Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 26! over-nove/city-ruins, to-future/prom-ise, breath-forest/ever-last

(+) 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
Compatibility sheet (courtesy of Haste!!): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iGYWo_ifr_p2uYpD_I6TwBQS2tm7zJtPCxYZfRJcG8I
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

TRianThology - over-nove
Composer: xaki

Kneel... or you will be knelt

over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Everlasting Love

City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Voyage of Promise
Breath of Forest

me yesterday: hmm i kinda want to change on the last match but its so close that'd be a dick move and its a tie anyway
and then nfun did it anyway


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over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

wow match 3 is pretty tough wouldnt mind everlasting love taking it

*Votes City Ruins but the better version*

(This is a comment on the poll, not a vote in the actual contest)
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over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Everlasting Love

---

over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Everlasting Love
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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Voyage of Promise
Breath of Forest

over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

---

NieR: Automata - City Ruins (Rays of Light)
DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu - The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Mad Rat Dead - Breath of Forest
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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Voyage of Promise
Breath of Forest

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NieR: Automata - City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Voyage of Promise
We Love Katamari - Everlasting Love

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over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

Yep. That's a Castlevania.

Breath of Forest [9]
Future [8]
over-nove [7.5]
Voyage of Promise [7]
Everlasting Love [6]
City of Light [6]

over-nove
Voyage of Promise
Breath of Forest

City Ruins
To Continue That Future
Breath of Forest

i think my problem with Voyage of Promise is that it's too *muddy*. none of the main instruments really pop out like i feel like they should. it's a pretty solid composition, just doesn't sound great to me.

excuse me everlasting love i did not come to vgmc for gintama-ass mediocre mid-2000s lite rock. i came to vgmc for GOOD mid-2000s hard rock such as the song "let it die" from the video game "let it die". these whispers at 3:30ish are interesting but cant save you, especially in the face of legit one of my favorite discoveries of vgmc.
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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Voyage of Promise
Breath of Forest

Two today that aren't a big surprise from my tastes, and one that is (that katamari song just isn't my jam, and the Mad Rat Dead one is.)

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over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

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Hey everyone, I've got a big favor to ask! It came to my attention that the upload of Voyage of Promise used in this match is lower-quality than the one i nominated with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-2bGXNsRbI
If you would be so kind, can you judge with this link instead? Gamefaqs wont let edits happen, unfortunately.

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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

over-nove beginning is real bad. I don't dislike the rest but it's not the greatest still. City Ruins isn't a near favorite in the slightest, but it's still one of the good Nier sounds.

Future is pretty fun stuff! I like everything about it. Voyage is nice but it feels like a discount version of a better song.

Breath of Forest is great. Best Mad Rat song in the contest I think. It uses that one annoying instrument that Disgaea uses sometimes, but not that much, thankfully. Wish Disgaea guy would stop using that instrument. Everlasting Love has this real monotone feel to it that kinda makes me like it more? Like the singer always sings in the same tone. It's somehow great?

Breath of Forest > The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future" > City Ruins (Rays of Light) > Everlasting Love = Voyage of Promise > over-nove
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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Voyage of Promise
Everlasting Love

2 days of bottom options, this is unprecedented!!!

I've always listened to the (Dynamic - Vocals) Automata uploads because those would be the top search results before Squeenixgeddon. Back then, I only really put City Ruins and Amusement Park on rotation since they had the most YT views, and have been really attached to the Rays of Light version ever since! Today's actually my first time listening to the OST version and the different sections flow a lot better than I thought! Interesting that it doesn't even go in order of Quiet=>Medium=>Dynamic=>Dynamic w/Vocals or something. The big percussion hit at 3:22 in particular is a great moment, I guess little transitions like that were added for the soundtrack?

Voted for English Version in the poll since I like a lot of J'Nique Nicole songs - Memories of Dust, Weight of the World EN, and City Ruins RoL. Amusement Park is definitely a worthy challenger though!

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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Voyage of Promise
Breath of Forest

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over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

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City
Continue
Forest
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over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

-(i never posted this song for my blog because it is actually too hard to ascertain the downbeats of any bars and that made it a pain to try to write out and i LIKE THAT because i like "ambiguity" it feels COOL. there's tons of parts where there's not clarity on what the main layer is i'm "supposed to be" paying attention to because the answer is NONE they are all equal friends in this land of AMBIGUOUS BEAT 1. this is especially noticeable at the beginning. I like guitar that is frustrated. i like CHURCH ORGAN that is FURIOUS. this song sounds like some crazy people in the garage being really mad and smashing every note on the piano bebr was being a boucny ball saying "This song has too much music theory where they care so much about number that they dont care about song" but my response is "actually this is just a bunch of people smashing random notes in their instruments (By the way that is cool and aggressive i like that)" it's like the OPPOSITE of theory-focus. the timesig stuff is clearly delibarate math puzzles but outside of that it's more punk-like aggression-over-planning TEAM INSTINCT visceral fury and i dig that. this song is "not well produced" and i think that is perfect for everything about this)-

-[DISCLAIMER WARNING: this writeup is VERY NEGATIVE. you might have your feeling hiorurt don't look at it if you don't want to be so sad: there is a piano in this song and i LOVE it : ) i love nier music!!!! this isn't one iever would go out of my way to save but you know WHAT who cares it certainly represents the sound of the ost. i love conlang voices that make cool syllables. beautiful ethereal pads in the background. guitar layers are neat and just like nebraska field. the kind of songs i wouldn't have liked when i was younger because they sound too much like mario(maria), but really all it takes is a shift of focus. when i lean so hard into looking for lots of stimulation for appreciation of a track, of course i'm not going to get it from something with this pace, but there's still plenty of food to pay attention to (piss) and you know i've realized how much i am attracted to these sorts of short and forceful STRING parts. the 2 songs i posted in the Favorite Song topic both have that trait and it made me take notice about how important it might secretly be to me as a trait. I never thought about it until then but it's a big part of why i like dungeon~geofront4 and long road home and this! great track that i'm thankful i'm capable of appreciating at this point in time]-

-{near}-

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-(ithe next song by imagine dragons is going to be called "imagine downloading mp3s" and why did i say that? it's a puzzle. but what's most important here is how it's trance music with the spicy gated saws and delay echo piano that sounds like robert mile and all that. but it's not just that...not all trance music has chords that are this go[od, and because it's by that practical joker manabu namiki (we all know about that) and it's good for my heated soul. I like the chill guitar mixed with the big pads at the start. but now there's the brightness glass from the synthesizer sparkling into the sky, just like stars! I wonder why spaceships and stars have anything to do with each other? there's so many moments that LIFT ME UP INTO THE SPACE NEEDLE such as and 1:55-2:02, both because of the melody and the startling movement of the background.0:51-1:04 is also one of those moments. it's the thing namiki does that i like the most : ) it makes me so happy!! he just knows how to make the chord changes that make me feel like i am FLYING in a SPACE SHIP *tked comes in"actually mycro dodonpachi isn't a game that takes place in a space ship, in that game, you are flying a ceramic plush doll hippo who is named Cave's fifth generation plot cycle"* i love shmup music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)-

-[voyage of promise sounds too LOW QUALITY that impacts my vote too bad there is no alternate youtube link i could list&&jarod's serene stupidity&&*by the way. but i guess i have to just learn to live with it which is just about all you can say. This is a castlevania song because it is composed by michiru yamane who composed "the castlevania song fake" and you know what? i like castlevania music, but not as much as taffer and earth shaker, that's for sure, i am only a casual light castlevania music fan. and sciv isn't even my favorite snes soundtrack anymore because of casio mario world (it's pretty close though...). i will still say i am a fan though, but i can't think of anything to say about this song other than i like it because it sounds like castlevania. ok i've thought another thing to say: i like how it has an oboe in it because that is my favorite wind instrument. also i like the parts with a strummy acoustic guitar because they remind me of the orre region. castlevania music is great at sounding like a castle, having fun fujnky moments, and all around being a good charm (this feels like it would be in smash)for your bat. tbh]-

-{yeah cool man}-

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-(i can't say "zigzagoon is so cute!" on this writeup because the youtube avatar isn't a zigzagoon even though this is the mad rat dead song that me and zigzagoon both like to the most similar amount to each othe.r...well anyways I LOVE This holy FUCK song. my response to this track is variable depending on mood but currently i am VERY MUCH IN THE MOOD and i am almost definitely not going to be able to keep it as high on my ranking list as it currently is, but what a perfect state of mind to be in while this match is happening
~~~~~
part 1: there's a piano and i like it, it's really pretty! has some semi-dissonant frantic playing that reminds me of botw ganon battle which is one of my favorite video game songs but i'm not even sure if that's what i'm here for, surprisingly. this song excels most for me because of the very exact position it holds on evoking exactly the world i want. clearly "nature" but there's OBVIOUSLY edm elements because it is a dance party and how else would the mad rat be able to be alive and run really fast unless there were artificial drum samples that were created 30 years ago in the song?! I don't know! but there's sounds in this song that are even older than 30 years old, such as "flutes and stuff" which i'm a big fan of because they remind me of forests and i like those. also i have an extra bias toward traditional japanese instruments, especially amplified an element of my taste in times even more recent than when i first heard this song (this is part of why the current ranking is even higher than i used to say it was)
~~~~~
part 2: there's so many good harmonies in the song at both an individual and chord movement level. the whole intro is cool...then the part after the intro is cool...and then the part after that is cool...and th. sorry i can't decide on what part to point out i think is the "cool chord changes and melody interacting with it" because i think that about teh whole song. it's just...the kind of melody i want! and everything I LOVE ANIMAL FANTASY and yeah.i need to play this game because i like "silver wing" and stuff and this is like if the plague dogs was less depressing serious and also at the same time a rhythm game where i like a weirdly high number of songs a lot more than i ever let on so yeah)-

-[i miss 2005]-

-{wow}-

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Breath of Forest (12th/154)
over-nove (38th/154)
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future" (56th/154)
City Ruins (Rays of Light) (84th/154)
Voyage of Promise (114th/154)
Everlasting Love (154th/154)
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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Voyage of Promise
Breath of Forest

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over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

over-nove (9.9 - 1st place) / City Ruins (Rays of Light) (7.0 - 44th place)
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future" (8.7 - 15th place) / Voyage of Promise (5.8 - 57th place)
Breath of Forest (7.5^ - 38th place) / Everlasting Love (4.6 - 63rd place)

Breath of the Forest is definitely going to be revised up, probably by a full point! It's got lots of energy, but also really nice direction to it compositionally. I love it when it shifts keys, too! Plus cool use of that sliding oriental instrument (whatever it's called >_>) I might like this even more than Heartless Being...

Also, I love over-nove! It's likely my favorite in the contest. It's also a strong contender for second favorite vgm of all time (though several are contending for that). It's full of crazy things, and I love every single one of those crazy things~! Love the way the guitar and organ blend. Just add in some drums and I guess that's all you need to please me in prog. Love the "displaced" pickups to the beat at the start. Love the glitchy guitar harmonics...seriously my FAVORITE use of harmonics in any music EVER. Love the odd tonality...sometimes it's normal, other times outright atonal. Love the way it moves into major at 1:09. Love the percussion/guitar hits in there supporting the organ. Love the 7/4. You got the constant organ chords, meanwhile the surrounding harmonies at ~1:40, etc. are changing. The stuff I mention can't adequately describe the music. It's full of subtle musical decisions that I'm not even consciously aware of....


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over-nove
Voyage of Promise
Breath of Forest

over-nove is pretty cool (really the whole TRianThology soundtrack, it was done by a couple of the Umineko composers). Narrowly failed to get this in last year, but it's here now! Cool electric guitar + organ prog metal thing going on here.

City Ruins certainly is Nier music, ehhh there's a lot better though.

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The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future" (wow what a title, also why is "To Continue That Future" in quotation marks?) is a dancey electronic song, but the background guitar is a nice touch.

VoP is one of those songs that just slaps together a whole bunch of different things I like into something I *surprise* still like! This is actually a very close match.

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BoF is super cool and it totally reminds me of something, but I don't know what!! These MRD songs have all been pretty cool discoveries.

There's like one Katamari song I really like, and this isn't it (it's papaya)

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City Ruins (Ray of Light)
Voyage of Promise
Everlasting Love

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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Voyage of Promise
Breath of Forest

over-nove (146th) vs City Ruins (Rays of Light) (184th)
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future" (11th) vs Voyage of Promise (94th)
Breath of Forest (49th) vs Everlasting Love (239th)

HI NAMIKI I LOVE Y ou the percussion in bwj'tctf' is like. a whole new level. Namiki's production in DFK/DFKBL in general is so crystal clear it just makes me feel like floating and both the stage 5 themes (continue that future and vertigo) are the absolute pinnacle of this kinda song. i guess it should be no surprise this kinda production makes me melt into multiple piles of goo considering how ccrazy for Hayato Asano I am, as well as often other people like Hagane or Camellia lol. i feel really bad for voyage of promise because i LOVE this song as well and i wish so bad it was in match 1 instead but alas....

also voted WotW for the jp version please bring it back,,,

over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

Okabe is Okabae, but the prog is just too good. I'll be really happy regardless of which song wins, it's just a shame that they both can't retire in the same contest.

Badass shmup music vs surprisingly weak Castlevania-esque music. I've only heard a few Bloodstained tracks and idk, they feel uninspired to me. I'm sure there's good stuff in the rest of the soundtrack but I also have a feeling that Yamane was just kind of hired to do her thing.

"Nice, unique electronic music" vs "the kind of rock song that could tickle some kind of nostalgia bone if I was in the right mood but I'm just not", so electronic it is.

over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Everlasting Love

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over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Everlasting Love

3rd match is close and was hard to decide, definitely

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I REALIZED WHAT SONG VOYAGE OF PROMISE INTRO IS

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rTGSBI2nRHU

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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest
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City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Voyage of Promise
Breath of Forest

Really good day! Especially after yesterday, but just in general.

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over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

Feel bad about vocal tracks always losing but here I go again being part of the problem wheeeee

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City Ruins
Voyage of Promise
Everlasting Love

tox i know you don't like everlasting love but why you gotta blow up my girl like this?
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Vote for savageshark21:

City Ruins (Rays of Light)
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Everlasting Love

over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Everlasting Love

City Ruins (Rays of Light)
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Breath of Forest

TRianThology - over-nove [WHAT i mean uh] [9.0]
DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu - The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future" [7.0]
We Katamari - Everlasting Love [7.5]

NieR: Automata - City Ruins (Rays of Light) [7.5]
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Voyage of Promise [6.5]
Mad Rat Dead - Breath of Forest [7.5]

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over-nove
The Battle Was Just "To Continue That Future"
Everlasting Love

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NieR: Automata - City Ruins (Rays of Light)
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Voyage of Promise
We Love Katamari - Everlasting Love

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