#WeeklyGameMusic: Search a Seal ~Tethe Alla~ (Tales of Symphonia)


Whoops, a little late on this #WeeklyGameMusic. We’ve got an old classic, Search a Seal ~Tethe Alla~, by Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura. This lavish variation of the dungeon-crawling music comes from the old-school JRPG, Tales of Symphonia: a seemingly innocent-looking Namco Tales Studio game that has a dark and twisted story discussing politics, religion, prejudice, and class struggle.

Welcome to Sylvarant, a fantasy world in decline. In a land where mana — the fundamental element in this universe — is rapidly depleting, humans are dealing with poverty, monsters, and Desians, a group of half-elves that enslaves humans into slave camps. But in a small village of Iselia, there’s hope: the chosen one, Collette, along with her guardians, Raine and Kratos, have just begun the journey of Regeneration. In said journey, the trio will break the five seals in the world to unlock the Tree of Mana, a renewable source of mana to bring prosper to Sylvarant and give humans a winning edge over Desians. Despite this setting, Tales of Symphonia actually follows an outsider, Lloyd, and his friend, Genis, who joins Collette’s party after the two banished from Iselia due to disrupting a neighboring Desian human ranch (and breach the two org’s peace treaty). The duo initially follows the party given they’re already familiar with its members (Lloyd is good friends with Collette, and Raine is Genis’ sister). But as the journey continues, they uncover terrifying secrets that forces them to question everything the party knew.

Tales of Symphonia is a JRPG that uses an (admittedly antiquated) real-time battle system called Linear Motion Battle System. Upon touching a generic monster in the overworld, up to four party members are teleported in battle mode. The playable characters moves towards or away from a monster, similar to 2D fighting games. Attacks are executed similar to Super Smash Bros., i.e. inputting a controller direction and button press at the same time. Naturally, each character specializes in a type of attack (e.g. ground-melee, anti-aerial, offensive magic, support magic, etc.) that enemies are weak to, so having a well-rounded party is important to success. Otherwise, the game’s exploration mode is relatively similar to most JRPG affair: in villages, talk to people; in overworld, just move from point A to point B; and in temples, use items to solve puzzles.

Tales of Symphonia was originally released for the Nintendo Gamecube. It’s been ported to PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PC via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Shinshu Fields (Okami)


For some more optimistic and energizing #WeeklyGameMusic, why not enjoy the fabulous track, Shinshu Fields, composed by Masami Ueda? If you couldn’t guess from the very Japanese instrumentals, this tune is indeed from the cult-hit Clover game, Okami, an epic tale of how the goddess of the sun saves feudal Japan from great evil.

Okami wastes almost no time, with the story immediately starting with the seal of great evil Orochi being broken by an unknown troublemaker. Almost instantly, Nippon (“Japan” in Japanese) gets enveloped by a swarm of monsters and evil spirits. With the country in peril, the guardian spirits summon the sun goddess, Amaterasu, to fight against the darkness. Taking on a form of a white wolf with awesome red highlights, Amaterasu immediately springs to action…by taking a nap. Deflated and out of energy, the guardian spirits expires, literally leaving the fate of the world to one lazy female dog. Thus begins a parody retelling of many Japanese folkstories — including Issun-Boushi, Hato no Ongaeshi, Hanasaku Jiisan, and more — all uncomfortably mashed together into a single world.

True to Platinum’s spirit (a game studio which many of the main players from the now-defunct Clover Studio founded), Okami is an action-adventure game not unlike the Legend of Zelda series, but with a much tighter action component. Like any JRPG, battles takes place in an enclosed space, though in real-time with button-timing playing a critical role in stringing combos. In the midst of battle, Amaterasu can use her brush power to literally pause the game and draw over it, thus conjuring up spells to aid in battle. The genius of this combat gimmick is that it also works outside of combat, as a way to solve puzzles in dungeons.

Okami was originally developed for the Playstation 2. It was ported on the Nintendo Wii and Switch, Playstation 3 and 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Main Theme (To The Moon)


Returning back to indie games, this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic is the main theme from the narrative game, To The Moon, developed by Freebird Games. The music is composed by the main developer themselves, Kan R. Gao. It’s an oddly optimistic track for a game surrounding around a creepy, privacy-intruding technology.

To The Moon is an interactive story starring Dr. Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts handling a dying wish of an old man named Johnny Wyles. As the title implies, Johnny wants to go to the moon…or more accurately, wants to believe he went to the moon. Naturally, Eva and Neil’s memory-rewriting machine takes care of exactly that: they can adjust Johnny’s past memory to cause a chronological domino-effect of other memories to be adjusted with this new detail. When the duo asks why Johnny wants to go to the moon, though, he answers he doesn’t know. Faced with such ambiguous details, the two attempts to rummage through Johnny’s past to find what convinced him to go to the moon, and what they can do to change his (internal) history.

Gameplay-wise, To The Moon contains very little interactivity. One can explore in an RPG Maker world and talk to characters to learn more details about side characters (and Johnny’s wife). Collecting the right thing, or speaking to the right person continues the plot of the story. A very simple game with a move-at-your-own-pace story and no lose conditions.

To The Moon is available on Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: A Song for Eternal Story (Phantasy Star Online)


Following up with a SEGA music from last week, we’re moving right along to their lesser known IP, the Phantasy Star series. More specifically, the first online-connected entry in the long-running JRPG sci-fi franchise, Phantasy Star Online (PSO). Fans of this game from the Dreamcast and Gamecube era could probably immediately guess which track I’ll be introducing for this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic: the iconic title music, A Song for Eternal Story, by Hideaki Kobayashi and Fumie Kumatani.

Phantasy Star Online begins with a start of a new hope. With the home planet ravaged and inhospitable, your civilization journeys across space in an effort to discover a new planet to call home. When one of these colony-carrying spaceships, Pioneer 2, receives a message from Pioneer 1 of an excellent candidate they dub, “Ragol,” the former immediately beelines to the new destination. By the time they arrive, however, communication with Pioneer 1 — which up to this point has been regular with updates on their progress colonizing Ragol — suddenly ceases. Readings on the planet indicates a sudden large explosion occurred on the newly built city just before Pioneer 1 went silent. Suspicions high, the Pioneer 2 government asks for highly qualified soldiers, “Hunters,” to scout the planet and discover what dangers might lurk in this lush, unexplored land.

As a Diablo-inspired action-JRPG, Phantasy Star Online greatly diverges from past entries’ turn-based roots. A typical play session involves taking the following steps:

  1. Form a party of a maximum of four real players in Pioneer 2, which acts as the lobby.
  2. The leader of the party picks a quest from the quest counter. This prompts the game to procedurally generate a dungeon, themed under the environment the quest takes place in.
  3. All party members meet at the Ragol teleporter (after making preparations, of course) to start the dungeon-crawling adventure.

Combat in PSO is in real-time, where the player can customize their button inputs on what attack or spell to execute when pressed. The weapon the player equips dictates what action they can assign to their input pallet (weapons can be quick-swapped with a simple menu). Finally, the player’s class — chosen during the character creation screen — determines what weapons they can equip, thereby limiting what actions they can take. Given the game was originally designed with dial-up internet connection in mind, some technical limitations were enforced in the game that appear archaic to online games today. For example, players walk very slowly, and are unable to jump in PSO, making melee-heavy characters incapable of hitting flying enemies, and forcing them to rely on their gun-trotting or magic-wielding allies to handle the job.

Phantasy Star Online was originally released on Dreamcast, Gamecube, and PC. While official servers for the game has been put offline for quite a while now, the fan-supported PSO: Blue Burst Ultima Server is still online as of this writing. Of course, the other route is simply to check out the game’s free-to-play spiritual sequel, Phantasy Star Online 2, available on Xbox One and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store; which after 8 years since release, is still getting content updates as of this writing.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 (Sonic Mania)


Time to go old-new school, with retro-new game, Sonic Mania, developed by Christian Whitehead, Headcannon, and PagodaWest Games! OK, if I’m not making too much sense, here’s a simpler way of phrasing it: let’s enjoy this remix of Chemical Plant Zone theme by Tee Lopes, the track originally featured in Sonic 2. The new track, Chemical Plant Zone Act 2, is just as bopping as the original was on the old SEGA Genesis game!

Dr. Eggman (…or Robotnik, for purist) is at it again! After detecting strong signals from Angel Island, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles investigate to find the mad scientists and his robot army steal the Phantom Ruby gems. In an attempt to retrieve them back, the games suddenly activates, warping all the involved characters to past levels. You know…the usual Sonic plot…

Of course, the meat of Sonic Mania is it’s faithfulness to past 2D Sonic titles. Created by fans, for fans, Sonic Mania combines some of the best parts from each past entries. This includes adding unique twists to the momentum-based platformer, such as new power-ups, remixed boss battles, new environment hazards, and more. Played a 2D Sonic game before? You’ll be right at home here!

Sonic Mania is released on Playstation 4, Switch, Xbox One, and PC via Steam, Microsoft Store, and Origin.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Colors (Guilty Gear Strive)


Finally, we cover heavy metal in this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic with Arc System Works’ upcoming fighting game, Guilty Gear Strive. Composed by Daisuke Ishiwatari and performed by Naoki Hashimoto, this admittedly Engrish song manages to capture the goofy and chaotic fighting style resident Guilty Gear surgeon, Faust has. Despite it’s brash and dark beginning, it’s a remarkably sympathetic piece that does a decent job of summarizing Faust’s character arc throughout the game series.

As a long-running series, Guilty Gear Strive has quite a long backstory to cover. To summarize as best as this writer can, Guilty Gear‘s universe exists into the far future where scientists have already discovered…magic. As one would expect of such incredible power, it ends up being used by the military to create “Gears:” biological weapons that takes a humanoid shape. Naturally, the robo-I mean, Gears overlord starts becoming self-conscious and takes down humanity. By the time Strive begins, much of the war between Gears and humans have passed, and a brief period of peace has been achieved. But the main ensemble of mostly-human characters hears the news that the original creator of Gears, Asuka, has turned himself in. Suspecting this is another part of his foul schemes, the cast gears-up for action.

Guilty Gear Strive is a classic 1 vs 1, combo-based fighting game, similar to Street Fighter series and the like. Just choose one of your favorite characters, each with their own unique moveset, and dish it out with another player or AI. Unique to the series is the game’s stark art style: at first glance, one could mistake it for a well-animated 2D Japanese animation. In fact, the game is completely in 3D, including the characters. Lastly, Strive is planned to streamline many of the complications born from added features in prior titles, thus hopefully creating a more beginner-friendly control scheme.

As of this writing, Guilty Gear Strive is still in development. It’s planned to be released on Playstation 4, 5, and PC via Steam.

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