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Motoi Sakuraba Appreciation Thread


SwordBreaker
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Iwadare is pretty damn awesome in most of his work, too. The original Grandia is still one of my favorite video game OSTs.

I've actually never been a big follower of him but whatever work he does I usually like. I was first exposed to him with Lunar on the PS1. Then years later Radiata Stories pops up, probably the best example of how you do jazz in videogame music. Absolutely love the game and its OST. Then recently we had Kid Icarus Uprising, which had Iwadare and Sakuraba collaborating with other infamous composers.

Speaking of which, practically nobody on OCR has been talking about Kid Icarus' music. You guys should go give some tracks a listen on YouTube. Not only is it a great game, but the music is absolutely epic. Sakuraba really did a good job with his tracks as much as the other composers involved.

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In addition to everything else already posted, I really enjoyed the soundtrack to Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour. Sakuraba composed it.

Definitely. Same here. Most people forget that he composes for Camelot...his work for Mario Golf and Tennis are really memorable. I particularly love his work in Mario Golf GCN the most when compared to the rest. There's this badass arrangement of the Mario 64 Bowser Battle track in the game which is insanely cool.

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Dark Souls [...] you'll die. Hahaha.
All that needed to be said about the game. ;D

Star Ocean 3 and Valkyrie Profile contain my fav tracks from Sakuraba, with Baten Kaitos and End of Eternity following closely.

He's not one of my fav composers, but still a talented and versatile musician, whose works often reach insane levels of intricacy.

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I guess I'll offer a different angle .. I've looked through all of the games listed here and the only one I've played is Star Ocean 3. And--unfortunately--I don't remember any of the music really .. It was a while ago and I even kind of remember thinking "this music isn't very memorable" (I think it was the battle music).

Based on what I've seen in this thread, I fully accept that this is more a testament to my bad memory rather than to his music .. Thus I conclude: I am bad. And I feel bad. :neutral:

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I guess I'll offer a different angle .. I've looked through all of the games listed here and the only one I've played is Star Ocean 3. And--unfortunately--I don't remember any of the music really .. It was a while ago and I even kind of remember thinking "this music isn't very memorable" (I think it was the battle music).

Based on what I've seen in this thread, I fully accept that this is more a testament to my bad memory rather than to his music .. Thus I conclude: I am bad. And I feel bad. :neutral:

Or maybe Motoi just isn't for you. Nothing wrong with that.

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Yeah, there are tons of people who can't stand Motoi's style. I remember reading a review of Star Ocean 3 by a pro critic like IGN or one of those and the person said that the music was really bad. I was kind of shocked, though.

Sometimes it's hard to..."get" Sakuraba. If you aren't into weird time signatures, strange instrument choices, songs broken up into different parts that switch frequently, and other various assortments of prog wank, you probably won't like Sakuraba. He's one of my favorite game composers, but even I'll admit that his style is an acquired taste.

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Sometimes it's hard to..."get" Sakuraba. If you aren't into weird time signatures, strange instrument choices, songs broken up into different parts that switch frequently, and other various assortments of prog wank, you probably won't like Sakuraba. He's one of my favorite game composers, but even I'll admit that his style is an acquired taste.

Motoi does occasionally have universal and well-liked tracks, but there are times that it's indeed an acquired taste, even for Sakuraba fans. Some of his tracks from the modern games aren't gold material, feel too familiar, and at times are more "filler". Again, this is very subjective, as one man's trash is another man's treasure. But I did encounter a couple of occasions in Sakuraba's work in which the track itself isn't exactly up to fluff, especially when comparing the modern stuff to the awesomeness of his PS1 material. He's only human after all, and the more modern technology gets with gaming the more grand the OST has to be. A grander OST doesn't necessarily need to be great work for every single track. So I can understand why Mr. Sakuraba's bigger soundtracks aren't exactly as good as previous ones, especially when he's the sole composer of certain games.

Speaking of which, Star Ocean 3 is a game that I unfortunately given so little time to back in the day. Like 5 hours or something. Even though it was one of my most anticipated PS2 games. I don't know why. So I never got to appreciate its soundtrack. Recently, however, there's one track from the game that I absolutely love:

This is just so soothing. Love every second of it. SO3 recommendations are welcome. :)

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Motoi does occasionally have universal and well-liked tracks, but there are times that it's indeed an acquired taste, even for Sakuraba fans. Some of his tracks from the modern games aren't gold material, feel too familiar, and at times are more "filler". Again, this is very subjective, as one man's trash is another man's treasure. But I did encounter a couple of occasions in Sakuraba's work in which the track itself isn't exactly up to fluff, especially when comparing the modern stuff to the awesomeness of his PS1 material. He's only human after all, and the more modern technology gets with gaming the more grand the OST has to be. A grander OST doesn't necessarily need to be great work for every single track. So I can understand why Mr. Sakuraba's bigger soundtracks aren't exactly as good as previous ones, especially when he's the sole composer of certain games.

Well what do you expect - He does 28 CDs of game music a year. He's always been a quantitative musician. Play a drinking game where you take a shot every time you listen to a track he did in E Minor and you'll die of kidney failure halfway through Valkyrie Profile.

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Well what do you expect - He does 28 CDs of game music a year. He's always been a quantitative musician. Play a drinking game where you take a shot every time you listen to a track he did in E Minor and you'll die of kidney failure halfway through Valkyrie Profile.

bIlkshiY ibe tryed tis an

tumblr_lky7g6_Mkmt1qdhxyeo1_500.gif

__________________

Currently listening to Valkyrie Profile - Behave Irrationally

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One thing that I was really looking forward to after playing Star Ocean 2 was the castle music in Star Ocean 3. SO2's Cross Castle had realistic sounding choral sounds that BLEW MY MIND! I thought SO3 could never beat it but I feel like it did. It's a string quartet with other accompaniment and I THINK it's a live recording. In the ending it shows the names of a ton of musicians, so perhaps the whole soundtrack is real instruments.

Check it out.

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I love Tales of Phantasia OST and really like Star Ocean's. But I have to be honest... I don't really Valkyrie Profile score. It's probably because I had heard so much about how it was awesome and wonderful and perfect and etc, but I don't know, something about the synths...

Actually, I don't even like the game ):

But I didn't played much of it, stopped after the first dungeon, IIRC.

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I definitely agree that Sakuraba's work is not for everyone. A lot of his compositions seem to lack identity and can literally be interchanged with any of the other games he's worked on. This is especially the case for titles from the Tales series, Eternal Sonata and Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria. However, I still consider him an excellent composer and fondly think back to the soundtracks from Star Ocean 2 and Valkyrie Profile. I especially liked his take of Chopan's 'Revolutionary Etude' in Eternal Sonata.

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I definitely agree that Sakuraba's work is not for everyone. A lot of his compositions seem to lack identity and can literally be interchanged with any of the other games he's worked on. This is especially the case for titles from the Tales series, Eternal Sonata and Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria. However, I still consider him an excellent composer and fondly think back to the soundtracks from Star Ocean 2 and Valkyrie Profile. I especially liked his take of Chopan's 'Revolutionary Etude' in Eternal Sonata.

If you're talking about the actual piano piece played around the 3rd act of the game, that was the pianist Stanislav Bunin playing. If you were talking about the rearrangement used during the final battle, then yeah, that was Sakuraba.

Personally, I just can't really get into a lot of Sakuraba's work. For me it's really hit or miss with mostly misses, however I think that when he nails it, he really does. In my opinion his work on Infinite Undiscovery, Eternal Sonata, and Tales of Phantasia(to a lesser degree) were pretty awesome and really added a lot to the games, but his stuff in the Star Ocean and Tales series sound pretty derivative, samey, and droll to me for the most part. If I can remember any of the music for those games, it's simply because of mass exposure rather than interest in them.

I think it was a good idea to pair him up with another composer a la Resonance of Fate(End of Eternity) with Kohei Tanaka, which was a bit of a stylistic clash, but I think it helped the over all feel and aesthetic of the game. Also much like Kid Icarus Uprising, when he worked with the "All-star composing team", which I think gave him more time to focus on just a few good pieces instead of being spread too thin.

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If you're talking about the actual piano piece played around the 3rd act of the game, that was the pianist Stanislav Bunin playing. If you were talking about the rearrangement used during the final battle, then yeah, that was Sakuraba.

I was thinking of the rearrangement.

But, as I mentioned, he's certainly not for everyone and I do think his work suffers from the sheer volume he does which was mentioned in an earlier post.

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