I hate it when good games have bad music

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.

Is it truly that great ? I don’t know the compositors as much as you, but I can that the ones who did mostly all the castlevania games and Final Fantasy 6-7 are freakin’ good too !

Nobuo Uematsu composed for all of the numbered Final Fantasy games to date. Michiru Yamane is responsible for the recent Castlevania titles’ music, though I’m not sure about the classics in the series; you’d have to ask SG or DG about that.

I haven’t played any of the Shadow Hearts games yet (except for a brief period of trying out Koudelka), but I’m constantly being told to. I might pick up both of the older ones with the third game comes out next month.

I like it how when I first bought Shadow Hearts 2, SG did nothing but applaud my purchase, but since then, he’s made two seperate threads talking about how much he dislikes the game. =(

Also, shouldn’t the title of this thread be you hate when bad games have good music?

Was the FF9 music good? That was my favorite OST besides Chrono Cross

FF9 wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t call the whole work a masterpiece though. Its what I would call standard Uematsu quality, which usually isn’t the best but overall fairly good. Most composers tend to be good in certain fields in my opinion. Some are better battle music writers than others, others are better at town music than others. But that depends a lot on style preference…

Aha, thanks for correcting me! Oops :stuck_out_tongue:

And sorry. Before I played it (and after I played the first SH), my friend who got me into it was like “if you thought the first one was good, SH2 is the GREATEST EVER BLABLABLABLA” so I just had a hard time imagining it would be a bad game. Well, I dunno. I take the stance of “decent game, terrible sequel.” In any case, I think it’s a horrible blemish on the story of the first SH, and I personally wouldn’t ever play it again.

I totally feel your pain, man. I mean, like … Path of Neo had a really sharp soundtrack, but some of the coolest tunes were way underused (I’m looking at the Red Pill Rescue levels), and I still <s>can’t find a torrent of</s> wish I had the soundtrack.