Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 2! SoftCol v linkage, AzureSadness v Fuse Man, Discovery v FurySparks

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to Video Game Music Contest 15, an annual celebration of the best of the best video game music according to the voters!

Important Links:
Bracket: https://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=474630
Contest info sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16XAaBMDuUnQ4c5AxQNL9ZhvD7VG5kQyrXWWZxnkrn-o
Contest discussion thread: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79443554
Main bracket playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT3m7iohpL0xt7lOF1eB-H4NpAaF1yAnU
Last years spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNrPnFRI7nJ4PqFiURBW0NWqxvXiuasoq8Sn_O169ss
VGMC total stats sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K1XdLWiUKB2kX99qYBgnRbLU_sCz4dvZSByKKJHCT6o
Discord: https://discord.gg/WDvMS4a

Rules:
- Listen to both songs in a given match, at least through the loop time provided (to make sure you don't skip before you've heard the whole thing!)
- Please consider the loop point listed when judging the song; if a video loops one minute 5 times, don't treat it as if it's a repetitive 5 minute song
- If it's a match between your favorite song ever and a song you despise, still LISTEN TO BOTH! Votes can and will be disqualified if there is suspicion songs are not being listened to, and you may be discounted for the rest of the contest for repeat offenses.
- No alt accounts, no rallying or begging, etc., etc.... You only get one vote! Swapping votes is alright, just make clear that you've already made a vote and are swapping.
- Make clear what your voting options are! Please keep votes separate from any comments, and use the titles given in the topic post.
- Voting in all matches is not mandatory, feel free to skip matches you do not wish to vote in.
- Vote based on the links provided, and not other sources of audio. Links are specifically chosen for best quality and the like.
- Don't discuss vote tallies in this thread, or in other threads, as they may influence votes. Likewise, please refrain from looking at the running tally before voting.

Voting Period:
- Today's matches will last 24 hours from the time of posting, or 24 hours from 10pm Eastern, whichever is the later time.
- Please note this may mean that two topics will be active at the same time!
- If you anticipate being unable to vote in a given day, please send an absentee vote to @banshiryuu or @Toxtricity, or post your absentee vote in the discussion thread!

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Match 1

Mighty Switch Force! 2 - Soft Collision
Composer: Jake Kaufman

Kneel... or you will be knelt

linkage-alter
Fuse Man Stage
Fury Sparks

day 2 of voting all bottom options.

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linkage-alter
Soaring Through
Fury Sparks

I guess i was in more of the xaki-rhythmy mood today. I'm also incredibly sad that Fuse Man drew what it did, but I guess it can't be helped.

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linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

Songs 2 and 3 are two of my favorites in the whole contest, and there are like 4 songs in the first half of bracket A that I like even more

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Soft Collision
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Fury Sparks

Nothing really was working for me from this six pack. I appreciate the loop point info though. Didn't notice it from the last day's.

---

alter
Through
Discovery

first match here sad but not difficult

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linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Fury Sparks

linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

pretty easy matches, sorry soft collision you cool

(also copout cheater's answer of koshiro for the poll)

Rose Gun Days - linkage-alter
Mega Man 11 - Fuse Man Stage
Tales of Vesperia - Fury Sparks

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linkage-alter
Fuse Man Stage
Discovery

linkage-alter > Discovery >? Fuse Man Stage > Soft Collision > Soaring Through Azure Sadness > Fury Sparks

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linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

Soft Collision (7.9v - 28th place) / linkage-alter (9.9 - 1st place)
Soaring Through Azure Sadness (9.2 - 9th place) / Fuse Man Stage (6.9^ - 43rd place)
Discovery (8.6 - 19th place) / Fury Sparks (7.7 - 34th place)

Again, "v" means I'd revise the score down, and "^" is revising the score higher. And these apply to Bracket A only.

Soft Collision is nice... Jake Kaufman always puts something interesting in the music. Reminds me of Crabulon except not nearly as catchy. linkage-alter I've talked about enough already. Azure Sadness has grown on me more than most anything from VGMC 13. Fuse Man Stage is weird... since when has MM robot master music become edm? I like it, though! As for Discovery, my favorite part my actually be the Earthbound-esque "oohs", though I like all of it! Fury Sparks resonates with me more than most standard electric guitar JRPG battle music.

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Soft Collision
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

virt :)

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linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

Match 1

Soft Collision is a nice track and all, but up against linkage alter it really loses the game of impact.
xaki really kills it with the crazy pianos and percussion.

Match 2

Fuse man is catchy enough and a song that I feel might stand a chance elsewhere but the sheer emotion of Azure Sadness really takes the cake for me.

Match 3

These songs really hit around the same mark of being a bit above eh ok with fury sparks being one of the better non shiina tales songs. Discovery has more variety over time and some interesting low key chill vibes, and Fury Sparks had that instant energy and generic rpg rock vibes. After much deliberation and Discovery's growing on me it edged out Fury Sparks.

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linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Fury Sparks

linkage-alter >> Soaring Through Azure Sadness > Soft Collision > Fury Sparks > Discovery > Fuse Man.

If it wasn't for Haste gushing about linkage in their ranking thread causing me to check it out beforehand, this would have been by far my favorite discovery from the vgmc.

linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Fury Sparks

linkage feels bland but weirdly enough it still sounds pretty cool.

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Soft Collision
Fuse Man Stage
Discovery

MSF2 - "You can't just throw Kaufman at me like that, bracket. It's pretty standard fare EDM, which is better than "average" for me, but that's just personal tastes, but I don't see it getting far beyond that."
RGD - I'm all for dissonance having a place in a music competition but that opener ain't doing it for me, chief, and this is someone who is 50-50 on the Drakengard entrants (spoiler.) The random piano flailing doesn't much improve it for me either as the song goes on, and the strings, which I like, are much too quiet in comparison.

Gurumin: Coming into this one a bit prejudiced since it's shooting to kill a nom of mine, and I'm still kinda "ehhhhh" on Falcom. It does some weird combination of flamenco guitar, flute, oboe?, and vocals without lyrics. I like it, but it's just... I don't know. Can I get over the prejudice?
MM11: No, I can't. My nomination; Para's been going over every mainline MM, and this is easily my favorite 11 track in a soundtrack filled with overly synthed stinkers. The electronics WORK for this one, which wound up being the trailer music. Not a contest winner, but happy to bring it to the table, at least. (For what it's worth, this was pretty close for me.)

Kaze no Notam: Groovy, funky, and made for headphones. Sounds like a high-energy platformer level, and I am ALWAYS keen on liquid drums+bass (RIP my white whale.) The ending I don't like very much, and it docked a few decimals (when I was doing numerical comparison) but otherwise, pretty cool.
Vesperia: I'm torn here and trying not to be too mean. I like the opening percussion, but it doesn't go anywhere, which is similar to the guitar itself. The percussion tries to carry it, but it doesn't do that terribly much. Or go anywhere. There's a lot of not going anywhere. Like not getting out of round 2 at the most on street cred alone, if it makes it that far. Hot take, I know.

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linkage-alter
Soaring Through the Sad Blue Skies
Discovery

very tough first match. soft collision im rooting for you secretly

linkage alter
soaring through the sad blue skies
fury sparks
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in case you dont know who any of the people in the poll are; nfun has provided some examples for reference and i am adding some others as well so now here are 20 videos sorry

Hayato Sonoda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK-ptN8LnH8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L8pMtFUomU

Masanori Osaki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmgApuXuBm8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XUzvISRwUQ

Mieko Ishikawa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Yj-jLDiTo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUUvMBA5UcM

Ryo Takeshita
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USwjWuD0YBg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbj46qI0zDo

Ryo Yonemitsu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oGuvPt4K9M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38dR1YYulio

Takahide Murayama (Eiichiro Yanagi)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z07WdBYBEe0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7qRp0oGmYQ

Takahiro Unisuga
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqAzKJIr5aQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ok9bzDzaS0

Wataru Ishibashi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1GhOzlGXQk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImEjyhUXzKM

Yukihiro Jindo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dD0uOmcJmQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzDG5PeXgVk

Mitsuo "NOT THE BEES" Singa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IhQ0Xvc6cg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQLnjocBxtU
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linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

Match 1 is the match of songs I don't feel much for by composers I really like in general. Ok actually linkage-alter is a bit better than I remember but I'd still rather this were Proud Dust or something. (Yes I realize that was literally in nominations and I did not support it, so I guess this is what I get, or something)

I still think Gurumin has several better tracks than this one to offer, but it is still good. It's also up against Mega Man which I'm generally not a huge fan of.
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Soft Collision (109th) vs linkage-alter (172nd)
Soaring Through Azure Sadness (16th) vs Fuse Man Stage (126th)
Discovery (173rd) vs Fury Sparks (41st)

i love virt!! and you don't get much more virt-y than soft collision lol. the part where it does the crabulon progression always makes me laugh because it reminds me of one of my favorite songs ever~~ yeah very good stuff. I think I've come around on linkage-alter quite a bit since its last appearance, I remember really being unable to get into it back in vgmc13 but nowadays I see a lot more in it. the piano is SUPER cool, especially at the end of a loop where it does very "deo will love this if it is an ostinato (puts in background quietly): things that make me scream

YORU GA AAAKEEEEETEEEEE HAJIMATTA SHIIIIN SEK--...oh wrong song (funnily enough, i'd be voting that over azure sadness here lol) fuse man is like so close to being something i really REALLY like but its a little rough around the edges. if it were a nes composition i think it would be a favorite but the instrumentation is just so... eh. not bad, not i really don't care for the lead at all and its CONSTANTLY THERE but I don't hate it so I can't knock it too much. Would do well against many other songs in this bracket but not Literally Soaring Through The Sad Blue Blue Skies Blue Blue Skies I See daytona usa how i s this song alive and speaking to me and saying "i'm sad :( but i'm also fun :) lets sing together" and then i do and i feel fuzzy because its such nice song aaaaaa this one's a fan favorite for good reasons

I'm really glad Discovery is back again!! For being a song style I usually am pretty lukewarm on, I like this one a lot actually. Having listened to all of Notam finally I can def say this is my favorite in the game, and it's no surprise it makes a return to VGMC so quickly. and thems the BREAKS hahaha get it cause break ebabts hahaheehndmam FURY SPARKS is more my thing though and does that thing very very well so I have to go with it here oops. It's not particularly interesting and doesn't do much to stand out, but god damn if that package that it does give you isn't just a downright fun one. Love it and a shame it has to go up against something I want to do well as well. But who knows what will happen O---O

Soft Collision
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

linkage-alter
Fuse Man Stage
Discovery

---

Rose Gun Days - linkage-alter
Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure - Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Tales of Vesperia - Fury Sparks

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Soft Collision
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

linkage-alter is okay but virt is virt. Of course we all value different things in music but if a song gets my head bopping then I'm much more inclined to pick that one.

I wasn't sure how to feel about the Gurumin track at first, but it really comes together by the part with the vocal accompaniment. I definitely came out impressed - less so from Fuse Man, which falls a bit flat especially from my usual standard of Mega Man music. Particularly not a huge fan of the synths.

Discovery is one of my favorite pieces of video game music ever and blew me away the first time I heard it with its airy, atmospheric intensity. It is legitimately unlike any other piece of music I've ever heard, VGM or otherwise. Meanwhile, Fury Sparks sounds intensely generic to me and I can't think of one interesting thing to say about it, honestly. There's zero contest here.

---

linkage-alter
Soaring Through the Sad Blue Skies
Discovery

linkage-alter
Fuse Man Stage
Fury Sparks

those 4 minutes i spent listening to that kaze no notam song felt like 15. if you put this song on loop for like an hour you could effectively create time travel or something

Soft Collision
Fuse Man Stage
Fury Sparks

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Soft Collision
Fuse Man Stage
Fury Sparks

Soft Collision
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

Another day, another set of songs where I can't say that I hate any of them. Though I will say that if I was introduced to linkage-alter months ago, my vote could very well have swung differently. But alas ... Soft Collision gets my love instead.

I like Mega Man. I like Fuse Man. I just find Gurumin to be more engaging and more pleasant to listen to.

I didn't get a chance to vote for Discovery before it made it to this round, but I was more than happy to lend my support to Phantom. I love this funky hot air balloon game music.

linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

I had Soaring beating linkage in my favorites bracket two contests ago. I still like it quite a bit, but it's hard to imagine picking that now. I'm finding myself enjoying linkage-alter so much more now, which is impressive considering I nominated it that year.

---

linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Fury Sparks

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Rose Gun Days - linkage-alter
Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure - Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Tales of Vesperia - Fury Sparks
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Linkage-alter
Fuse Man Stage
Discovery

Soft Collision
Fuse Man Stage
Discovery

---

Soft Collision
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

---

linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Fury Sparks

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linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Fury Sparks

The more of his stuff I listen to, the more respect I have for the works of Jake Kaufman. A lot of it is still hit-or-miss though, and Soft Collision doesn't do much to stand out in terms of electronic VGM. Nothing too remarkable here. linkage-alter is maybe one of my favorite xaki songs?? A lot of this is all the weird sounds piled up onto this song, but it sounds SO COOL!! Good thing we still have RGD and TRianThology to pick nominations from once we run out of Umineko music!

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Soaring Through Azure Sadness (or however they wanna translate the title) has become one of my favorite VGMC regulars. Apparently this is by the same composer responsible for Rose-Killing Carmilla?? Favorite Gurumin song for sure. Fuse Man Stage is decent, definitely warming up more to MM11 music in general, but this one is not a favorite. It'd still be hard to beat Soaring anyways.

---

Discovery is cool, but not the right kind of "cool", if that makes any sense. It sounds very different and I dig that reversed synth sound, but it uhhh kinda drags on for too long. Fury Sparks is very bog-standard JRPG "special fight" music, which isn't really a bad thing, this sort of stuff used to make up the bulk of my nominations. The main melody could use some more oomph and I'm not crazy about the electronic drum loop pervasive throughout the song.

Not as exciting as yesterday

---

linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Fury Sparks

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Alter
Sadness
Fury
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linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Fury Sparks

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TheArkOfTurus posted...

I'm finding myself enjoying linkage-alter so much more now, which is impressive considering I nominated it that year.

Ohhhhh... all this time I had thought it was loweffortmemes who nominated it. Ermm... actually, just checking to see if you were the "original" nominator?

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HasteDeux posted...

Ohhhhh... all this time I had thought it was loweffortmemes who nominated it. Ermm... actually, just checking to see if you were the "original" nominator?

I wasn't the original nominator, no.

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Whoops forgot to do song rankings yesterday. Oh well, I like today's songs better anyways!

SC and LA are both pretty cool. I could honestly go either way on this match. I liked SC slightly better, I think? But maybe not. I'm voting for it.

I feel like I dislike Soaring less than I did last year. It's not bad at all now! Fuse Man is a lot more fun though. Easy vote here.

Discovery is the main stinker of the day. I don't really like anything about it, but I don't hate it or anything. Fury Sparks I've always been super into. Maybe it's because of the context, but it's always felt ultra fun to me. Love listening to it.

Soft Collision
Fuse Man Stage
Fury Sparks

Fury Sparks > Fuse Man Stage > Soft Collision = linkage-alter > Soaring Through Azure Sadness > Discovery
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WOOOOOO DAY 2 OF VGMC IS HERE BAYBEEEEEEEE

linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

I'm listening using the bracket playlist this year and it really is a nice experience! Beats having to open a bunch of links and switching tabs between each song.

Which song to talk about today...let's go with Fuse Man Stage! Maybe I've just been picking the song I feel bad for the most...anyway, I love Azure Sadness and know it's the higher seed, so having forgotten how Fuse Man sounded I was pleasantly surprised today! The transition/fill at 0:34 in particular is a really fun lead-in to the next section, and the synth bass with the effects keeps reminding me of the one from Celeste's Golden. I kept playing the song a whole bunch of times after deciding my votes, it loops smoothly so I can just keep stuffing it into my ears like bite-sized candy! That analogy sounded better in my head...overall, I just wish the loop was longer because I feel the song could do so much more with added development!

On another note, Fuse Man may be sweet candy but Azure Sadness is a spicy quesadilla and has to take my vote. It's adventurous and fun, and just feels more like a complete meal YA FEEL ME??????

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linkage-alter
Fuse Man Stage
Discovery

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Rose Gun Days - linkage-alter
Mega Man 11 - Fuse Man Stage
Tales of Vesperia - Fury Sparks

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linkage-alter
Soaring Through Azure Sadness
Discovery

-(Jake Kaufman V I R T on the green streets, softly colliding every extended harmony possible. 4 pitch classes? Or at least pitch classes involved in a chord that are either one whole step or half step apart, so that you are a BIG LION just like red. jake kaufman thinks he is so cool and that is why he is famous. With this track i'm all about both the individual chords and their movements. The funky syncopation of those chord blips at the beginning is great. Later on these really startling emotive progressions in the more melodic sections like :29-:57 make me start floating in the air. 1:27-2:22 has similarly WHOA IM IN SPACE (but not cuba) chord changes that make me happy!!! I usually like edm but this isn't the type of edm i like infused into whatever i may be listening to, more sidechain-y than i look for, so that's actually a detractor for me, but in the end that's more of a minor nitpick about the aesthetic. the composition i like all around)-

-[i'm a pretty big fan of xaki's subset of tracks for umineko so it's not surprising that i'm a big fan of his work in "umineko" as well. linkage-alter's always appealed to me in its glitchiness, especially those buzzing panning moments. The way it can be difficult to tell the difference between the synth bass and the glitchy elements is also really cool, the super short high blips on that sound blur the line between composition and instrumentation/production, and i love stuff that feels that. the thing that excites me most here is any multilayered looping rhythms (polymeter). 1:16-2:01 leans into that really well, the piano loop in 6/4 while the drums come in in frantic beats more likely to be interpreted as 4/4 (and the synth bass is 3/8 on top of THAT). the low piano rhythm just before the drums come in is great for enforcing these feelings of so many different possible loop points to latch onto at once too
~~~~~~~~~~
I like dissonance but i feel like that's a reductive way to look at this track, it's actually pretty tonal and conventional outside of clearly deliberate exceptions where it dives into less than a second of chaos. but what I really like is where this has these really striking contrasts between the conventional moments and unconventional ones. Sometimes sudden jumps like the weird unexpected bits from :05-:07 or whatever. That polymetric part at 1:16 is an interesting example to look at though, the main loop is like, major scale normal notes, but the low piano at like 1:45 is doing this wild stuff that has no relation to the above and man it's just such a interesting contrast and way to build tension. The contrast of the conventional/unconventional layered on top of each other rather than rapid violent alternation like the rest of the song. It makes me happy to hear a song where it's way of building tension, contrast, emotion, is centered around treating dissonance as such a casual potential option, and making startling jumps into it at just the right moments for impact]-

-{not a close match, but certainly a match where i very much enjoy both songs.}-

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-(Soaring Through Azure Sadness blue skies i've certainly talked about many times already, so i dont feel the need to go too much in depth again. I've always liked it, love the instrumentation, the melody is cool and dramatic. my favorite bit is unsurprisingly the odd time section (7/4) from 2:48 - 3:10, and when the same section continues after 3:10 but in 6/8 more like the rest it's a neat rhythmic comparison for having multiple ways of feeling similar melodic ideas. that whole bit's my favorite section of this tune even regardless of my odd rhythm obsessions, it's just the section i find most melodically "emotional". For some reason whenever i listen to this track i picture sunset, RED or YELLOW skies, this tune is misnamed!!! what the fuck!!!)-

-[i think mm11's ost gets too much hate, but at the same time i'd be lying if i said i was a fan, so i get it (i still love block man though!!!). I think individual songs in a vacuum (like vgmc) feel a lot less "all the songs sound the same so i can't remember them unmemorable bad"; but the common criticism of this ost isn't unearned, there's definitely a reason for it, they're just hard to distinguish from each other!
~~~~~~~~~~
This actually falls into similar trap as soft collision for me but much worse, i like edm, but this just isn't the kind i like. but i can still think of plenty of positive things to say here! I like the attention to detail, it's actually never boring, there's all sorts of things going on in the track, and on any relisten i could choose to focus on a different layer. basically everything except for the melody is way more interesting than the melody lol--and that's ok with me! I wish the mixing was a bit different, if there was more capability to focus on all these cool arpeggios in the background and stuff, the leads would be way less grating. i dont find the stuff the lead plays memorable, which isn't a problem for me, but this would be a lot more engaging a track for me if it wasn't the element demanding my attention.
~~~~~~~~~~
This genesis cover of the menu theme i feel like highlights how much the music in this game benefits from different balancing, there's all sorts of details that are interesting that i wish could be focused on, other than the layers that are beaten into your head with a base ball bat. Savaged Regime's cover re-balances everything so the wealth of different layers all become equal options for demand on attention to listening to and i think it really pays off. This isn't just me liking fm synth more than modern production either (i actually wouldn't say i do anymore), but it's all about the forcefulness in which you're expected to pay attention to a given layer. Savaged Regime's cover gives you a lot more freedom to decide which element in the track is most interesting to you and worthy of your attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8i7YQKq_NU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tacS8cLKtc
]-

-{i did not expect to write that much about "fuse man"}-

[continued...]
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[...continued]

-(Discovery. kaze no notam has consistently cool sound design, and i think for people where in judgement, interesting timbres are more a focus than pace or melody, this soundtrack will stand out. i don't know if i want to classify myself that way, these days i'm actually probably way closer to the taste of the sorts of people here who don't "get" this and vote for fire emblem instead of no one can stop mr domino. i just care about composition much more than instrumentation/production, and electronic stuff isn't even my preference these days, but I still definitely get into this soundtrack FOR its sound design. love the breakbeats, love all the morphing sounds from one cool sound to another. it's cool how much different the added kick in the 2nd half makes the same stuff you've already heard feel, at least to me! ONE THING THAT ALWAYS stands out to me about this game: I can't believe it's from the 90s, all these things that just feel so much newer than when this came out. AHEAD OF ITS TIME. THIS is the type of edm that i like. oh also yeah the chords are cool because they are "jazz harmony". i could go on about this one and just point to every detail i like, but really? what i like is the "vibe", it's "cool", yeah)-

-[fury sparks. i have vented about how much i hate this song before, but i'm a bit more ok with it as of like, listening to it while making the bracket. it IS purely in terms of the melodic line, possibly my least favorite melody in the contest. i've complained before about how painfully predictable i find it and i respond so unemotionally i almost get repulsed. but i still have positive things to say about this song that keep the whole field of 256 in the "i at least slightly like the song" zone. I LOVE the drum break it starts off with and there's so many songs that start reminds me of that i always think this song is going to be a different song when i hear that intro. tbh the genericism is ironically to this track's benefit for me...it just...reminds me of things i like lol, sonic songs i dont care about, anime songs i dont care about. but that doesn't mean i don't like sonic or anime! So it's like...whoa! pictures of things i like start to appear in my brain, i get excited. the energy and "ready for action" feeling to it, is just fun!! i think some fun ACTION THING (fighting? competition? exploration? adventure? something) is about to start, and it's going to be colorful, and i will be nostalgic for whatever that thing is 10 years later. whether or not i like the actual composition, it certainly conjures imagery and action in a way that centers itself in the aesthetics of FICTION I ENJOY. even though i am pretty sure kaonashi will not like this song i'm wondering if this is aligned with what kao means when he tells me that his "anime music taste" is so misaligned from everything else about his taste in music, and if it's for similar reasons.]-

-{i wish motoi sakuraba tales was here instead}-

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CURRENT RANKING

1. Rose Gun Days - linkage-alter
2. Final Fantasy VII Remake - Collapsed Expressway
3. Mr. Bones - The First Thing
4. Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure - Soaring Through Azure Sadness
5. Kaze no Notam - Discovery
6. Mighty Switch Force! 2 - Soft Collision
7. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - The Heritors of Arcadia
8. Pokmon Gold and Silver - National Park
9. Mega Man 11 - Fuse Man Stage
10. Touhou 14.5: Urban Legend in Limbo - Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
11. Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland - Nefertiti (Ver.MMXI)
12. Tales of Vesperia - Fury Sparks

linkage-alter sitting comfortably at the top of everything so far.

oh yeah i moved collapsed expressway back above the first thing, but they're very close!
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