Yasunori Mitsuda's One Weakness

As I replay through Xenogears and Chrono Cros, a thought occurs to me. It's something that occurred to me all the way back when I was playing the Xenosaga Trilogy but expanding my horizons a bit has kinda confirmed it.

Mitsuda is a legend, no questions asked. His world map themes, character themes and various other music are some of the best ever. I personally can't think of a better World Map Theme than Cross' " Dream of the Shore Bordering Another World" and Xenogears' "Faraway Promise" is just beyond beautiful. These and so many others are fantastic and have virtually no competition.

But his one flaw is battle music. Cross' normal battle theme is an infamous black mark on an otherwise wildly regarded soundtrack. Both Xenogears and Xenosaga Episode 1 have little in the way of battle music variety and while what they do have is decent, I have to say it doesn't quite measure up to his other music. Moreover, I would never say it is the greatest of all time like some stuff I've heard from Meguro, Uematsu, Kajiura or Sakuraba.

I love Mitsuda but nobody is perfect and I just feel this is his one flaw.

I still like his battle music. I really love the fact that the Xenogears battle theme just keeps shifting from subdominants to dominants and never really resolved properly, keeping things tense. It’s definitely an underrated battle theme.

I'm going to agree here, his regular battle themes leave much to be desired. Now his final boss themes or special boss themes are all pretty epic (Battle with Magus, Awakening, Dragon God, Last Battle, and World Revolution), but his regular battle and boss themes (when there is an actual boss theme) tend to wear thin after awhile. I need to actually sit down and play through Shadow Hearts and see if the trend continues in those titles as well.

same can be said about prety much any video game composer... most battle themes are horrible screechy affairs that ruin the atmosphere and mood of the area the second it interrupts the better music in the game... battle music in general is awful, i'm always relieved when a game composer decides not to utilize it...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elly

same can be said about prety much any video game composer... most battle themes are horrible screechy affairs that ruin the atmosphere and mood of the area the second it interrupts the better music in the game... battle music in general is awful, i'm always relieved when a game composer decides not to utilize it...

---

I wouldn't say I don't want them to use it, but I do think that it typically needs to be more subdued. Overly aggressive battle music can be jarring and can ruin the atmosphere of an area. It's exacerbated by how a lot of old games had really aggressive battle start animations that could be outright startling at times.

I agree, I always found the battle theme in Cross to be quite jarring. In a different context it sounds amazing though.

CC's battle theme sounds like it belongs in a Benny Hill style chase scene, not in a fantasy RPG battle. The rest of the OST is good though.