"The Sunleth Waterscape - Overseas Version" from Final Fantasy XIII on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, & PC (2009 - 2014)
Composer: Masashi Hamauzu
Vocals: Frances Maya
Album: Final Fantasy XIII Original Soundtrack Plus
Label: Sony Music Distribution
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix 1st Production Department
This song has a few layers to it that I wanted to talk about before I get into the whole of the song.
First, this is an arrangement of the main theme for Final Fantasy XIII, "The Promise," which likely has a lot going on with it in terms of deeper meaning for almost all of the characters in the story. So we are going to move on from that analysis which could likely be its own entire article
Then, there is this specific arrangement of the song. For the first minute, the melody is played on a solo piano accompanied by an EDM track. This by itself works perfectly fine as an overworld theme that might exist in any top-down open-world JRPG. The beats might be a little too upbeat for a traditional turn-based JRPG (the first half of the Final Fantasy series), but it does work. Then add onto that how linear the level design is in Final Fantasy XIII and I find this song to be a perfect theme for running through a semi-tropical forested area fighting off bouncing ghost-like creatures and frogs.
But then, just about a minute into the song, the singing starts.
Having played through most of the numbered Final Fantasy games between 1987 and 2009 (when Final Fantasy XIII was originally released) I do not know if there has ever been a song with lyrics played as an overworld theme (of sorts). This track plays in the Sunleth Waterscape, Chapter 6 which features Vanille as the controllable character, and that kind of made the fact that there was singing in this stage more palatable. I have not done a deep dive into the lyrics and I am not great at lyric interpretation, especially when I am only half-ish-way through the game, so we are going to skip over lyric analysis. I specifically chose the "Overseas Version" of the lyrics because that is what plays in the copy of Final Fantasy XIII purchased through Steam and is what I am used to hearing. So then there is the comparison between the different lyrics that I am not about to make.
And then! There are parts of this song, around 1:28 that for whatever reason remind me of a song or two from The World Ends With You, specifically "Someday," and "Calling." I bring this up because I hear it every time I listen to this song and because the battles in this game are so different than other JRPGs I have played, reminds me of the drastic and successful approach to battles in The World Ends With You.
So I have all of these elements going on in my head when I hear this music, which at first seems like an odd choice for background music for a JRPG, but I find that it actually works really well. The only downside though is that I thought having two enemies in the Sunleth Waterscape, specifically, the Scalebeast and the Wyvern in the same zone and be alternate monsters to fight/avoid seemed a little overkill. Which is to say that getting through the Sunleth Waterscape took me a while to do because not only is the stage pretty long distance-wise, but including two tanky monsters made this stage drag on longer than I felt like it should have; all the while, this music is playing, which again, I did enjoy.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I would often just avoid the scalebeasts because they're so tanky. But also, I like fighting the scalebeasts because it's very satisfying when they drop their armor. Those games appear in the sequels to XIII as well.
ReplyDelete