I got a few things to talk about in a post here. About a few games I've been playing in the mean time and about some video game soundtracks that I bought and other various shit too. I noticed the Star Ocean: Second Evolution ad on the front page. Heh, I'm pretty interested in that game coming stateside for the PSP, along with Star Ocean: First Departure, both which are predicted to be around probably before or when Star Ocean 4 will be coming out in the states. early '09? That's kinda how I see it. But anyway, I learned some stuff about those ports that is plenty of incentive for me to buy it when it comes out.

New voice dubbing, as if "I'll turn you into a beehive!" wasn't horrible enough localization of the playstation game, while being a fan of the original english dubbing. New character portraits portraying the new character and anime art style, expressing various emotions during regular dialogue. The battle system is revamped a bit, claude's normal attack can now be a 3-hit combo sort of thing, probably true with other characters as well. Recurring Star Ocean NPC Welsh will be available as a playable character now, too. Star Ocean 2 for me is characterized by its sense of atmosphere... the background art is really beautiful at times, the soundtrack brought the playstations audio to its maximum with real-sounding-flute samples and cymbal crashing triumphant overworld themes.

All sorts of things make Star Ocean 2 to me one of the best playstation RPGs, and is a welcome title in my library.

...But anyways...!

I've been playing Tales of the Abyss lately. Called all around my area to see if it was available, and found nothing. Thanks to the incredible resource that is the internet, I acquired the game surprisingly shortly and "backed it up" to my PS2. The beginning was pretty slow and I wasn't terribly impressed what I had seen, but I got about 16'ish hours into the game and I'm taking a stronger liking to it. The awkward character developement in the beginning helped build up to a "reality check" in the plot, so to speak, pretty well.

As I've been playing the game I'm actually following along with the plot, which I honestly have trouble doing when I play RPGs. In this game, they keep things pretty simple and it feels like a drama, where you know what's going to happen next, and when it does, you're thinking "Ahhh, well no shit!" But laughing at the same time at the corniness.

(Tales of Symphonia's story progression also gives me that dopey, childish vibe that the game's dialogue and events seems to
represent, and well, I wouldn't lie that Symphonia's battle was incredibly easy too. Saying that the game itself feels like it's suited for an RPG novice. But I can't rat on the difficulty too much because I was suckered into an 80-hour experience, a lot of time that I didn't expect to spend on the game.)

In saying that, Tales of the Abyss is a pretty high quality RPG. And I'm looking forward to playing it some more today.

~

The Music

I purchased Motoi Sakuraba's "Forest of Glass" album as well as Yoko Shimomura's "Best of Yoko Shimomura," an album of Shimomura's personal picks of her music found in video games, rearranged in some fancy german orchestra. I've heard Best of Yoko already and there are some fantastic tracks. Including a few legend of mana songs like Hometown Domina and the Holy Mana theme, just beautiful. Sakuraba's "Forest of Glass" is the first solo album Sakuraba has released since "Gikyokuonsou," a prog rock album released in 1999. I have not heard this piece of music, but I love Sakuraba's music just as much as I like Shimomura's and am looking forward to listening to it. Apparently its a complex piano heavy cd, but it sounds like some of the melancholy themes he would normally do in a video game. If what the review about this said is right about that, I will enjoy it. As a fan of video game music, I think that's what we want to hear, too. For instance, I loved Uematsu's "Phantasmagoria" album, a collection of calm songs that sound straight out of Final Fantasy games, which didn't sound anything like I had before, really. But the tracks are lovable.

Importing these new cds from japan is costing me roughly $30 USD for each one. But it's worth it, because I haven't bought any video game music legitly since I bought bootlegs of the Xenogears and Xenosaga soundtracks off of ebay (Hey, they look authentic enough!) and I want to support these amazing composers for further musical additions such as these and for all the hours of enjoyment they have given me, too. Look at that, I'm a thankful consumer!

Well, I've bored you folks long enough. I'm off to brew some coffee and play some Tales of the Abyss, before the work begins today. Take care.

Most recent blog posts from Luke Schirmer...
The Urge to Write ~ Metal Gear series retrospection Aqy's SNES Journeys - Part 5 (Super Castlevania IV) Final Fantasy Distant Worlds, I went!

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