Board 8 > [BOST] Day 17, Round 2 Begins! Undertale v KI 2013, FF9 v VSR, Rewrite v GGX

(+) Yeah! (+)

Greetings, and welcome to the results and bracket/contest discussion topic for Best OST Contest 5! In this contest, you and fellow video game soundtrack lovers will come together to once and for all answer the question "What is the best video game soundtrack? (For now.)"

Links:
Contest Bracket and Info - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sD964sXfa3trbXrr14mFKeEIA14cGM2RtHmW9TqGBmw
Discussion Thread - https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/77915805

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VOTING RULES

- Each match will be between the songs representing each game, not the game as a whole. Please remember to listen and vote with this in mind! Any votes referring to a game name rather than a song name will not be counted. You have been warned!
- Listen to both songs!! If one is your literal favorite song in the world and the other is something you hate with a passion, listen to them both!!
- No alts, no rallying, no begging for something to get more votes, etc., etc., you know the drill.
- If you change your mind and would like to swap your vote, you may do so. As soon as it is 24 hours since the match topic was started, you may not change your vote and new votes will not be counted.
- If you would like to vote in advance for matches you know you will miss, please let me know in the discussion topic.

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Main Bracket: Winners Round 2

Undertale - Battle Against a True Hero

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWBtpBwzzdM" data-time="

Killer Instinct (2013) - Village of Whispers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZLmf3n00IM" data-time="

Main Bracket: Losers Round 1

Final Fantasy IX - Melodies of Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94PdrQF1Ugs" data-time="

Vision Soft Reset - Chronic Duel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGtKNfzBUDk" data-time="

Snubs Bracket Match

Rewrite - Philosophyz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNWUE4R2pRs" data-time="

Guilty Gear X - The Original

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmiypctuaMM" data-time="

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Vote Form:
Battle Against a True Hero / Village of Whispers
Melodies of Life / Chronic Duel
Philosophyz / The Original

Battle Against a True Hero
Melodies of Life
Philosophyz

Boring votes are boring, yes.

Snubs very close

Final Fantasy IX - Melodies of Life
Rewrite - Philosophyz
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Undertale - Battle Against a True Hero - 9/10

Killer Instinct (2013) - Village of Whispers - 7/10

Voting for Battle Against a True Hero

Final Fantasy IX - Melodies of Life - 6.5/10

Vision Soft Reset - Chronic Duel - 5.5/10

Voting for Melodies of Life

Rewrite - Philosophyz - 8.5/10

Guilty Gear X - The Original - 7/10

Voting for Philosophyz

Village of Whispers
Melodies of Life
The Original

Sorry Rewrite. Philosophyz isn't bad but always felt like relatively unremarkable jpop to me. To clarify, "unremarkable jpop" is still enough to do decently in my eyes because I think jpop music tropes are generally good musical things to do, but yeah. I might have voted the other songs on the list here as Philosophyz is my least favorite, but The Original is also quite good so who knows.
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Battle Against a True Hero
Chronic Duel
The Original

yo you know what I'm gonna go ahead and get this done in a TIMELY fashion this time so I'm not a distracted fool.

I initially wrote a long piece of dialogue here about how this song doesn't appear in many playthroughs of the game but I don't think it was worth keeping in my post. I myself am a bit less familiar with this than other Undertale songs as a bit of a result of that even though when listening to the soundtrack I don't have to worry about limitations like that. Anyway this song is pretty cool & engaging, though I don't like the hint of moody twilight the piano keeps in the background throughout, though I Really like the touhou switch part at 1:56. Village of Whispers has this cool appealing, rough base electric guitar feel to it or so, and I like the stuff that rough bass electric guitar does like the thing at 1:56 as well as other places. Wow 1:56 is apparently a good time. For a good time call 1:56. The soft light tones around the background give it a decent & enjoyable eerie feel. But the whispers, well they're vocals so I don't like em. Hm I guess I'm in like a more tolerant mood towards vocals than usual because honestly this match felt a lot more closer than I felt like it should. I guess the whispers were quiet enough that it's easier for me to ignore them. "Thankfully" the slow quiet moody vocal lala part easily made my decision for me which it probably would have been regardless.

VSR's my real "pet nomination" , I guess is the right term? a cool obscure discovery with some songs I really like, though maybe not a lot of songs total. But as a result I guess I'm hoping it does decently more than I am with my other nominations. I feel like there is some what of a slight drop off between these bottom two songs and the rest of the 4 (though I still think they're great! Like this is one Chronic Duel a cool, imp-ish battle theme with a grimy cavernous feel to it, but in a good "setting the location" kind of way than in an actually gross way) that if it can get past this things could really be looking up. Or something. Any way Melodies of Life is a very anti-me song, mostly slow sad emotional moody piano + vocals, though about 1/4 of the way in when other instruments start to pick up I guess it gets a little better, as does when the lady stops singing, though she definitely doesn't stay quiet for nearly as long as I would like anyway what I'm saying is I really don't like Melodies of Life So if I lose my "pet nomination" to this it'll be that much more flustering oh no.

I am legally unauthorized from voicing my thoughts on Philosophyz yet.
"The Original" has a rather interesting instrumentation as it goes through it's intro, if you ask me. I like the cool deep bass it starts with but I don't like the snaps. The electric guitar is in the middle I don't really care about it either way. But also hey is that the freaking Windows XP MIDI piano instrument lol I can't hear that and take this song "seriously" which may or may not work in it's favor because I'm silly. Anyway this song is fairly decent, and does a number of things to keep my interest.
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Undertale - Battle Against a True Hero
Final Fantasy IX - Melodies of Life
Rewrite - Philosophyz
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Village of Whispers
Melodies of Life
The Original
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Village of Whispers
Melodies of Life
Philosophyz

Battle Against a True Hero
Chronic Duel
Philosophyz

Battle Against a True Hero is one of two Undertale tracks I really like, so good draw here. Or maybe not, since I'm not particularly fond of its opponent anyways.

I'm not a fan of sappy, emotional vocal VGM (Lunar 2 is an exception), and this one really falls flat for me. Chronic Duel is kinda cool but it's short. Kind of a weak match here.

Would probably take a number of other GGX tracks for this match, but I was never too big on Faust's theme.
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Village of Whispers
Chronic Duel
Philosophyz

i know gamebop will not like me saying this but melodies of life vs chronic duel is like dead even i love them both a lot!!! but i think the "newness" factor of chronic duel is what is making it stand out to me right now. also jp melodies > eng melodies sooooo there's that too (this will come back to bite sound of the wind as well maybe....)

the original is actually pretty funny i like it more than i remember, but Philosophyz is HOT YO like Seriously some pretty good anisong stuff right here

Village of Whispers
Melodies of Life

Didn't really care for either of the snubs so passing on that one. Really liked Village of whispers even if both songs in the first match were pretty good.
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Village of Whispers
Melodies of Life
The Original

Battle Against a True Hero
Chronic Duel
The Original

Battle Against a True Hero
Melodies of Life
The Original

Damn near double-voted against my own noms.
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Village Of Whispers
Chronic Duel
The Original
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Village of Whispers
Chronic Duel
The Original

BAATH is okay. VoW is quite good basically the whole way through, other than that lalala part.

It sucks how we always get the shitty English versions of these Japanese vocal songs. They're basically always worse. Nier, Smash, Mario, FF, etc. Always better in Japanese. Blech. And I don't really like the song anyways. <_< CD's pretty solid. I dunno if I'd vote it against the other FFIX songs, but it's an easy vote here.

Philosophyz pretty cool Jpop. I like it way more than MoL at least! The Original is just awesome though. Love it. Song of the day~
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I generally prefer English versions either way it wouldn't have changed how I voted
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I'd probably say more often than not I prefer the Japanese versions, but it's far from 100%. I really like the English versions of Melodies of Life and Eyes on Me. This one's Tales and not FF, but Ring a Bell is another case that's coming to mind even if that one might be nostalgia.
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Undertale - Battle Against a True Hero: 10. An old favorite of mine. Really great in every way.
vs.
Killer Instinct (2013) - Village of Whispers: 7. I never quite know where this song is going to go, and I like that a good deal. Evil demonic chanting and creep metal are a good combo here. Runs a little too long for me, but I really appreciate it.

and

Final Fantasy IX - Melodies of Life: 0.5. I don't like anything about this, from the singing to the composition to the lyrics. If it wins here I'll be very sad.
vs.
Vision Soft Reset - Chronic Duel: 5.5. My favorite song from this setlist already got played. This is cool too though, a nice "pursuit" theme. I wish the main instrument was a bit stronger.

and

Rewrite - Philosophyz: 7.5. What a nice surprise this is. A nice blend of guitars and otherworldly synths and expressive vocals. Would definitely listen to this again (and in fact I did, after it ended!).
vs.
Guilty Gear X - The Original: 7.5. This is good too! Drums are a little quiet (actually the whole production feels sort of muddy) but that rockin' Guilty Gear guitar really shines, plus sax! Shame one of these has to lose.

Votes:
Battle Against a True Hero
Chronic Duel
Philosophyz

Battle Against a True Hero
Melodies of Life
Philosophyz

Love these matchups; tons of interesting contrast. Philosophyz was starting to hurt my ears playing from my speakers and made me feel like an old man muttering "fucking weebs..." as it blasted from some ungodly location. It's pretty good (I went back and listened with headphones).
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Village of Whispers
Melodies of Life
The Original

Hisako the Indelible, Grave of Flames
Prayers of Vengeance, Vengeance
Memories of Smoke, Smoke
Hisako the Indelible, Malice Indelible

(is cool song)
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Undertale - Battle Against a True Hero
Final Fantasy IX - Melodies of Life
Rewrite - Philosophyz

MATCH 1

Battle Aganist a True Hero is one of those iconic Undertale songs (though you could probably say that about a large portion of the soundtrack) and I like it! I think I actually like the softer parts of the song the most, such as 1:36-1:55.

Village of Whispers is really interesting, but ultimately, it's a good example of metal songs that would make sense for me to like but is something that I'm not overly excited about. I could do without the horror strings intro, but the main riffs are pretty boring, to be honest. I do like metal a lot, so this is still good to me in the sense of "I like metal and this is metal music so I like this." It's just that it has a lot of potential to be really good, but doesn't quite get there. This reminds me about my feelings on Dimmu Borgir's (a black metal band that I like) music. I love a lot of their older albums because of this epic, symphonic style to it, but their newer works lost a lot of that flair and now just has the kind of generic riffs that I feel like Village of Whispers is guilty of having. I guess in short, Village of Whispers has a style that I can get behind, but isn't quite in line with my tastes, so I'll have to take Battle Against a True Hero over this.

MATCH 2

Melodies of Life is really pretty! Slow songs with a good melody like this are really pleasant to listen to. This song has a sort of vintage feel, for lack of a better word. Like the kind of song that my parents could've slow danced to in their youth or something like that (that is, of course, if that song had existed back then).

I was a bit worried about how this might've matched up against Vision Soft Reset because I thought the setlist was pretty cool overall, but fortunately, it drew one of the weaker songs for me, so this decision became a lot easier. Chronic Duel is kinda cool and I guess it sounds like what the name suggests, but it's pretty forgettable overall.

MATCH 3

Key visual novels always have such great OPs! I love this j-rock style from Philosophyz! The melody in the vocals is super good, especially in the chorus, and the guitar is great too.

The Original is interesting. Cool sax and guitar. This actually feels a bit different from what I've heard from Guilty Gear songs in the past. Guess the song kinda lives true to its name haha. Cool song, but not good enough to beat Philosophyz.

Philosophyz > Melodies of Life > Battle Against a True Hero > The Original > Village of Whispers > Chronic Duel

Battle Against a True Hero
Melodies of Life
The Original

Village of Whispers was actually pretty cool and I almost feel bad voting against it but nah (also huh is the quality of the BAaTH upload kinda bad or is that just me (WHOOPS that's my nom))

ok having only heard like Scene Shifts There and Deep Forest from Rewrite I did not expect this kind of song but I am not complaini- wait is that a SAX in The Original oh baby
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Village of Whispers
Melodies of Life
Philosophyz

Battle Against a True Hero
Chronic Duel
Philosophyz
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Killer Instinct (2013) - Village of Whispers
Vision Soft Reset - Chronic Duel

Rewrite - Philosophyz
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Undertale - Battle Against a True Hero
Vision Soft Reset - Chronic Duel
Guilty Gear X - The Original

Typically I have more to say, but today just didn't really do it for me. I always love Undertale music and was happy to see it starting off today's match. "Battle Against a True Hero" isn't my favorite Undertale song, but it did a lot more for me than the Killer Instinct track. Guilty Gear X's song was alright too-- I defs enjoyed the sax and a little bit of the insturmentation. Today's match just felt a little bit boring to me. There was a lot of sadmusic.mp3 and a little bit of anime-ish sounding stuff and that was really it. Sorry for the minimal commentary, I just wasn't impressed.
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Undertale - Battle Against a True Hero
Vision Soft Reset - Chronic Duel
Guilty Gear X - The Original

Uh
hm

VSR great as always but wow this is an especially flat way to start R2.

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Village of Whispers
Chronic Duel
The Original

tuff snubs as always
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oh my god the EDGE (village of whispers)
Chronic Duel
Philosophyz

"I don't remember KI being all that great for music" - azuarc, 2018

memories is very pretty but not interesting at all
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