damn blog would be a complete disaster.  Another thanks to my friend Angel Adonis, for being ready and willing to act as a backup editor on the fly, and indulging an old man on the matter.

Huge, heartfelt thanks to my patrons, Dan Brandt and Ecclesiastes (yes, that’s double thanks to you, sir, don’t spend it all in 1 place).  It’s no less a source of pleased amazement now than ever that you guys actually value my blathering idiocy enough to support me this way.  Seriously.  Thank you, so much!

And lastly, as always, thanks to all of you, who read these rants.  It never stops being gratifying to know that I’m not just shouting fruitlessly into the void, here.  May our 2022 be an awesome year that brings a new and wonderful wealth of joy to us all!

Or at least just doesn’t suck quite so hard as usual.
























* Professional peers, that is.  In terms of talent and skill, of course, Asimov has no peers.


** Have you ever noticed how often comedy and jokes exist in a vacuum within games, shows, movies, etc.?  Characters never laugh or even smile when someone does or says something funny; it’s always solely for the audience to react to, or even just acknowledge.  Always struck me as weird.


*** Yeah, I’ve fallen a bit down the V-Tuber hole, what of it?  I told you, this year I finished watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.  I need something colorful, cute, and fun to take its place, alright?


**** Yeah, I said it.  Whatcha gonna do about it, Whedon-worshippers?


***** Not that I didn’t enjoy Suikoden Tierkreis, mind you, but the whole perspective of the conflict-as-a-part-of-the-character-of-the-nation-itself thing was highly different in that title.

...Also, it’s possible that I HAVE played a decent Suikoden-esque RPG between Suikoden 3 and Celestian Tales, but have managed to forget it.  I find that I’m managing to forget a lot more of the RPGs I’ve played, and the stuff within them, nowadays than I used to.  I optimistically hope this is just because of the number that I’ve played being too damn big at this point, and not a sign of mental deterioration as I age.  But I have a bad feeling about it, not gonna lie.


****** Don’t you go trying to argue the logistics with me.  Real-life crocs will give each other piggy-back rides all the damn time, and Aloy’s like a third the size of these things.  There was 0 feasible cause for us not to be able to ride into town on a pimped-out Megaman X villain.

General RPG Music Lists 4: See You Bass Cowboy

Well, all, it's been a lot of fun, but just as all good things must come to an end, so, too, do all mildly diverting things conclude.  Except for The Simpsons, it seems.  But as Fox isn't using money to perpetually animate this blog into a sullen corpse of entertainment past, today we end our exploration into my favorite music of the Role Playing Game genre.

So, to date, these rants have covered Battle themes, Setting backgrounds, and Mood music, which covers most of the major bases.  There's really only 1 significant area we haven't explored so far: the melodies related to the nuts and bolts of the medium.  Basically, today we're going to be covering all the music in RPGs that's a part of the process, the engine, the structure of RPGs.  This'll be tunes that relate specifically to the medium of video games, the signature elements and features of RPGs in particular, and the process of storytelling.  If an RPG were a stage play, then Battle music would be the actions, Setting music would be the props, Mood music would be the actors and dialogue, and the stuff we look at today would be the lighting, stage devices, special effects, and overall management of the play's course.  It might not be the most glamorous and thanked role, but the stage manager is an indispensable part of the process, and the musical equivalent for RPGs is just as vital.

So here we go: the Tools of the Trade music that I love most in RPGs!

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 Skin Legume-y Tonsils song, "Crossroads of the Heart (Help I'm Trapped in a Soundtrack Factory Remix)", which played during the ending, then just assume that I call it Skin Legume-y Tonsils Ending, as that's the game of origin and its actual function.

Also Note: As with the last couple times, if a category doesn't have an A+ song within it, I'll just do a little opinion piece on my favorite of the ones it does have.



MAIN THEME

How better to start today than with the Main Theme?  This is the song you most often will first hear in an RPG, as it usually (although not always) plays on the game's title screen, or perhaps during a pre-game opening.  This is a pretty standard asset for just about any form of media possessing an audible component, and I probably don't need to really go into detail on it--Main Themes are there to be the melody equivalent of a product's logo, something you hear and instantly associate with its game, movie, show, or whatever.  You might not be able to say which 60s era cartoon a certain background jingle happens to belong to, for example, but you sure as hell know the opening song for The Flintstones when you hear it.  An intense, industrial pulsing background sound could come from any number of movies, but the signature theme of The Terminator franchise is immediately recognizable.  And of course, there's no way you could mistake the Main Theme of Indiana Jones for that of any other movie--you hear that tune start, and you just immediately know that you're watching Jurassic Park, I mean Star Wars, I mean Superman, I mean E.T., have I mentioned how thoroughly unimpressive a 1-trick pony I find John Williams to be?

Theoretically, this song should essentially summarize the ideas, atmosphere, purpose, and/ore heart of the work it's attached to.  And it does!  Sometimes.  Occasionally.  Honestly, though, most RPG Main Themes sort of just seem like they're there in their own right, no more or less personally attached to their product than they would be to any other given title in the genre.  Similarly inconsistent is just how significantly involved the Main Theme is in the game itself.  There are RPGs where you may never hear the Main Theme outside of the title screen, calling further into question just how signature it can really be said to be to the game.  On the other hand, there are other RPGs that use their main theme as an appropriate backdrop to pivotal moments in their story, and still others that sprinkle it in more frequently.  Hell, Fire Emblem 16 is so inexplicably enamored with this 1 sequence of exactly 13 notes that I'm pretty sure, no lie, that at least 60% of its entire soundtrack bases itself off of it.  Nethys help you if you don't happen to like that little ditty while you play FE16; it's gonna pursue you everywhere.

There's a lot in this category here, but it's actually kind of surprising that there isn't more, really, given that probably about 90% of RPGs have a Main Theme, and this is sort of THE first and foremost piece of music associated with the game.  I mean, as of the time of writing this, I've played just a couple RPGs over 400, and less than 20 of them are represented below--that seems surprising when this music is theoretically the most important one in the whole lot.

B+
- Fallout 4 Main Theme
- Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon Main Theme
- Grandia 2 Main Theme
- Sakura Wars 5 Main Theme

A-
- Chrono Cross Main Theme
- Chrono Trigger Main Theme
- Dark Cloud 1 Main Theme
- Final Fantasy 10 Main Theme
- Final Fantasy Series Main Theme (FF6 is my favorite iteration, but they all work pretty well)
- Live-A-Live Main Theme
- Mr. Saitou Main Theme
- Whisper of a Rose Main Theme
- Secret of Mana Main Theme (Link avoids unnecessary intro)
- Ys 1 Main Theme

A
- AeternoBlade Series Main Theme
- Breath of Fire 4 Main Theme
- Neverwinter Nights 1 Witch's Wake Main Theme

A+
- Celestian Tales 1 Main Theme
Calming, bittersweet, mournful, laden with the promise of a story that may take as much as it gives...the slow, comfortable finesse of this thoughtful tune never fails to deepen my mental state and give me a pleasant sense of longing.  Love it!



BEGINNING

While the Main Theme pretty commonly doubles as music for an RPG's opening cinematics, that's not always the case--plenty of times, a game's intro will have its own tune independent of the title's signature song, and that's what this category's for.  Additionally, there are sometimes sections and events within the story of an RPG that qualify as beginnings of sorts, such as the music that transitions from a prologue to the main story of a game (heck, just a music representing the prologue as a whole), or a tune that introduces a new chapter in the work, that sort of thing.  It's a lesser category when Main Themes so often pull double-duty, but Beginning music's still a worthy and important component to the soundtrack--first impressions matter, and can buy extra hours of an audience's engagement to give a story the time it needs to properly unfold, so a great opener can significantly contribute to the product as a whole.

When not trying to coordinate with a specific prologue scene, Beginning music generally trends 1 of 2 ways: either it's a heavy, melodious, and slightly mystical piece that's out to intrigue and imply the gravity of the game to come, or it's energetically promising (but not cheery), out to energize and imply the grandness of the adventure that has begun.  They both work, really.

B+
- Live-A-Live Demon King Prelude
- Wild Arms 1 Intro

A-
- Chrono Cross Intro
- Crimson Shroud Prologue
- Legend of Dragoon Intro
- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 1 Intro

A
- Secret of Evermore Intro
I really like how moody and mysterious the soundtrack of Secret of Evermore is overall (even if the game itself really, really isn't), and this is a representation of it at its best.

A+



CHARACTER CREATION

What?  Don't be ridiculous.  Of course the idea of creating an entire song just for the screen in which you select and/or customize your protagonist is excessive and silly.  Ridiculous, I say!  I mean, why would you need a whole other tune devoted to such a small part of the playtime of a game, right?  Certainly no one spends too long at the beginning of any given game fine-tuning every tiny detail of their avatar's history, class, abilities, heritage, affinity, and appearance.  Certainly I never spent over 2 goddamn hours in the Character Creation screen of Pathfinder: Kingmaker which might have damaged my psyche had the background music not been really, really good.

Certainly not.

B+

A-

A

A+
- Pathfinder: Kingmaker Character Creation
Some of my love for this song is probably akin to a self-inflicted Stockholm Syndrome (look, fuck you, I really wanted to get my damn Aasimar monk queen-to-be right, alright?), but you gotta admit, the patient, quiet beauty of this song, promising spectacular adventures and stories to come in its gentle, classic tabletop manner, is pretty damn nice, right?  It's like Inon Zur's condensed every heartfelt, purposeful fantasy track he's ever composed into 1 song.  I so hope that Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous uses this again for their character creator, too...because let's face it, I'm probably gonna wind up incarcerating myself in the character creator again.



CHARACTER

Once the preliminary stages are over and done with, and an RPG has properly begun, 1 of the earliest tunes you'll likely come across, besides the Setting music, is the Character theme.  This is a song that's specifically devoted to a single character, which is meant to embody and put forth the essence of that individual's personality, story, and significance.  Character music tends to play whenever the associated actor is saying or doing something of signature significance to them, or during the major moments of the story devoted to the character's arc and development.  Frog's heroic theme in Chrono Trigger, for example, tends to play when the amphibious swordsman is in the midst of being an honorable badass, thus playing up to his core character traits, while Aeris's affectionate but sad melody is famous for its presence at the conclusion of her story.  Occasionally, a Character theme also doubles as a higher-priority type of music, which is why we've seen a few of them scattered around in the previous lists (CT's Magus's theme was better categorized as Battle music, for example, while Arc the Lad 3's Alec's theme was too clearly a Determination song not to list it as such), but in all other cases, songs devoted to the expression of a single character go here.

Obviously, there's no generalized statement to make on this category.  Character music is as varied and creative as the casts that it accompanies, and that's as it should be.  This genre might be the most creative and unrestricted I've seen in terms of the casts of its games, and while maybe sometimes it goes a little far, it's generally an endearing trait of RPGs that you're as likely to have a break-dancing ladies' man robot and a cowardly winged iguana on your team as you are to recruit an average human being, so it's good that the music attached to them all is equally nonrestrictive and malleable.

B+
- Arc the Lad 2 Gruga
- CrossCode Jet
- Final Fantasy 10 Auron
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Riku
- Kingdom Hearts Series Kairi
- Omori Mari
- Shin Megami Tensei 5 Tao

A-
- A Dragon's ReQuest Argon
- Chrono Trigger Schala
- Knights of the Old Republic 1 Bastila
- Lunar 2 Leo
- Planescape: Torment Fall-From-Grace
- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 Al Saiduq
- Tales of Berseria Eizen
- Wild Arms 5 Avril

A
- Lufia 2 Iris
- Mana Khemia 1 Isolde
- Threads of Fate Claire
- Rakuen The Boy

A+
- Planescape: Torment Annah
I may not actually personally like Annah too terribly much, but holy crap is her theme music lovely.



CONVERSATION

What are characters, though, if they aren't talking to each other?  Although sadly not nearly as common as it should be, there are many RPGs which set a special little between-time aside during an adventure, during which party members and other significant members of the cast have a chance to rest, relax, and converse.  Sometimes it's a simple periodic bit of dialogue between battles, as in Children of Zodiarcs, sometimes it's those wonderful, charming dinners in the Grandia series, and sometimes it's a case of the team gathered about a campsite after a long day of adventuring, as seen in Dragon Age 1.  This can be a scenario which only plays out once (such as the iconic late-night discussion that the party has in Chrono Trigger during which Robo speaks about the theoretical Entity), but most often these talks are a periodic part of the game.  They're great vehicles for character development (heck, it's practically the ONLY tool for that in some Fire Emblems), as well as a formation of a general team dynamic within the cast, and I tend to love these scenarios.

Not every game gives these scenes their own music, but when an RPG does create a devoted Conversation tune, it tends to be either cheerful and relaxed, or empathetic, quiet, and meaningful, depending on whether the interactions of the cast during these times are of the "everyone grab a beer and some chicken and just shoot the shit" variety, or more of a "let's open our hearts and souls in the quiet of the night as we watch the flicker of a campfire, my friend" deal.  Unsurprisingly, my favorites tend more to the latter style.

B+

A-

A
- Legaia 2 Camp

A+
- Children of the Zodiarcs Conversation
Reflective and poignant, laced with regret and past tragedy, this moving tune is the perfect companion to conversations between the major actors of Children of Zodiarc's drama of suffering and the ways in which revenge perpetuates the kind of tragedy it was born from.  A poetically painful song to match the interactions over which it plays, this.



WORLD MAP

At first, I had expected to list World Map music as part of the Settings group, but when I stopped to think about it, its relevance to the soundtrack and to the RPG itself isn't so much as a place, as it is a function.  World Maps are really more like a limbo between actual settings than locations themselves, and a device of the gaming format that doesn't generally exist in other mediums, the way a regular Setting would.  Likewise, their place in the score for an RPG is less about the World Map as its own entity, and more about characterizing the adventure as a whole, and doing so to propel the heroes and player onward--they seem to be given to pretty, wistful fantasy tunes, and/or encouraging on-our-way-to-adventure ditties.

Also, let's face it, that Settings music rant was way too big already, so any excuse to trim a category from it is a good thing.

Not that it always has to be a WORLD Map, incidentally.  Any equivalent works--underworld, galaxy, point-and-click like in Final Fantasy 10, regional variants of world map themes, it all gets chucked in here.

I frequently really like World Map music.  It tends to have a lot of the heart and soul of the game contained within it, and have a nice mix of calming and emboldening themes that somehow connect very well to each other.  Some of the more beautiful music in a game tends to be its World Map theme(s), and it's probably my favorite type of this Tools of the Trade music.

B+
- Beautiful Desolation World
- Chrono Cross Home World
- Final Fantasy 6 World
- Final Fantasy 7 World
- Tales of Phantasia World

A-
- Dragon Quest 4 World
- Final Fantasy 3 Ocean
- Final Fantasy 4 World
- Terranigma World

A
- Chrono Cross Another World
- Chrono Trigger 1000 AD
- Legend of Dragoon Tiberoa
- Terranigma Underworld

A+
- Justice Chronicles World
If there is anything in this world that can prove my theory that RPG music is frequently at a whole other, far higher tier of overall quality than the genre it's attached to, it's probably the fact that I have just awarded an A+ to a song from a Kemco title.  But goddammit, I'm not taking it back, this bit is entrancing and really cool!

- Legend of Dragoon Mille Seseau
This is the kind of world map music that makes you hope that the game will never progress to another continent, because the idea of no longer getting to hear this every time you exit an area is tragic.  Just love the quiet, relaxing vibes here.

- Mass Effect 1 Galaxy Map
There has never and probably will never be a better, more lovely representation of the scope, beauty, and grandeur inherent to the concept of space travel.

- Shin Megami Tensei 1 World
I don't know exactly what it is that makes this tune so superlative to me, but I do know that I absolutely love it.



VEHICLE

Airships, boats, submarines, tamed dragons (both biological and robotic), horses, sandships, tanks, giant mechas, rafts, airplanes (including crashed ones that somehow make good boats through shallow water?  The hell was up with the Tiny Bronco, anyway?), whales, spaceships, whales that are spaceships, helicopters, motorcycles, giant birds, regular birds, tiny birds, flightless birds, birds that used to be people, birds that still are people, just a hell of a lot of birds in general really, buses, time machines, sassy witches on brooms, giant ants, entire floating islands, and for 1 brief, embarrassing moment, this stupid fucking thing, RPG vehicles are very nearly as diverse as the casts that ride them--because trust me, I could keep going.  As ubiquitous in RPGs as they are in real life, it's only natural that the vehicles that are almost inevitably eventually required to continue a quest come with their own music.  You know, because without a musical accompaniment, you'd surely forget that you're currently riding a cybernetic war dragon that shoots goddamn missiles and lasers.

Vehicle Music generally adapts itself to the type of vehicle it's associated with--a goofy, chipper tune for those absurd Final Fantasy chocobos, a free and courageous theme for an airship, a hearty and adventurous song for a seafaring vessel,* etc.  The 1 rule that seems inviolable is that, barring extreme plot circumstances, the tune must convey, to some degree, a sense of sallying forth on a journey.  Surprisingly, considering the quantity, there's not a whole lot of these that stand out to me enough to warrant a spot here, though, a fact which I don't really have any explanation for.  Vehicle music just always seems to hit a "good, but not great" mark, for me.

...Oh, and cars!  Almost forgot about cars.  Man, it's kinda crazy that the most obscenely common vehicle in the real world by a wide margin is so rare in RPGs as to almost be forgotten entirely.

B+

A-
- Golden Sun 1 Ship
It's a little brash and in-your-face, but this music really just perfectly captures the feeling of adventure and excitement as you voyage across the sea; you can practically taste the brine on your lips and the pitch of the ship below your feet as it rushes forth against the crashing waves.

- Lunar 1 Airship
- Star Ocean 3 Space Ship

A

A+



MENU

It's uncommon, but by no means unknown, for an RPG to have a spot on its soundtrack devoted specifically for the act of navigating Menus.  Most of the time, it's a situation wherein there's a separate, substantial section of the work that exists outside the actual narrative in which the player can experience other content.  Like, say, the second disc that came with the Playstation 1 re-release of Chrono Trigger, for example.  Although, on rare occasions, there's also a separate theme for standard, in-game menus, too.  It might seem like an unnecessary or even indulgent thing, to create a piece of music all on its own for the sake of just selecting options, and I guess it sort of is, but on the other hand, navigating options on a menu is the primary method of "gameplay", if such it can truly be called, in RPGs, so really, one could instead wonder why more RPGs don't have devoted menu tunes, considering how vital menus are to them as a whole.

Menu music doesn't really have too difficult a job.  There's no feeling or storytelling act it's responsible for conveying, no confines of environment or situation it must adhere to.  My assumption can only be that the sole directive for it is, "Provide some inoffensive noise so the player doesn't sit in uncomfortable silence for the whole time they're in the menus."  Which can be important, I suppose; just imagine trying to read the entirety of the lore-dump archive Xenosaga 3 provides in lieu of an actual game to explain how you got from the end of the second game to this start of this one in complete silence without something relatively soothing in the background to counteract all the ridiculously over-complicated grandiose nonsense you're being bombarded with.  Still, it does kind of make this the hold music of the RPG soundtrack.  But hey, a bit of it's still really good, it turns out!

B+

A-
- Deltarune File Select
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Mission Mode Menu

A
- Chrono Trigger Extras Menu
It's a credit to Tsuyoshi Sekito and Yasunori Mitsuda that this theme, created for the Playstation 1 rerelease of CT, so perfectly captures the aesthetic and quality of Chrono Trigger's music as a whole that it not only fits right into the soundtrack like it was always meant to be there, but also actually manages to embody a retrospective spirit and joy of the game.  It's the perfect accompaniment to an Extras Menu, whose function is primarily accessed and appreciated post-game, and lovely to listen to on its own.

A+



PIRATES

Sometimes pirates exist.  I don't know what else to say about it, really.  Aside from the fact that, in my opinion, Pirate music tends to not be very good in RPGs, even though other mediums seem to do well enough with it.

B+
- Final Fantasy 5 Pirates
It's a pirate song that sounds good, and also like pirates.  Look, what do you want from me?  You can hear this thing as well as I can.

A-

A

A+



CUTSCENE

RPGs from the Playstation 1 on have been very fond of cinematic breaks outside the player's control through which they show a scene in the story that's simply too important or cool to be restricted to normal graphics and modes of interaction.**  And when that cinematic shit goes down, it needs music to sell it, as much as any other scene in the game--arguably more than most, in fact.

Cutscene music isn't so much meant to be a background element as it is a participant in an active, ongoing, real-time scenario.  Most RPG tunes are designed with the idea that they're playing over a scene whose time varies substantially (some players may spend more time in a location than others, and of course, during story events, everyone will be reading through the text boxes at a different speed), so they're a broader, works-for-however-long-it-needs-to kind of melody.  Cutscene songs, on the other hand, have a specific, set time in which they must play, and they generally are supposed to be coordinated to what's actually happening, moment for moment, in the cinema.  I'm not sure whether that's a more or less difficult prospect for creating a song, but it does tend to make for a pretty different, more in-the-moment feeling category.

Interestingly, while this is true of all RPG music for me to some degree, Cutscene music is the category in which my level of enjoyment for it can be most influenced by the game content over which it plays.  For example, if I were strictly judging Leliana's Song below based solely on my enjoyment of the song itself and nothing more, it'd be a B+, not an A-.  But intrinsically linked to the song, for me, is the quiet, gentle scene in which it plays, as we see each member of the Grey Warden's party sit at their camp and react to the lovely song echoing through the night, some moved to reflection, others (Morrigan) stubbornly denying in silence that it moves them (she does have quite a talent at declining every attempt to give her any depth or character development).  As I said, my love for a game's moments is a factor to some degree for just about all the music I've shared in these lists, but with these songs below being so intrinsically tied to specific scenes (and usually substantial ones, at that, to be a cutscene to begin with), it's a stronger factor here.

B+
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Byrne to the Rescue

A-
- Dragon Age 1 Leliana's Song
- Final Fantasy 7 Remake Roche's Defeat
- Final Fantasy 9 Silver Dragon Battle
- Final Fantasy 9 Zidane Alone
- Xenosaga 2 Chase

A
- Xenoblade Chronicles 1 Dunban's Return
- Xenosaga 1 KOS-MOS's First Battle
If there's any song that encompasses how epic, awesome, and promising both Xenosaga 1 and KOS-MOS herself are, it's this tune.  Forget what actually did happen to the series, forget what they reduced KOS-MOS to in the sequels--listen to this bracing, grand musical depiction of a larger-than-life heroine coming to the rescue and showing off why she's the most kick-ass entity in the galaxy and enjoy.

A+


 
MINIGAMES

Fuck you, RPGs.

B+

A-

A

A+



TIME

This category primarily concerns temporal displacement, whether to the past or future.  A fairly common device by this point in RPGs (and any other media, really), time travel has an interesting place in the musical landscape.  In most cases, going to the past or future of an RPG's world will result in music designed for the setting itself, and that setting just happens to be in a different time period, which means that it more falls under Setting themes.  Sometimes, however, the time period you land in really is defined by the fact that it's in the past/future, more than the actual place.  The Magic of Scheherazade, for example, has setting music which varies from place to place in the present, but when in the past, a single tune generally functions as 1 large catch-all theme, so in this case, it's more of a Time music than a standard Setting theme.

And yes, true, the past IS technically a Setting anyway, BUT, the thing is, Time music can also be about the act of traveling through time, rather than the actual destination.  Chrono Trigger, for example, has a separate tune for going through a Gate, and Tales of Phantasia similarly has a tune (which made it onto the list below) that plays while Dhaos is mucking about in the time stream after getting his pretentious, shallowly-characterized ass handed to him during the game's prologue.  That kind of music is definitely not a Setting, and I don't really see a point to separating Time into 2 categories when it's already pretty small and niche, so, here it goes.

Anyway, this category tends to do best when it's weighty, purposeful, and just a touch inscrutable, mirroring the importance and unknowns we attach to the past and future.  Sometimes it's somewhat more scenario-based, if the trip to a new time period is defined by a specific mood or goal, but overall, this category gravitates to the mystical and softly poignant.  Which I'm sure you've observed, by now, is exactly to my tastes.

B+
- The Magic of Scheherazade Past

A-
- Okami Past Kamiki Village
- Tales of Phantasia Stream of Time
It's mysterious, soothing, and yet expectant, a good companion to the idea of moving through the rivers of time itself.  Very pleasant.

A

A+



MISCELLANEOUS

The catch-all category of the catch-all rant, this spot is for all those songs that just haven't managed to fit anywhere else over the course of 4 entire list rant taxonomies.  Any song whose cataloguing perplexes me, but is too good not to share, it goes right here.

B+
- Disco Elysium Mercenary Tribunal
- Fire Emblem 9 Mission Mode

A-
- Child of Light Aurora Grows Up
- Chrono Cross Fateful Night
- Millennium 4 Waiting for Bokden
- Nippon Ichi Games Psycho Burgundy
- Okami Entering the Ark of Yamato
- Sweet Lily Dreams Sea Battle

A
- Dragon Fantasy 2 Ogden's Dream

A+
- Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 Final Days
When the end is not over and done with, but rather a long and lingering thing, regretful yet punctuated by the meetings and farewells of those whose lives you have touched forever, and the clinging, sad, yet overwhelmingly joyful knowledge that it's the spring of their lives even as you've reached the winter of yours...at that time, there is this song to take you through its course.  Beautiful stuff.



NIGHT BEFORE

It's been a long, eventful journey that has changed all who experienced it, through which its heroes have found themselves, raised armies, and campaigned tirelessly for what's right.  Now, all is staked on a final showdown the next day, through which the world will forever be changed.  And so, on the eve of the last battle, the hero(ine) of our story contemplates all that has come and all that shall be, and has final, inspiring words with allies, before retiring for this last fateful evening.

Basically, this is the Suikoden category.  Sometimes other games do this, too, and good for them, because the quiet eve before the last conflict is a very powerful opportunity for the last cementing of character development, reflection of a journey's meaning, and overall deepening of how affecting a game's story will be.  But no matter who else makes use of this narrative tool, it'll still always be Suikoden's special baby to me.

B+

A-
- Millennium 5 Night Before the Tournament

A
- Suikoden Series Night Before the Decisive Battle
This is the iconic song of this category, and it's a lovely, significant piece that perfectly captures the quiet, purpose-heavy eve before the final, climactic conclusion to a long campaign which has tested the convictions, camaraderie, and character of every actor in its play.  There's beauty, finality, and hope embodied within this, and it's the perfect theme to accompany a final round through the castle to exchange last words with each of one's companions and friends.

A+



CONCLUSION

Just as not all Beginning songs are Main Themes, not all tracks signaling the end of something are actual Ending music.  Whether it be a certain chapter wrapping up, the completion of a character's personal story arc, the end of some in-game event, the finish of a DLC, or something else of that nature, there are times when an RPG has to indicate the termination of something with a song, which isn't, in fact, the end of the game itself.  That's what this category's all about, the endings that aren't actually the Ending.

Obviously, this kind of music is all about closure.  What form that takes varies a little--the wrap-up of a character's personal journey is going to sound different, for example, from the completion of an episodic chapter of a tactical military campaign--but the gist is usually the same.  Conclusion music is usually satisfying, purposeful, and designed to indicate accomplishment, and sometimes the nature of that accomplishment.  A good Conclusion tune should make you feel like something important was experienced and achieved, and ready for the transition to the next step of the adventure.

B+
- Gurumin Level Complete

A-
- Disco Elysium Debriefing
- Mass Effect 3 Anti-Shepard Defeated
- The World Ends with You Game's Conclusion

A
- Pathfinder: Kingmaker Personal Journey's Completion

A+
- Mass Effect 3 Return to Duty
As the final DLC of Mass Effect 3, Citadel was our last experience with this marvelous universe, and this final moment, at which all of the teammates that we've grown to love gather by Shepard and prepare to return once more to the fight, could not be better symbolized with this quiet, beautiful melody that bids a loving farewell to the 1 of the greatest science fiction adventures ever created.



ENDING

And so we come to our final category, of our final rant.  Ending music would be the the themes that take us out of the game, the songs that play after the final boss is defeated and the last moments of the game's story play out.  Goodbyes said, communities revisited, memories of those who fell along the way recalled, credits rolled, retrospective visions of the future had, Ending music has 1 of the simplest jobs in theory and hardest jobs in practice in a soundtrack: give closure to the game and make the player feel satisfied with what has occurred.  Wrap things up the way the game's meant to be finished.  Basic in concept, but of course, in practice, it must be quite a task to come up with a tune that manages to juggle the weight of the full experience of the game behind it and the (usually) hopeful, relieved vision of what shall now come of the heroes' victory, all the while staying true to the overall feel of the work, AND often having to coincide with the events of the ending's sequence as faithfully as Cutscene music has to.  Frankly, considering how often RPG creators manage to horrendously bungle the far easier ending task of just writing a halfway decent bit of closure to their game, it's almost a wonder that Ending music isn't generally a hot mess.  But then, I once again put forth my suspicion that the composers who make the music for RPGs are by and large a hell of a lot more qualified for their job than a lot of the writers in the industry.  That no doubt seems a harsh critique, but I'll be damned if I've ever heard a musical disaster the equivalent of Mass Effect 3's disgraceful ending.

B+
- Dark Half Ending
- The Outer Worlds Ending
- Pokemon Generation 5 Ending

A-
- Baldur's Gate 2 Throne of Baal Ending
- Breath of Fire 2 Normal Ending
- Defender's Quest 1 Bad Ending
- Radiant Historia 1 Ending
- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers Ending
- Undertale 1 Normal Ending

A
- Shin Megami Tensei 4-2 Ending
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q1 Ending
- Undertale 1 Freedom

A+
- Chrono Trigger Ending
As it does so often, Chrono Trigger sets the bar.  This is that which an Ending song should aspire to be, the sublime musical embodiment of conclusion, closure, and contentment.  What more is there to say?  This is the song which captures the scope and soul of the adventure it closes, and leaves you feeling fulfilled, accomplished, and happy for the story and characters you've experienced.  It's truly great, and it's everything it should be.



NOTE: 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.



Phew!  Well, we've covered it all, now--battles and emotions, places and people, beginnings and endings.  From start to finish, we've covered the whole RPG soundtrack, so this is the end.  Hope you enjoyed it!

...

* Airships and regular boats, incidentally, are the major reason why the Sky and Ocean settings have so comparatively few spots in RPG soundtracks, in spite of their frequent relevance--because most of the time, your presence in/on either is defined by the vehicle through which you're traversing it.


** In theory, at least.  In practice, a heck of a lot of FMV/CG/Whatever cutscenes are anything but vital or cool, especially during the era in which they originated.  I mean, how much of various RPGs' cinematic budget was thoroughly wasted on location establishing shots?  And staring at slow-moving wall carvings or scroll paintings or whatever while someone narrates backstory?  And don't even get me started on the stupid boat song in Lunar 1.