LogFAQs > #898959518

Last Surprise
Banbard ~piano arrange~
Terrible Monster Attacking Crew!

Last Surprise is for sure not my favorite Persona song. It's not bad, since I do like most of the song, but I'm not a fan of the vocals during the verses which noticeably brings it down. The chorus is pretty great though, and the ability to do All-Out Attacks to the "YOU'LL NEVER SEE IT COMING" grants it like a million "in-context points". Either way Confronting Myself is not something I'd vote over it. Having trouble pinpointing exactly why but it just doesn't do much for me.

Bleh. I don't like either of these songs and for similar reasons, which is that I think both of them have the wrong instrumentation for the type of songs their trying to be. The Trials Grow Complex has the melody of an emotional ballade, but the instrumentation and tone quality says it's trying to be a heavy, overbearing synthpop song or something like that, and it doesn't really work at all for me. My complaint for Banbard is less critical, but the instrument/sound playing the top melody line specifically just doesn't sound right to me. Like the twangy slurring nature of it almost makes it sound like a folk song or something, when the rest of the instrumentation and the way the melody is composed says "aggressive electronic dance music". As I said this is a less major complaint which is why I'm voting it, but it does bother me a pretty reasonable amount.

Terrible Monster Attacking Crew is great! This is one of those nominations I wanted to support but couldn't, and I wish it made it into the contest. It's got a good overall tense feel while interspersing some really interesting melodic lines (see 0:52-1:09 for example) that I like a lot. Basically it does a good job mixing things up and not feeling repetitive. Feeling repetitive isn't something I always think is a problem, but it's much more likely to be one for this style of music than for others, and that's also a pitfall I feel a lot of RPG battle themes fall into which this one avoids very well. Unfortunately I don't really like anything about it's opposition. The melody of Patchouli Stage 3 is one I find dull, and I also have significant problems with the instrumentation. (In this case it's more just "I don't think it sounds good at all", as opposed to being the wrong style like in match 2.)

Terrible Monster Attacking Crew > Last Surprise > Confronting Myself > Banbard > The Trials Grow Complex > Patchouli Stage 3
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Congratulations to BK_Sheikah00, this year's guru to achieve contest enlightenment!