LogFAQs > #962444440

81th
Game: Breath of Fire IV
Title: Bastard Sword
Composer: Yoshino Aoki
Nominator: @Haunter12O
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS-NPweV0YA

another Haunter12O's Top Half pick that is in the style of exactly everything i love about "this style"

in this topic and recent vgmcs, i've repeatedly said something along the lines of:

as a kid, my personal aesthetic was "inside a computer", but these days it's more commonly nature/fantasy that tickles my fancy. but what I got into as a result of that younger identity was "inside a computer" composition (MegaMan Battle Network being my most common example to cite of such a thing, and what heavily defined my concepts of musical identity that could evoke 'inside the computer'). i never grew out of the sound of that style of composition. HOWEVER since these days I'm more inclined to more like world/orchestral stuff than before, would rather have the natural world evoked: SO one of the best ways to maximize the appeal to me is if you had like MegaMan Battle Network style composition on orchestral instrumentation.

like i probably said some variant of this exact thing in 10 separate writeups this topic!

WELL, this song is what happens when LITERALLY the MMBN2/3/6 composer makes an orchestral fantasy song......! !!!!!!!!!

When this was first nommed for me i was startled when i saw the composer, but it made so much sense with what i'd just heard once i comprehended it. All those rapid mathematical arpeggios, dense chords, even has like certain fragments of Epic MegaMan Melodic Style. like imagine if this exact song was played back in grainy beeps with maybe chord samples on a gba. it would just be an mmbn3 song. i'm not even sure which sound i'd like more, but i just beat mmbn3 and have been playing starforce (which is also Yoshino Aoki), so i'm certainly pretty attuned to this composition style and quite in the mood for it!

This song punches me pretty hard with everything i want to hear out of a composition. especially that first dissonant brass swell at :04, it's implying part of a larger chill harmony but choosing some 'nasty' tense clusters to represent that thru and i LOVE that. it makes my heart glow and body float. my real favorite part is those rapid flute flutters tho, like at :09, they feel...SO so fucking MMBN it's almost hilarious, yet it successfully evokes a song that would be titled "bastard sword" in a game that has an album cover that shows a forest even with this exact said composition style. all that needed to change was the instrumentation and PRESTo we have gone from "PHANTASY STAR ONLINE 2 Original Sound Tracks Vol.6" to "PHANTASY STAR ONLINE 2 Original Sound Tracks Vol.7". congratulations!

(i still dont know which pso2 volume i like the most but btw haunter12o based on the songs u have nominated for me i think you might enjoy "vol.7 and 8" of pso2 specifically.

(example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jwE1s_yqSg
)
)

anyway i just picked a random megaman starforce song to click on to try making this comparison and the first one that popped up was this one that has like that exact same synth arpeggio sound from :30 of bastard sword, repeating over and over immediately haha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFyXb3_9xTA

i should probably listen to this soundtrack as well, i think this is the only song i've heard but i know/love breath of fire 3's music extremely well, and most of 5's pretty well too. but 4 slipped me by despite being a composer i love everything else i've heard by, and being within a series with a number of entries i'm super into musically. so many signs pointing to that i'd like it. This track is as good an introduction as any! adding to my list of soundtracks to listen to this year at this very moment.

(update: since last typing any part of this writeup, i have started listening to this ost and i'm about halfway through at the moment. what the FUCK is this soundtrack it's like 20x better than i even expected holy wow. i thought i'd like it but it's like way above the megaman material i already loved from aoki somehow. it also gives me a neat context for the sound sakimoto went for in breath of fire 5, if this was sorta clearly a reference point, definitely feels like a precursor to the musical worlds explored in that as a whole)