Music

[FallenStar]

Oh, I don't know... I think he's gotten a *lot* of mainstream success. He was part of the "dream team" that made RPGs popular to *all* sorts of people; not to mention, again, he has his own band *and* his music has been played by professional orchestras.  Seems pretty mainstream to me.  =P

[MinaMurray]

Oh, I know.  He's pretty successful.  He's done well, and his music is well known.  But what I meant was, he's not achieved mainstream success in the sense that he appeals to broad populations.  I know many people hear him in Final Fantasy, but only some listen to it outside of that.

[FallenStar]

Sadly, that's more due to the bias *against* listening to VGM music outside of the game.   


I mean, taking Doom_Guard for example; he *hates* to listen to VGM music and he's not the only one. Then, of course, you've got the Anti-Final Fantasy bias growing as well so even *more* people are opposed to even trying to listen to him, even without playing the games.   


It makes me sick to think that such a genius like him probably won't be acknowledged as a genius simply because of these things.   

[MinaMurray]

I've not seen much Final Fantasy bias, but yeah, most people don't listen to vidya music outside of games.

I think it's just not their cup of tea, usually.  It does take good taste to get into tracks like he writes.  I had Don of the Slums on my iPod, and people thought it was weird.

[FallenStar]

What it is, basically, is that since Final Fantasy got so big and so popular (and few other long running RPG series can compete with Square's advertising blitz), people are getting sick of them and starting to share their opinions as fact - sorta like how people now feel about Walmart, when back in the day, they used to *love* Walmart for the cheaper prices over Kmart.

Now, guess what... Walmart is *exactly* like Kmart was and people are starting to hate Walmart because of it, lol.


I don't really think "Don of the Slums" is all that great myself, personal opinion, but I do love nearly *every* track from FFIV and FFVI.


Dancing Mad - Black Mage version gives me chills when I read the final chapters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I swear the music fits *so* well there.   

[Ameboes]

Beethoven didn't have that problem - he could do what he wanted.

Musicians of their time did, to a point. (At least, baroque and classical periods—I'm not sure about the classical-romantic transition period that Beethoven was a part of, but I'd assume it was still similar.) A lot of their music was commissioned—church music or for royalty's enjoyment or entertainment during a supper or feast. They were limited by the music' intention and whatever was asked of them. If we're comparing to Uematsu's work for games, we're comparing their works written for their job.


@Star: As per you're wishes, I'll drop the subject, but I'd just like to make a final note: it seems that most of our argument centers on a fundamental disagreement on the definition of an overrated medium. I believe my understanding of it as it applies to media is correct, but it is solely based on my observations of usage trends and what I could make out of the dictionary definition.

[FallenStar]

Put it this way, Ameboes:

For something to be overrated, it would mean that a select *few* would think it was great, whereas the majority of fans would think it sucks. Uematsu's music, by your own admission, is generally well-received everywhere it goes. I would think that means it's *not* overrated.  =P

And, uh, BuS? The heck are you on about, FFXII not using ATB? O_o;

I've played the game and it *most* certainly *does* use  ATB.

[FallenStar]

I hated FFXII, and it had the worst battle system ever since Kingdom Hearts II. Whether it has ATB or not is irrellevant - if the system wasn't broken why try to fix it?

Because people get bored with the same battle system rehashed over and over again.  =P

FFXII was Square's answer to the MMORPG craze and I think that as an offline MMORPG, it wins quite hard at that.  The story, now that really sucked for me, lol.

[FallenStar]

Yes and have you not read what I said before? There's a Anti-Final Fantasy bias growing because Square reuses the same systems, similar characters, etc, etc...  ATB is one reason why (another is the moody, quiet, self-absorbed main character - the "Cloud/Squall" syndrome - If Square keeps reusing the old systems without advancing them more than they've done, they're going to oversaturate the market and lose business.  =P

I applaud what they did gameplay-wise with FFXII (don't much like the instant-death without ID protection), because it was something that they hadn't done in a console game before. Now if they could just fix the damned story...   

[MinaMurray]

I thought that FFXII had the best battle system of the series.  It was actually fun and active, unlike several other titles in the series.

The story didn't really matter to me.  I muted the TV whenever the main scenes were on.  I was a lot more interested in the peripheral objectives of enjoying my role in the clan, achieving sidequests, and hunting the required quantities of monsters to unlock those bonus documents.


Taiki, I'm sure you know, but the band behind Live and Learn and most of the other 3D Sonic themes is Crush 40.  They may or may not have been involved beyond that.

[Ameboes]

For something to be overrated, it would mean that a select *few* would think it was great, whereas the majority of fans would think it sucks. Uematsu's music, by your own admission, is generally well-received everywhere it goes. I would think that means it's *not* overrated.  =P

By my understanding, something is overrated (in a given person's opinion) when the general populous regards it highly while this person does not. Your definition I'd attribute to "underrate"—when the general public sees it as less or notices it much less than it deserves.


FFXII... haven't gotten far enough to judge the story, but the gambits make for interesting pre-strategy. Otherwise it's difficult to control the other characters, though, with all the switching menus ... plus I find the free-movement ATB system rather slow and non-strategic most of the time. I'd rather a full-on real-time system à la Tales or Star Ocean, or the FFX CTB system.

Personally, I don't like the music of recent Sonic games (just like the games themselves). I loved the old 2D Genesis platformers to bits, though—my first video game was Sonic the Hedgehog, actually—and most of its music. A lot of them sound awesome as metal or orchestral arrangements.

[FallenStar]

By my understanding, something is overrated (in a given person's opinion) when the general populous regards it highly while this person does not. Your definition I'd attribute to "underrate"—when the general public sees it as less or notices it much less than it deserves. 

We must agree to disagree there. When something is overrated, a small group of loudmouthed people (such as critics, fanboys, etc) *say* something is really good, when to most of the world, it isn't.  Uematsu's music *doesn't* fit into this category, sadly, thus I said that Uematsu's music isn't overrated.

Underrated would be where the critics and anti-fanboys hate something that the rest of the population actually loves. 

[Ameboes]

Well, this isn't a matter of opinion but of understanding a term's popular usage, so I'd love to get some external opinion on which of our stances is correct, then. :D

[FallenStar]

Well, this isn't a matter of opinion but of understanding a term's popular usage, so I'd love to get some external opinion on which of our stances is correct, then. :D

Well, consider this:

FFVII is one of the games that was rated at the top of the charts for years. You've got critics, you've got loudmouth fanboys, all saying this is "THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME!"

Then, when you get right down to it and start asking the serious veterans of not only FFVII but of all Final Fantasy games (not to mention playing it yourself), you find so many errors here and there (mostly translation errors), that compared to any other Final Fantasy game, FFVII was dubbed with extremely poor quality and the game itself used character models that were *worse* than Super Mario 64 that was released the year before for a different system.

Not only that, but if you've ever seen the commercials for FFVII, you'll realize that they *only* show the FMVs and *not* the gameplay itself.

Thus, the majority of good, honest, Final Fantasy players agree that the game is overrated. It's a solid game, good for its time, but it is *not* "The Greatest Game of All Time."

Then consider the opposite situation;

Final Fantasy VIII was released a year or two later;  by all graphical standards, it *far* surpassed FFVII, by script standards, it surpassed FFVII, by gameplay standards, it surpassed FFVII.  Yet, most people hate it. Most people think it's one of the worst in the series and the critics gave it *less* accolades than FFVII.  Why?  No one knows for sure, but it's considered a great game by those who've actually gone out and played it as opposed to those loudmouth idiots who say it sucks.

This, then, is why people (the true fans of FFVIII) say that their game is underrated, because of all the negative feelings about what is one of the greater games in the series as a whole.

[FallenStar]

Okay, here are my two cents. This time, they're Canadian.

Why are we debating over the underrated and overrated? Final Fantasy VIII was a massive improvement over FFVII, but maybe those changes were made to fit the old school fans from VI and before. Most RPG fans (myself included) started on FFVII, and thus we consider that to be the benchmark which all other games are compared to. Since FFVIII was such a large change, the newer RPG fans hated it because it wasn't anything like the Final Fantasy they had first played.

On the other had, those who played FFVIII first or had played previous Final Fantasies may have appreciated it more because FFVII wasn't such a landmark title - it was just the next game in the series. They had lived through the storyline of FFVI (some consider it to be the best, but I won't say anymore since we'll spark another debate), and FFVII was just the step into the next generation and wanted to play it to see what they had done.

Uh, no offense B.u.S, but FFVIII had *more* in common with FFVII than it did with the earlier Final Fantasies, what with the:

1. Brooding Anti-Hero main character
2. Controllable Limit Breaks
3. The "Every Character Can Do Everything" ability

Also, the fact that you couldn't use most magic without decreasing your stats was *greatly* against the earlier Final Fantasy routine.  =P