Distant Worlds ~ Music from Final Fantasy

Bit of an awesome post for you today hopefully (well, if I can effectively put across what I am wanting to...English is hard to master)

We went to Distant Worlds in Edinburgh (or "Edinboro" as the conductor Ernie Roth pronounced it) last week on the 4th November, and it was really awesome to see them coming to Scotland for the first time. So for those of you who may still be wondering what the heck I'm talking about, this is a show that comes to a lot of venues worldwide now, and it involves a full orchestra and choir playing some of the music from the Final Fantasy games over the course of roughly 2 hours.

Now, before I start, I am no music critic or reviewer by any means. However I know what I like. I'll attempt to run through the concert briefly and give my thoughts where I can :)

Me and my girlfriend got to the venue (Edinburgh Playhouse, Scotland) about 45 mins early and bumped into a good friend at the doors (brah love! lol) and made our way through the theatre to where our seats were supposed to be. My first impressions were that the theatre was quite nice! Not the best I've seen, but pretty damn awesome inside! The venue looks so small from the outside...don't know how they managed this kind of Tardis crap! =) But we got to our seats on ze balcony and quickly realised that they weren't kidding when they said that our ones would have "limited legroom." Probably the most cramped I've been in a long time...That was one thing that would annoy me as my legs kept trying to resist the temptation to fall asleep on me. One of the only real flaws for me was the legroom in our seats...that would bug me just a tad throughout the night.

Anyway, after a while of looking around, trying to take pictures of the surroundings, having a look at Streetpass people on the 3DS and chatting, the orchestra started to file in and practice a bit. Pretty awesome when the really crisp projection came on screen;

So HD! As they promised on the website, visuals from the games and some of Yoshitaka Amano's art would be presented throughout the songs.

They started off with the Final Fantasy prelude, the song that is reused in a lot of the openings, endings and menu screens of the Final Fantasy games in slightly different iterations. It was a complete shock to the system to hear such amazing music that I've heard so many times come to life right in front of us. It was so well done at times that I almost drifted away into some kind of daydream where I was watching the projections on screen. At times it was almost possible to forget you were seeing this live, it sounded right out of the games in some cases.

After the prelude, they launched into the opening song of FFVIII, Liberi Fatali. On hearing that starting up, I was really stoked, its a really nostalgic song for me as VIII is one of the first final fantasy games I played. Hearing that opening so many times and watching it was really amazing back then. Squaresoft and Square Enix were always really good at pushing the boat out in terms of visuals. So seeing clips from the FMVs edited together and projected behind the orchestra was really cool. At times, the clips weren't always up to scratch, that was one of the only flaws I could put on the evening (that and the cramped legroom up in the balcony.) What I mean by up to scratch is that they just more or less put together pics from Amano, with no real editing, or transition or even thought behind what ones would be put up. Just random Amano art from some of the earlier games...it detracted just ever so slightly, because of the intricate nature of his pictures, and the distance we were from the screen, it made it quite hard to resolve some of the details and tell what was going in the pictures. Perhaps thats just me and optometrist training coming into play and trying to point out flaws...because really it didn't bug me as much as it might be coming across.

 I was really happy that they played a lot of songs that were from VII and VIII, the first games from the series that I played, as well as some I played more recently. FFVI has some great songs in its OST, and they played both the Opera song, Terra's theme and a couple of others. The Chocobo medley was really good fun, and they put a lot of work into the visuals that went along with it =p More text after the picture break! (Hopefully they're in the right order, I don't like the Blogger picture uploader for multiple images...) Thanks to my awesome girlfriend for the pictures! She has a blog over at Link ~ check it out if you are interested in nail art and other stuff =p

One really cool twist was to find out that there were some high up Square Enix staff at the concert, like the composer of the FFXIII soundtrack, Masashi Hamauzu. Even cooler was to find out that he had been with the company for a long time, and had played a part in the chanting chorus in One Winged Angel. So he actually jumped in and performed with the choir when they did One Winged Angel as an encore. Pretty cool stuff! I'd definitely recommend checking out Distant Worlds if you're remotely into Final Fantasy and it comes near your area! =)

New Xbox! =D

I got my Xbox 360 fixed finally! Hopefully no more Red Rings for moi! T_T

Dunno if I'll even have enough time to play it though, with uni and all. Think I'll check and see if my Gold subscription is still on, might jump online for a bit. =p

Rather randomly, I got to Radiant Garden in Birth by Sleep. Its pretty cool how you get to see what its like before the main 2 games when it is known as Hollow Bastion. I always liked that area, its nicely designed and has really cool music, which they have kept a similar track for in BBS. Here's 3 of them, Radiant Garden and Hollow Bastion songs from the OSTs:

Final Fantasy music.

I miss the music of old, Uematsu...you better be back for FFXIV. Some of the epic soaring songs from the pre-XIII games really put them up there among my favourite games. I should note before I start, I don't know an awful lot about music, so I'm not under any misconceptions that I am any kind of expert, but I know what I like the sound of, and I try to think about when things fit or don't.

Something about the latest outing in the Final Fantasy series lacks impact in places, but I do like some of the songs. The Chocobo theme is pretty damn cheery and uplifting, even if you don't get to stay in that area for long, it is a welcome change in mood. 

*Whistles* 

The XIII soundtrack is very varied, and it seems to have some of those bizarre choices from some of the other games like some of VIII's music (the Waltz, sure it fits in the actual dance scene early on, but not in the dark as heck lategame stages in space.) One example from XIII is the song that plays in some of Sahz's cutscenes. It is like this wierd harmonica blues style music..really bad choice. 

Its got a vast amount of tracks it seems, with each chapter having a couple of songs at least. Anything from rock, jazz, techno to drum and bass it seems, some of which fit in quite nicely, some of which are quite ambient and perhaps not quite memorable enough, some of which are remixes of other songs in the game, and some which just feel downright out of place. 

Like, I appreciate that they are trying to do something different for XIII, but I really don't think the soundtrack is as good as some of the older games.

I had meant to do more in this post, but its a couple days since I wrote this and kinda forgot what I was going to say...I guess you can enjoy these pictures at least. Epic stuff. 

I wonder what the soundtracks for the next Final Fantasy games will be like.

Tesla coil music! =o

There are more on youtube. These are pretty damn awesomez! =p

Some random stuff.

Thought I'd put up some videos of some bands I am kinda into at the moment. I don't recommend nearly enough music on here any more. I want to try make the blog somewhere I can talk about all my different passions and interests and appeal to as many different people as I can, and hopefully keep it interesting at the same time. =p

Some amazing songs by a band I am getting more and more into, I will probably pick up some of their albums at some point. Eluveitie~They are kinda a melodic death metal/folk/celtic metal band from Switzerland.

And one from Epica, I love those guys. Such awesome music!

Finished Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.

I finally completed Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance today, with all of the main endings (I had to look up a guide on how to get them, but meh..)

Its a pretty cool game once you get into it, but still its not as good as some of the other Castlevania titles. Even though its short (took me less than 8 hrs to beat) and very easy, it still had some features I quite liked.

So anyway...after I beat the game with the 3rd main ending, I turned the DS off, victorious at last. Then decided a bit later to turn it back on to have a look at boss rush mode. Turned it on to find I had no data. What the hell?

Yeah, somehow the data had vanished into nothingness just like Dracula's stupid ass castle. No error message, no "your data has been corrupted" message, no nothing. OMG...

I guess the one positive is that it happened after I beat the game and not during it or just beforehand. Still it pisses me off no end. I'm not usually too bothered about keeping backup saves but this is probably gonna change that. I would have smashed stuff in my room, or cried if this had happened on my 60 odd hr Odin Sphere save which is unfinished, but so close to the end.

*Backed up my PS2 saves just incase*

I guess the fact that I hadn't put that much time into the game either means it shouldn't be so hard to take...but I just wish hardware and game testers would pick up on these things. 

Its not my first experience with losing data, its happened before but a long time ago...it sucks. I'm gonna go listen to some angry music and vent some anger now. Arch Enemy sounds good.

Arch Enemy - My Apocalypse

Cradle of Filth - Tonight in Flames

Disarmonia Mundi - Celestial Furnace

Megadeth - Symphony of Destruction

Slayer - Angel of Death

Thats a bit better...metal has some awesome power! \m/

Odin Sphere.

I've been playing quite a bit more of Odin Sphere today. I'm in the epilogue of Mercedes' story, Fairy Land. This game is really cool, but can be quite hard at times and some people criticise it as being repetitive, as you basically play through an overlapping timeline for each of the characters, fighting some of the bosses multiple times through the game. Its definitely worth a look though, I like it. At the moment, I'm around 40 hours through, and still have to do 2 character's storylines after this.

Also, thought I'd upload this video to youtube. I love the song!

Games, Anime Conventions and Music

At the moment I am playing two games(the others are kinda partially on hold)

The main two games I'm talking about are Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII(PSP) and Luminous Arc(DS)

Crisis Core is really impressive, its so well presented, voice acted, scripted(for the most part) and the graphics look really nice. They've also put a lot of thought into the main story, with minigames and different mission styles keeping it nice and fresh throughout. Its taking me a long time to complete the game however, as I am trying to complete all of the subquests or missions as they are referred to in the game. Apparantely there is a good reward for doing so but...they are very monotonous, as they are all basically the same A-B layout-kill the miniboss(es) to complete them. I am currently on a play time of 30:10:20, sitting on Lv44 at the start of Chapter 7 and 39% through the Missions. I am guessing I will 100% the missions around the 60 hr mark, but thats just an early estimate, I might get bored of them and not bother.

Luminous Arc is quite cool, I really like the character design and character building. Each of the characters actually have quite well developed personalities and you get to know each during the intermission bits between missions. The game is a tactical RPG a la Final Fantasy Tactics(I'm only comparing it to that because that was the first Tactical RPG I played. The battles arent exactly revolutionary, but they arent too bad either. One thing I noticed that I dont really like about the gameplay are the amount of near enough useless skills the characters will learn. I guess that happens in most RPGs, but it kinda annoys me sometimes. Its also quite easy to grind the challenge out of the game, especially with support or healing characters. Every time they use a skill or spell that aids another friendly character they get 30 XP, and in this game, similar to many other Tactical RPGs, the characters always require 100 Experience Points to level up, regardless of level. So currently, my healing characters and support characters are about 9 or 10 levels higher than my combat characters. Theres quite a lot to do in this game, but I'm still pretty sure its not a very long game(excluding the sidequests, of which I've only found 1 so far.)

I was at Auchinawa 08 the other weekend, an anime convention in Glasgow, running for the 2nd year now. I was at the first, which I think although it was in a better location(Central Station in Glasgow City Centre) this year it was better. This year it was at the Holiday Inn at Glasgow Airport, slightly harder to get to for us lot, but still pretty good. Me and some others from GUMAF-the Anime & Manga Society at Glasgow Uni stayed at the hotel for 2 nights. The Con ran Friday, Saturday and Sunday and was really fun but exhausting. I did my first cosplay for the event as well, I was L from Death Note. Kinda known as the lazy man's cosplay, but one of my favourite anime characters, so I dont care lol. There were at least 2 other Ls at Auchinawa, one of which had socks! L doesnt wear socks or shoes, so he automatically failed lol. Anyway...I am getting sidetracked...

Other awesome things that happened at Auchi 08 were some karaoke to anime openings, endings and other stuff. Pokemon opening=AMAZING! Disco, Yugioh tournament (which I won!) Cosplay Masquerade, Games Room and the dealers room(which had awesome stuff, but I had to resist the temptation to buy stuff due to my lack of income...

GUMAF - Pokemon! 

Some stuff I've been listening to recently; Killswitch Engage, The Black Mages, Disharmonia Mundi, Castlevania soundtracks

Killswitch Engage - The Arms of Sorrow

And finally, one of the most amazing cutscenes I've ever seen in a video game.

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core cutscene

First post in a while

How awesome is this? I am on the bus back from St. Andrews after staying up at a friends for a bit of the weekend. That doesnt sound so awesome, but I am on the bus using the free wi-fi on my laptop.

Actually, it could be better cos it seems theres some kind of content control...I couldnt go on a few sites, bebo for example -_- But still, net on the bus was a foreign concept to me until the other day...

Anyway, St. Andrews was awesome lol, I now have black hair.

And I am seeing Nightwish tomorrow in Glasgow! Awesome, cant wait! =D

That is all, over and out.