Flash Flash Revolution - View Single Post - March 2021: 31 days game review challenge

**Hateandhatred** · 03-28-2021, 09:03 AM

March 28th

Today's challenge is: Game with favorite music.

This theme was suggested by xMUSICxMASTERx (aka Volupture).

Alright, this is the big one I had to stretch my interpretation of certain themes for, since it fitted almost everywhere. And I'm actually going to cheat and pick two games for this one, as there's a lot to say here. That being said, the games are closely related, so it's not much worse than it was on Day 2, and they're games made by the same company, actually. Still, this is going to be a heck of a post, so let's get into it right now.

I'm talking about Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana and Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. Although if I'm being completely honest, Ys VIII is the one with the ever so slightly superior soundtrack, so I'll focus on it a little more. It's not exactly an obscure franchise, but it was never super popular in the West, despite how the recent titles were critically acclaimed. Before VIII came out, the only one I had played was Ys: The Vanished Omens on the glorious Master System, and it kind of sucked. The bump combat (basically, you don't have an attack button, you just hug your enemies to deal damage) was just really weird, though I still thought it was cool for what it was.

Fast forward a few years, and I ended up hosting Keith at my dad's place to help him ease into his new Quebec life. I was definitely intending to stimulate his interest into a broader spectrum of video games as well, and I'd say it worked out rather well. Among other things, he mentionned being a huge fan of Final Fantasy, which honestly made me cringe a lot, so I tried to introduce him to other franchises. I made him play the demo for Tales of Berseria, and it definitely worked out as he got the game himself pretty soon afterwards. On that high note, I told him to keep an eye on NIS America's games, as they were porting a new Ys a few months from then. I had seen screenshots and some online talk about it, but that was it. We looked up some trailers together, and I ended up being the one whose interest spiked this time around.

I preordered the Vita version at a local store, and picked it up on release, as I was absolutely stoked about this one. I mentionned in a previous write up that I've rarely felt let down by a game I was anticipating, and this one sure as hell isn't an exception. If it wasn't for Gravity Rush 2, this would probably be my favorite game of all time. I was actually the second person in the world to platinum the North American Vita version, and then while looking up the trophy lists and regions of the game, I found out you could platinum the game a total of 6 times. There are three regions with separate lists, those being Asia, Europe and North America, and they all have two versions of the game in the PS4 and Vita versions. “Cool”, I thought, “time to buy the same fucking game 5 more times”. I did just that and completed all of them for a total of 12 playthroughs. I also bought a 7th copy just because I wanted one with the Collector's Box. And I'm probably gonna buy an 8th copy in the future (for the Switch, this time), just because the reversible cover art is incredibly gorgeous. I have problems. On a side note, I did the same thing for Ys IX, but I preordered all three versions as soon as they were available. But more on that one later.

It's a little hard to explain what the story is without spoiling the entire thing, so BEWARE OF SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH. True to Ys tradition (with the sole exclusion of Ys Origin), the story covers a travelogue written by a man known as Adol Christin, the crimson haired adventurer. While travelling on a ship on his way to the unknown and working as a sailor to pay for the fare (along with his partner in crime, Dogi the wall crusher), a giant creature showed up and wrecked the ship as they were passing by the cursed isle of Seiren. Finding himself stranded on said island, he tries to round up survivors to work with them and figure a way out, though he himself is more interested in exploring the mysterious area than in saving his own skin. Soon after arriving however, he starts being plagued with weird dreams in which he observes an unknown civilization and its Maiden of the Great Tree, Dana Iclusia. While scouting the island, he figures out that this Dana is actually from the Jurassic era, and was a leading religious figure for her dragonkin people. Somehow, both Adol and the Dana of the past learn to communicate, and she helps him progress in his adventures. They eventually find the lady in question sleeping in a tree, seemingly for millions of years, and the group now tries to figure out what happened to her people, and what are all the strange things happening on this island, such as the resurgence of the dinosaurs, which should have been impossible. It turns out that Dana was chosen as the eternal watcher of her entire civilization as her people was brought to extinction through a process that was occuring once again in the current time. Dana fought valiantly against her fate, but even though she failed, she refused to ascend with the other watchers of the past, and managed to stick around until Adol's time to fight the process once more. With their new friend, Adol's party shifts to a new focus and hopes to find a way to stop the extinction event and thus save humankind. I'm not gonna go so far as to say what happens from there, but it's a great story in my opinion.

While this is undoubtedly a RPG, this is NOT of the shitty turn based variety. It's a high flying, blazing fast action RPG, almost like a Musou game. Each of the 6 playable characters has a wide array of offensive skills, and a decent amount of movement based skills as well. Design wise, the dungeons are mostly designed to look like natural formations, and it's therefore not just a bunch of crypts and temples that exist just to be dungeons basically. You'll instead have jungles, forests, mountains, caves, stuff like that, and I think this is one of the strongest points of the game. Hell, this is probably the only game in which the “water temple” is arguably the best dungeon. Along the way, you also gain adventure gear, which lets you progress to new areas in different ways, much like Link would with his hookshot, power gauntlets and whatnot. Speaking of Link, I want to say that as a life long 3D Zelda fan, the new Ys games shit on the entire Zelda franchise. So please, take notes and give them your attention. Praise Falcom. Oh and as side note, sure, the graphics arent super detailed or anything, but considering it was designed as a vita game originally, it holds up really well. And it's bright and colorful, which is personally all I could ask for.

But what about today's theme itself? The music? Oh fuck yes. It's the very best, at least to me. The majority of the game is balls to the walls power metal, with some tasty violin licks mixed in, and it works incredibly well with the gameplay and context. I honestly think I could round up my top 3 video game music tracks of all time with this game, and my top 5 by including Ys IX, and I wouldn't feel like I'm pushing it. Mitsuo Singa might take some flak for his hentai work, and he may be a one trick pony, but he and the JDK Falcom Band are fucking geniuses. “A-to-Z” is the true ending's final boss' theme, and hands down the best video game track I've ever heard in my life. “Deadly Temptation” is the regular boss theme, and probably my favorite boss theme as well across all of gaming. Then you have stuff like “Hope Alive” which plays at the climax of the prehistoric Dana side of things, which is not really the greatest track on its own, but within story context and with the accompanying visuals and sound effects, it carries a lot of weight. You also have the orchestral theme song, which brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. And that's already 4 all time great songs, and there's more than those in this game for sure.

This seems like a good place to start talking about Ys IX as well, as the fantastic music found in this game doesn't really need much context at all. All you need to know is that it's set in a fictional Paris of yore, specifically in the gothic era. And you can again hear some of that glorious power metal, coupled with harpsichords and even fucking saxophone, and yes, it works really well. All of the Grimwald raid themes are fantastic battlefield themes, like “Lacrima Crisis”, then you have stuff like “Cloaca Maxima”, which is just a very interesting track overall, and is a dungeon theme in-game. The theme that plays when facing strong enemies is “Feel Force”, and it has more of a prog metal feel instead, and it's really great too. The big, killer song from this game is “Norse Wind”, which is a loop that lasts over 2 minutes long and acts as a theme for... A gigantic open field. If this was Ocarina of Time (pardon the Zelda references, but both franchises are quite similar, so it's only fair), this would be Hyrule Field's theme. That is absolutely crazy. Like with VIII, there are also a ton more legendary tracks in here, like the main city theme, but I don't think the soundtrack (or even the game as a whole) is quite as legendary to me as what you had with the previous title, but it's just a tiny difference. The game itself did a few things better, but overall I think it gets outshined. Ys VIII has better colors, slightly better music, better level designs, better story, but Ys IX has better balance, movement, exploration and graphics. Opinions vary a great deal on that topic, but I think we can all agree they're both fantastic.

I'm not gonna go too much in depth about this one, but I'll still say a few things about it. I actually started playing the Japanese version as soon as it was released, and it took me just under a month to complete it. If you wonder how it's possible to 100% a game that's only in Japanese without a walkthrough, let's just say it's the kind of skill you might develop if you're a kid growing up without knowing a word of English. I remember having to “brute force” Metal Gear Solid as a kid, so it was a similar kind of experience, and I still have the luxury of using Google Translate whenever I wanna read what something is saying. This was also not the first time in recent history I went in blind into a huge foreign game, and another game like this might be coming out sooner than you'd think. Wink wink nudge nudge.

And speaking of walkthroughs, being the insane fuck that I am, I'm actually the one who wrote and posted the 30 000+ words walkthrough on Playstationtrophies.org, about 2 months before the English release. I bought the very computer I'm using right now just to do this, and I'm actually in the process of writing a new one that's better suited for the English version. And since I don't do things halfway, I also decided I wanted to be the first and fastest person to platinum the North American version of the game, since I had an obvious edge over everyone else. It turned out to be impossible to be first, because a couple journalists with review copies already got the platinum trophy, and I couldn't do anything about it. However, I did manage to be the first to do it post release, and also the fastest to do it as well, which I performed on stream. A 32 hours long stream, for a 32 hours long run.

I FUCKING love Falcom's modern games.

Ys VIII is out on Vita, PS4, Switch and PC. Ys IX is out on PS4 only, but will be coming soon to PC and Switch as well. And you should play them. Hell, Ys VIII even came out on mobile, and it looks great! You could always give that version a shot!

03-28-2021, 09:03 AM	#67
Hateandhatred "The Quebec Steparatist." Join Date: Feb 2011 Age: 33 Posts: 1,947	Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge March 28th Today's challenge is: Game with favorite music. This theme was suggested by xMUSICxMASTERx (aka Volupture). Alright, this is the big one I had to stretch my interpretation of certain themes for, since it fitted almost everywhere. And I'm actually going to cheat and pick two games for this one, as there's a lot to say here. That being said, the games are closely related, so it's not much worse than it was on Day 2, and they're games made by the same company, actually. Still, this is going to be a heck of a post, so let's get into it right now. I'm talking about Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana and Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. Although if I'm being completely honest, Ys VIII is the one with the ever so slightly superior soundtrack, so I'll focus on it a little more. It's not exactly an obscure franchise, but it was never super popular in the West, despite how the recent titles were critically acclaimed. Before VIII came out, the only one I had played was Ys: The Vanished Omens on the glorious Master System, and it kind of sucked. The bump combat (basically, you don't have an attack button, you just hug your enemies to deal damage) was just really weird, though I still thought it was cool for what it was. Fast forward a few years, and I ended up hosting Keith at my dad's place to help him ease into his new Quebec life. I was definitely intending to stimulate his interest into a broader spectrum of video games as well, and I'd say it worked out rather well. Among other things, he mentionned being a huge fan of Final Fantasy, which honestly made me cringe a lot, so I tried to introduce him to other franchises. I made him play the demo for Tales of Berseria, and it definitely worked out as he got the game himself pretty soon afterwards. On that high note, I told him to keep an eye on NIS America's games, as they were porting a new Ys a few months from then. I had seen screenshots and some online talk about it, but that was it. We looked up some trailers together, and I ended up being the one whose interest spiked this time around. I preordered the Vita version at a local store, and picked it up on release, as I was absolutely stoked about this one. I mentionned in a previous write up that I've rarely felt let down by a game I was anticipating, and this one sure as hell isn't an exception. If it wasn't for Gravity Rush 2, this would probably be my favorite game of all time. I was actually the second person in the world to platinum the North American Vita version, and then while looking up the trophy lists and regions of the game, I found out you could platinum the game a total of 6 times. There are three regions with separate lists, those being Asia, Europe and North America, and they all have two versions of the game in the PS4 and Vita versions. “Cool”, I thought, “time to buy the same fucking game 5 more times”. I did just that and completed all of them for a total of 12 playthroughs. I also bought a 7th copy just because I wanted one with the Collector's Box. And I'm probably gonna buy an 8th copy in the future (for the Switch, this time), just because the reversible cover art is incredibly gorgeous. I have problems. On a side note, I did the same thing for Ys IX, but I preordered all three versions as soon as they were available. But more on that one later. It's a little hard to explain what the story is without spoiling the entire thing, so BEWARE OF SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH. True to Ys tradition (with the sole exclusion of Ys Origin), the story covers a travelogue written by a man known as Adol Christin, the crimson haired adventurer. While travelling on a ship on his way to the unknown and working as a sailor to pay for the fare (along with his partner in crime, Dogi the wall crusher), a giant creature showed up and wrecked the ship as they were passing by the cursed isle of Seiren. Finding himself stranded on said island, he tries to round up survivors to work with them and figure a way out, though he himself is more interested in exploring the mysterious area than in saving his own skin. Soon after arriving however, he starts being plagued with weird dreams in which he observes an unknown civilization and its Maiden of the Great Tree, Dana Iclusia. While scouting the island, he figures out that this Dana is actually from the Jurassic era, and was a leading religious figure for her dragonkin people. Somehow, both Adol and the Dana of the past learn to communicate, and she helps him progress in his adventures. They eventually find the lady in question sleeping in a tree, seemingly for millions of years, and the group now tries to figure out what happened to her people, and what are all the strange things happening on this island, such as the resurgence of the dinosaurs, which should have been impossible. It turns out that Dana was chosen as the eternal watcher of her entire civilization as her people was brought to extinction through a process that was occuring once again in the current time. Dana fought valiantly against her fate, but even though she failed, she refused to ascend with the other watchers of the past, and managed to stick around until Adol's time to fight the process once more. With their new friend, Adol's party shifts to a new focus and hopes to find a way to stop the extinction event and thus save humankind. I'm not gonna go so far as to say what happens from there, but it's a great story in my opinion. While this is undoubtedly a RPG, this is NOT of the shitty turn based variety. It's a high flying, blazing fast action RPG, almost like a Musou game. Each of the 6 playable characters has a wide array of offensive skills, and a decent amount of movement based skills as well. Design wise, the dungeons are mostly designed to look like natural formations, and it's therefore not just a bunch of crypts and temples that exist just to be dungeons basically. You'll instead have jungles, forests, mountains, caves, stuff like that, and I think this is one of the strongest points of the game. Hell, this is probably the only game in which the “water temple” is arguably the best dungeon. Along the way, you also gain adventure gear, which lets you progress to new areas in different ways, much like Link would with his hookshot, power gauntlets and whatnot. Speaking of Link, I want to say that as a life long 3D Zelda fan, the new Ys games shit on the entire Zelda franchise. So please, take notes and give them your attention. Praise Falcom. Oh and as side note, sure, the graphics arent super detailed or anything, but considering it was designed as a vita game originally, it holds up really well. And it's bright and colorful, which is personally all I could ask for. But what about today's theme itself? The music? Oh fuck yes. It's the very best, at least to me. The majority of the game is balls to the walls power metal, with some tasty violin licks mixed in, and it works incredibly well with the gameplay and context. I honestly think I could round up my top 3 video game music tracks of all time with this game, and my top 5 by including Ys IX, and I wouldn't feel like I'm pushing it. Mitsuo Singa might take some flak for his hentai work, and he may be a one trick pony, but he and the JDK Falcom Band are fucking geniuses. “A-to-Z” is the true ending's final boss' theme, and hands down the best video game track I've ever heard in my life. “Deadly Temptation” is the regular boss theme, and probably my favorite boss theme as well across all of gaming. Then you have stuff like “Hope Alive” which plays at the climax of the prehistoric Dana side of things, which is not really the greatest track on its own, but within story context and with the accompanying visuals and sound effects, it carries a lot of weight. You also have the orchestral theme song, which brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. And that's already 4 all time great songs, and there's more than those in this game for sure. This seems like a good place to start talking about Ys IX as well, as the fantastic music found in this game doesn't really need much context at all. All you need to know is that it's set in a fictional Paris of yore, specifically in the gothic era. And you can again hear some of that glorious power metal, coupled with harpsichords and even fucking saxophone, and yes, it works really well. All of the Grimwald raid themes are fantastic battlefield themes, like “Lacrima Crisis”, then you have stuff like “Cloaca Maxima”, which is just a very interesting track overall, and is a dungeon theme in-game. The theme that plays when facing strong enemies is “Feel Force”, and it has more of a prog metal feel instead, and it's really great too. The big, killer song from this game is “Norse Wind”, which is a loop that lasts over 2 minutes long and acts as a theme for... A gigantic open field. If this was Ocarina of Time (pardon the Zelda references, but both franchises are quite similar, so it's only fair), this would be Hyrule Field's theme. That is absolutely crazy. Like with VIII, there are also a ton more legendary tracks in here, like the main city theme, but I don't think the soundtrack (or even the game as a whole) is quite as legendary to me as what you had with the previous title, but it's just a tiny difference. The game itself did a few things better, but overall I think it gets outshined. Ys VIII has better colors, slightly better music, better level designs, better story, but Ys IX has better balance, movement, exploration and graphics. Opinions vary a great deal on that topic, but I think we can all agree they're both fantastic. I'm not gonna go too much in depth about this one, but I'll still say a few things about it. I actually started playing the Japanese version as soon as it was released, and it took me just under a month to complete it. If you wonder how it's possible to 100% a game that's only in Japanese without a walkthrough, let's just say it's the kind of skill you might develop if you're a kid growing up without knowing a word of English. I remember having to “brute force” Metal Gear Solid as a kid, so it was a similar kind of experience, and I still have the luxury of using Google Translate whenever I wanna read what something is saying. This was also not the first time in recent history I went in blind into a huge foreign game, and another game like this might be coming out sooner than you'd think. Wink wink nudge nudge. And speaking of walkthroughs, being the insane fuck that I am, I'm actually the one who wrote and posted the 30 000+ words walkthrough on Playstationtrophies.org, about 2 months before the English release. I bought the very computer I'm using right now just to do this, and I'm actually in the process of writing a new one that's better suited for the English version. And since I don't do things halfway, I also decided I wanted to be the first and fastest person to platinum the North American version of the game, since I had an obvious edge over everyone else. It turned out to be impossible to be first, because a couple journalists with review copies already got the platinum trophy, and I couldn't do anything about it. However, I did manage to be the first to do it post release, and also the fastest to do it as well, which I performed on stream. A 32 hours long stream, for a 32 hours long run. I FUCKING love Falcom's modern games. Ys VIII is out on Vita, PS4, Switch and PC. Ys IX is out on PS4 only, but will be coming soon to PC and Switch as well. And you should play them. Hell, Ys VIII even came out on mobile, and it looks great! You could always give that version a shot! __________________ Last edited by Hateandhatred; 03-28-2021 at 05:43 PM..