I just had to get it out of my system. I’ve been listening to Shadow Hearts 2 music, lately. The soundtrack was done by Yoshitaka Hirota, who did the first Shadow Hearts (He hasn’t done anything else, but trust me, he’s really good), Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger/Cross, Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Shadow Hearts 1 also), and Kenji Ito (Final Fantasy Adventure, Final Fantasy Legends 2, almost all of the SaGa games). If you’ve heard the first Shadow Hearts music, then you probably know what to expect from all of these composers, cos names like Mitsuda and Ito are pretty big names.
Not surprisingly, the music is just…good. Downright, best and most original soundtrack I’ve heard in a long time. There are a lot of really good pieces. Like, it’s ridiculous how much my hairs stand up when I listen to some songs. When I listen to the music from Shadow Hearts 2, it makes me wanna play the game again soooo bad.
…And that’s what this rant is about. When I think of the GAME, Shadow Hearts 2, I remember a game of monotony. I remember a game with a bunch of inane added features that did nothing but make the game easier (I never used them). I remember how the first 2/3 of the game had almost NO character interaction whatsoever, which is ridiculous for having eight characters in a 30-40 hour game. I remember a plot that was poorly glued together, and as I kept pushing forward trying to look for what made sense of it, I found the two endings that SHATTERED the whole thing to pieces; one of which would just never happen, and the other one being a complete paradox, not to mention totally ruining the feelings and experiences of the original Shadow Hearts, which was in my opinion, one of the best RPGs on PS2. I never wanna play it again.
But, hearing this music makes me think of a great game. The music tells me an amazing story that leaves me on the edge of my seat. One that inspires a well of emotions from within me that I don’t commonly feel in my daily life. It tells me a story that I so desperately want to hear. But, when I open up the book, almost all of the pages are torn out; on what few pages remain, the ink is smudged and smeared, making it completely unreadable. The only story the pages show me is the vestige of something greater that never materialized.
Fucking music. I should have liked math or mechanics or something.