LogFAQs > #899002151

Confronting Myself
Tokyo - The Trials Grow Complex
Terrible Monster Attacking Crew!

Confronting Myself opens pretty aggressively with an ominous-sounding chorus on top of a polymetric synth arpeggio and, later, a pretty complex cymbal/hi-hat line. It leaves an immediate impression and I like that a lot. The main synth (which has a pretty awesome portamento effect) spends some time laying down a wandering melody before going back to a motif that recurs throughout the soundtrack (at 1:12). Then it does the whole thing all over again, except with an added layer of chaos-- hard gating and distortion effects on the vocals, and static cutting in and out. It's a really cool effect that ups the intensity of the track. It's the details that really make this track tick, and make it an enjoyable listen for me as a whole.

Last Surprise is pretty rad and probably comes closest to capturing the kind of style I go in for from the Persona franchise (among tracks in this contest). Funk pretensions with an absurdly catchy toe-tapping chorus? Sign me up. The bassline isn't super complicated but it really puts in work here. Maybe the most infectious song I've heard in the contest so far.

I feel like Banbard relies too heavily on the four-on-the-floor kick and clap, piano line, and frenetic bagpipe melody (later) that's established at the start of the track. It gives the track a shot of energy from the beginning but wears on me by the end. A lot of this is the various instruments riffing on effectively a repeating four-bar bassline (it changes at 2:30!). Some of that is cool but I don't get a real sense of progression, or a hook for me to keep tuning in for the entirety of its four and a half minutes.

Everything I like about The Trials Grow Complex exists at its periphery-- I think the sound design in the first eight seconds of the track is really cool until it's overridden by the overbearing, remarkably mechanical-sounding drum. The synth playing the dominant melody is similarly uninteresting (along with the melody itself!) and is backed by a saw wave synth that sounds like it's a Sytrus preset or something. But then there's stuff like the moment of complete silence at 1:23-- startlingly effective given how loud the track has gotten by that point-- and the stuff starting at 2:35 brings focus back to more of the accompanying instrumentation again.

Terrible Monster Attacking Crew sounds like one of those standard rock-and-strings heart-pumping battle themes-- but it has several features that I think make it a fun listen. It feels substantially less predictable. Those synth arpeggio runs are great. That four-chord progression at 0:24 gets me every time-- that's really good. Those descending chromatic fourths-- also good! The change in direction to a more tense feel at 1:55. All of these little things make this really work, and not get repetitive or too predictable. It makes the parts that cleave to more conventional compositional tropes just that much more palatable, even enjoyable-- a return to normalcy. A very pleasant surprise from the side bracket.

Patchouli Stage 3 might have been a serviceable (if fairly unremarkable) platformer track were it not for that guitar. I really don't like guitar patches that sound like this. Aside from that, at least one of the drums used here feels too boomy in the sub-bass region, making it actually a little uncomfortable to listen to, and making it sound muddy in the lower registers. I don't know why this approach was taken to this track's sound design-- is it meant to be abrasive?

Great VGMC day-- not because I loved every track (I didn't), but because it was a pretty diverse mix of tracks with something to think and talk about for each.