How do these things happen?

I planned on taking Dissidia with me on our Thanksgiving trip, so I take it and open up the box to find... Star Ocean. The disk for Dissida was no where in sight. So then I open up the box to Star Ocean to find... Valkyrie Profile. The plot thickens. The box for Valkyrie Profile is empty, so the trail runs cold. Instead I think back to the last game I played before P3, and remembered it was Breath of Fire. I looked there to find... Persona. So I looked in the Persona box and found... Disgaea. Surely Dissidia must be around here somewhere? But then, finally, in the Disgaea box, there is Dissidia. Sitting lonely, misplaced, and unplayed. Awww.

My current project! Or at least, a small section of my current project. I've been frustrated with painting lately because I've wanted to do something more ... "dynamic". My pictures? Not very dynamic. Colorful yes, pretty yes, dynamic? Not so much.

edit: So yeah, while I was posting this I kept feeling it was wrong wrong WRONG and so spent probably two hours fixing what I felt was wrong with his face. What you see up there is not what I originally posted. It is much much different.

So, just for kicks:

( Painting evolution... )

I was going to post more things... but now that I've wasted the rest of my day poking at some guys face, I think it will have to wait until tomorrow...

So since... I guess it must have been Saturday (really? Saturday?) I've been zoned out in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.

It's... a little disappointing. It's a good game, don't get me wrong (ESPECIALLY on the DS,) but this is the game that the devs were claiming was basically SMTIV without the IV attached. A main series game. What would be the SMT equivalent of FFXIII.

... yeah, it's no where near good enough to be SMTIV. I hope they come out with a REAL SMTIV, but if the devs say it's SMTIV then I guess we'll just have to go with it.

And it isn't the graphics. I've loved games with worse graphics than this, so you won't see me complaining too much about it. It's more of... scope. SMTIII had this freakishly fucked up Tokyo to explore. It was beautiful and horrid and there was so much to do and see in the game. The story was there only in threads and tatters, but it didn't matter because there was so much exploration and the gameplay was so good.

Strange Journey just seems more... contained. You're given a mission to do something (Yes! Missions on a handheld game! New and interesting concept! [/sarcasm]) and then you go and do it while walking down loooooooong booooooring corridors. Okay sure, most SMT is walking down long boring corridors. For some people that's what makes the game (I prefer other aspects of it, but...) Me? I think long boring corridors can go to hell. Though at least they aren't randomly generated long boring corridors (Which can also go to hell. Twice.)

That said, it's still a good game. Particularly if you consider that it's a DS game. Most companies seem to think that making a quick buck with a mediocre DS game is the key to success. Fortunately Atlus is not one of those companies.

The story is, well... okay, story isn't really a big part of original SMT games. It's more like setting, then the world explodes. In this game the world is overpopulated and then some strange vortex in the South Pole starts eating the Earth bit by bit. You are part of a secret team that is investigating the vortex, and you have special armor and vehicles and crap to help you do it. Buuuuuuut of course when you try and go into the vortex your vehicles crash land and you're all screwed. Demons start breaking in and several of your crew get slaughtered. You manage to kill off a couple but just barely. Then a strange program gets downloaded into your DEMONICA (Yeah, they had to stretch a bit to get that one. It stands for DEMOuntable Next Integrated Capability Armor.) that allows you to summon demons. Then with the help of your demon pals, you try to find a way out/search for what's happening/try to find the rest of the crew etc. etc.

Of course, that's not what this game is about (it's not!?) NO! It's all about demon summoning/negotiations/fusion and grinding your ass off. Now with 300 demons there are quite a lot of demons to find, which is the whole fun of the game. Getting demons to join you through negotiations in battle, which is fun, except of course for the one hundred million times you get shot down by the testy finicky assholes. But I love how you find out about the personality of all the demons with the negotiations. A lot of times they're funny (like one little girl demon asked me what I wanted of her, I said "I want you to become my friend!" and she was like ewwwwww, nasty old man! You shouldn't pick up little girls!) And then of course there is the experimenting with fusion to find just the right demon. Delicious.

But what is different about this game is just HOW important alignments are. You'll only work well in battle with demons that are the same alignment as you. If you hit a demons weakness it won't mean anything if all of your teammates have different alignments. But if they are all the same then you'll get massive extra damage for hitting weakness. They did away with the turn-press system, which makes the game a whole lot easier. In fact, this is the easiest SMT I've ever played. (Another mark against it for not being SMTIV.) It's just not SMT if you're not like HO-SHIT I'M GONNA DIE every other battle. In Nocturne when grinding I actually save EVERY COUPLE BATTLES because you never know when something's going to tear you a new one. Enemy hits your weakness? Gonna die. Enemy gets a preemptive strike? Gonna die. Enemy Marin Karin's your MC? Gonna die TWICE. So far in Strange Journey I've only died twice. Once because my MC's armor had a weakness to fire and the second boss happens to only use fire spells (oops!) and then once because I got Mudo'd. Otherwise it's been a walk in the park. I was nervous starting up the game because I was so sure I'd have a lot of game-over screens in my future, but that wasn't the case AT ALL. Not that I mind not dying mind you, but it doesn't feel much like SMT.

Another thing I like is the EX Missions. I find them a whole lot more interesting than the Main Missions. Once I had to go find a Sandman's sandbag, and then another time I was taking messages between a Karasu Tengu and Koppu Tengu where the Koppu Tengu was insisting that he was quitting and striking out on his own. Then there was one where these three Dis asked for help and then something random and unexpected happened that I found somewhat amusing.

I like the variety in the cast. There are males and females of just about every size/shape/race. Though for some reason the males are referred to as "XX Crew" and the females are referred to as "XX Woman" (where XX stands for whatever section they're in.) Why men are crew and women are just women confuses me to no end. But given the variety, and given the silent protag-ness of our MC, I don't see why they couldn't have let us choose our own sex/coloration/nationality. I don't think it would have been that hard. If I'm playing a game set in Japan, okay I'll be a Japanese guy even if it's a silent protag. But his being a Japanese man has absolutely NO BEARING on the plot. The MC could just as easily be an African woman, or an Irish man, or a Furry. Whatever. The devs claim they made the game with an international cast in an area outside of Japan because they want to appeal to the foreign market, but then they don't give you a choice? Playing a male character almost never bothers me, being a girl who games it's kind of inevitable you know? And mostly in story heavy games I don't see myself AS the character but WATCHING the character. But something about this game makes me wish I could have been given a choice.

I think the most disappointing part of the game is the music. While it fits the atmosphere (rock wouldn't work so well in an antarctic vortex) it soon becomes dull and repetitive. Nearly every track has this weird tuneless chanting. To give you an idea, this is a sample. Sure it sounds okay at first, but then try listening to it for five hours straight. The other tracks are only variations on this same theme, like this one (I keep imagining them as saying HEE-HOO HEE-HOO.)


I'm reading some Japanese reviews about the game, and everyone is talking about how difficult it is. So I thought, okay, maybe the difficulty escalates later in the game? But in their comments they said they were five hours into it. I'm probably 1/4th of the way through, and I can't help but think how easy it is. And I can't believe I'm complaining about this, because challenging difficulty is not the high point for me in any RPG and I get irritated when people say that RPGs should be near to impossible for anyone but the most expert gamer to get through. I'm not really complaining, it's more of just ODD.

New FFXIII chapters are out as of a few hours ago! Fortunately the first two are VERY short so I was able to get one in before bedtime. This time we see things from Hope's eyes. How much he hates his father for constantly working and making his mother sad, how much he claims not to care about his father at all. He really loves his mother though, which is sweet.

Read the first one here!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this character will be the coolest female an FF game has ever had!

EVER!

Can't get much from this blurry scan, other than her summon is Bahamut. Dragon + spear = dragoon? WILL SHE BE A JUMPER!? Supposedly her name is Oerba Yun Fang though.

Excited!


Oh, and Terra, Aqua and Ven's master is a total dork. I thought he was going to be COOL. HE IS TOTALLY NOT COOL.

EDIT: I've decided to post the translations on a new blog here. Please go there to read them, since navigation/formatting is slightly better. I will be posting more than just FFXIII so I hope you'll follow me!

I decided to put the next chapters (4-7) in a separate post from the previous three. I only have chapter four for now, but I'll update here when I have new chapters.

edit: All chapters complete!

Thank you for reading, everyone. I hope you've enjoyed it! If we're lucky, chapters from the next part will be updated on the website soon. I'll translate them as soon as we have them.


Note: If anyone wants to repost my translations anywhere, feel free to do so! The same goes for translating my versions into other languages. Just put "Original Translation by Lissar" somewhere and everything will be fine! Just be aware that I will probably be making revisions to the translations at some point, but I will note when that happens.

And if you see any mistakes/awkwardness, or have any other comments, message me about it! I'd like to hear from you.


( Chapter Four )

( Chapter Five )

( Chapter Six )

( Chapter Seven )

EDIT: I've decided to post the translations on a new blog here. Please go there to read them, since navigation/formatting is slightly better. I will be posting more than just FFXIII so I hope you'll follow me!

That took a couple hours! Well I decided to start working on the FFXIII novel today. I don't know why, it just seemed like a fun project to do. I'm sure there are tons of other people working on it as well, but this is just for me and anyone else who might drop by to read it. I only have chapter one finished, but considering chapter one is over 1/5 of the whole story that we have now I don't think I'm doing too badly. I'll probably update here when I finished later chapters.

edit: I've updated with chapter two and three.

Chapter Four can be found here.

Note: If anyone wants to repost my translations anywhere, feel free to do so! The same goes for translating my versions into other languages. Just put "Original Translation by Lissar" somewhere and everything will be fine! Just be aware that I will probably be making revisions to the translations at some point, but I will note when that happens.

And if you see any mistakes/awkwardness, or have any other comments, message me about it! I'd like to hear from you.

( Chapter One )

( Chapter Two )

( Chapter Three )

A variety of things to talk about! I actually went and saw PEOPLE last weekend, so that was nice. I don't enjoy being a hermit as much as I once supposed.

I did a book review on Soulless, which was a sort of steampunk/paranormal romance, which I quite enjoyed.

THEN I decided to start posting up the prequel novella to New Tales of Edo (Shin!! Edo Monogatari for those of you who know) called The Pure Law Scrolls. I've been thinking about it for awhile, but finally decided to just go for it today. I feel weird doing it before actually complete the regular one, but the comic is going to take me a very long time to complete once I really start working on it. I'm hoping to get a chapter a week up, as a small goal. It's kind of sad that it took me far longer to draw that picture than it did to write the prologue. A picture may be worth 1000 words but it takes longer to draw them than the write them.

I have so many things I'm doing right now! Fortunately I have a lot of time.

I did another review. Though this one is a book that I wrote a mini-review on before, so those of you who read that already know all the main points. It's not as funny as the previous review, but since I actually enjoyed this book there isn't much to make fun of. Well I suppose I could have gone off on the implications of sexually transmitted cities, but I actually really LIKE that concept.

I'm currently soliciting suggestions for future reviews! So if you have a book you think I should read, or something that you think would be good to review, tell me!

I want to avoid doing anything big name, since generally people will have already formed an opinion of their own on the series (So LotR, HP, etc. are straight out. No Twilight either, much as I would enjoy ranting about that shit book.) Getting people to notice less famous books (or warning them away from them) is better to me.

I really enjoy doing this though. If I could make a living off of it? Awesome. I mean I get to draw, read, and rant about books. It's like heaven. I'll be doing some game reviews too, I think, odd as that might be. But in some cases games can be viewed on a similar (though obviously different) level as books, so I don't feel it is that odd (or at least not for me.) I read Tor.com, and occasionally they have game reviews. The only ones I've seen, I think, were for Tales of Vesperia and Fallout 3, but it's nice to see games getting that kind of recognition in different outlets.

This is what I was talking about. The book review thing. OMG it's fun. To tear apart horrible books. AHAHAHA. Though next I'll review a book that I enjoyed. Don't want it all to be bad reviews. Otherwise people will wonder why I read books at all.


And I changed icons (twirls) do you like? I was getting a bit tired of Roxas looking at me angrily day in and day out. I decided to make this my "online character" for awhile. A fox woman who is keeper of the Great Library. Suits me, don't you think?

Apparently the English version of Days (out today) has decreased HP for all enemies in comparison to the Japanese version. OMG THAT ALMOST MAKES ME WISH I HAD BOUGHT THE ENGLISH VERSION (but not really.)

No wonder people are generally giving it an 8/10. My score was 7/10, but I would have given it an 8/10 if it hadn't been for the annoyingly massive amounts of HP every enemy had. Some enemies would take a couple of minutes of just me dodging and whacking them upside the head just to defeat. And that would be just regular vanilla enemies. Never mind bosses (the last boss in Neverland makes me cry just thinking about it, and I had switched to Easy by that time just so I could more easily deal with the large amount of HP.)



Hooray for rain! For the past two weeks there has been a forest fire south of Oakridge. The sky has been filled with smoke, and they haven't been able to contain it. They were hoping for rain, so I'm happy it finally came! Plus the rain is just pleasant.


I decided to set up a book review blog, since I've been posting all of those book reviews lately. But I'm going to do one up over other book review sites, and include an illustration with each review. Of course the illustrations will just be quick sketches, but I thought it would add something nice and personal to the blog. When I'm finished with it I'll give you the link.

Yaag. I don't even need a punchline.


This is the only quick sketch I did today that I don't completely hate. I'm still going to post the others though... because why not? Oh, except for the second attempt at Xemnas. I hated the first one so I tried again. I think I made him even WORSE.

( If you notice a theme it's all in your head. )

Next time I'm going to try and do drawings with all the characters that I like with RED hair!

I wanted to go full out on drawing today, but ended up having to translate some more. So tired of translating already! So in-between I did some quick sketches, just to keep me in the drawing mood for tomorrow.



Setzer "all your beautiful women and money are belong to me" Gabianni

( Can you tell what my theme was? )

I really need to get out more.

I got my iPod nano the other day and have been spent the rest of my time downloading and filling it with video game soundtracks. For some reason I don't much feel like filling it with any other kinds of music. I don't really listen to other kinds of music these days so it would be kind of silly to put anything else on it. At least for now. But I keep putting stupid things on it like the Tales of Vesperia soundtrack. I really liked that game but the soundtrack is boring. It's kind of a waste of space. And I was reminded how much I like the Crisis Core soundtrack. Despite the fact that all the original stuff is basically two songs remixed over and over. But they're two really GOOD songs.

I wasn't going to get another iPod for awhile after the last one had it's little meltdown crisis, but then I found out that they were discontinuing the 4th generation line of nanos that I wanted, and that the 5th generation comes with, of all things, a video camera. If I wanted to take videos I'd GET a video camera. I just want a music player. My mom suggested that if I only want a music player I should just get a Shuffle. But why would I want something that just plays music randomly? And since the older generation ones were all discounted, I figured that now would probably be the best time to buy it. So I cried and let go of another portion of my savings. But I don't regret it. It's been really lonely without a portable music player.


I'm finding that the mark of a really good soundtrack is if you can listen to the normal battle music without cringing. If the composer can make THAT enjoyable for however many hours you get to listen to it then imagine what the rest of the music sounds like! Sadly, even though I mostly like FF music, there isn't a single normal battle song that I can listen to happily. They're just too annoying. The victory fanfare is even worse. It's familiar sure, but I kind of hate hearing it. It's in every damn game and you have to hear it 1000+ times per game. How exciting.


Books I've finished recently:


Palimpsest - 8/10 A city that lives as an STD on peoples skin. That's right. You can only visit this city if you have sex with another person who has the STD. You go there in your dreams. Interesting premise. The writing was also very... beautiful. Sometimes it was a little bit too beautiful but I won't hold that against anyone. Unfortunately what this book lacked was a purpose for about 4/5 of the story. For most of it, there were just little vignette type stories showing the same four people in different places in the world trying to find a way to the city... which of course ends up with them all having lots of sex with random strangers. I would have giving this book a 10/10 if she had let on to the purpose of the story a little earlier on. I enjoyed the last 1/5th the most because I finally understood what she was getting at.

Jovah's Angel - 7/10 Another Sharon Shinn book in her world of spaceships and angels. Pretty basic Sharon Shinn fair though, which means if you like your fantasy with a good romance you'll probably enjoy her. I've enjoyed every single book of hers, which is a compliment. Unfortunately, there isn't a single book of hers that I LOVE. But at least she has never disappointed me, unlike some authors I could name.

What a Dragon Should Know - More dragon porn, although this one focuses more on the characters and less on the porn, so I enjoyed it quite a bit more. That and the female MC reminded me so much of myself (except for her tendency to dress herself in drab clothing which is not something I can understand AT ALL) with her glasses and her bookishness and her razor-sharp wit. We never do find out what a dragon should know though.

Mouse Guard Fall 1152 - 7/10 This is actually a comic book. A comic book about mice. If you like Watership Down, Redwall, The Secret of NIMH etc. you'll probably enjoy this comic. It's about mice who build cities and live civilized lives, but the surrounding areas are full of predators and it is dangerous to go anywhere. So they have the Guard to protect the boundaries of their territory. Then everything falls apart when they find a traitor. The art in this comic is the best part, it's beautiful. The story was simple but nice. Unfortunately the pacing was not done well at all. It just went from scene to scene without letting us get a feel for the characters and situations. I read through it all and still don't remember any of the character's names. I wish he had written in more character interaction than we got. For example there was one character who died, and another character was devastated by it, and it turns out he was her good friend. But from what it sounded like at first, I had thought they had just met. But, if he works on his pacing issues in later comics, I can see this being one of my favorites.


Anyways, time to... oh dear, go to bed I suppose! I need to stop staying up so late...

I was thinking it has been awhile since I've really done anything with lines. So I've decided to work with lines more often now. Liiiiiiiiiiines (sorry, 7am and I haven't slept yet. Not that it's unusual or anything.)



Potential character for my Edo period samurai steampunk Nanowrimo? I'll call him... Hiroyuki! (Just kidding Jess.)

Umm... vote for me? Asking my friends to vote for me is probably the only way I'm going to get votes! (sigh) There are so many that are so much better than mine I can't even compete. I guess I count myself lucky that I got into the top 30 (they trimmed it down from the "best of the best" list for the voting page.) I dislike their voting system very much though. Basically they took the thirty they thought were the best, and put them on the main voting page. You can still look at and vote for all the rest, but only by going to a page with ALL of the entries that takes FOREVER to load and then you'd have to e-mail your vote in for that particular entry, unlike the main voting page which has a poll. I thought what they would do was have several pages of images, say like 30 images a page, and list them alphabetically with a "vote" button by it. Of course if it's listed alphabetically I would be just about dead last and no one would ever see me, but I still see it as far more fair. I feel so bad for those people who worked hard on their images only to not be able to get voted on at all. (Well at least not without having to go out of their way for it.)

I see they got rid of man-face and head-to-small-for-her-huge-body Bayonetta, but they kept the torpedo hair one? Who decided that? It would be sort of kind of awesome if he won though.

Character meme I stole from Jess: (wow I can't remember how many years it's been since I've posted a meme)

List ten of your favorite characters from different fandoms; ask people to spot patterns in your choices; and, if they're so inclined, to draw conclusions about you based on the patterns they've spotted.

1. Roxas (Kingdom Hearts series)
2. MC from Persona 4 (Okay this is an odd choice since he has whatever personality you give him. So he can be sweet and kind or a complete douche depending on how you want him to be. But I like his design and... he does magic tricks!)
3. Citan Uzuki (Xenogears)
4. Remus Lupin (Harry Potter) (I actually don't like his character much in the movies. He's much more round and wishy-washy than I imagined him from the books. I always thought of him as a thin, sharp, scholarly type.)
5. Auron (Final Fantasy X)
6. Saito Hajime (Kaze Hikaru) (Probably the least attractive version of Saito Hajime ever conceived but he is a great character.)
7. Lirael (Abhorsen Trilogy)
8. Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice)
9. Celes (Final Fantasy VI)
10. Kazuha Akiyoshi (Sekai de ichiban daikirai)

I find even if I love the game/book/comic that doesn't mean I have any particular attachment to a single character. I may like all the characters as a whole or hate the characters entirely but love the story, but actual singular characters that I like are rather few and far between. So this was actually difficult for me to do.

I'd like to see other peoples favorite characters as well!

I'm playing Devil Summoner 2 again, and I'm trying (tried and failed) to complete a side quest with Oberon and Titania. The side quest is that Titania thinks you're (the main character, who is a Japanese high school boy) cute and wants you to live trapped in fairyland until you die. After she tricks you into getting captured she tells you, "Beautiful Oriental boys are just my type!" For some reason I thought this was hilarious. Queen Titania of the fairies has yellow feveeeeeeeeeer.

I can't beat it though, because Oberon has this bitch move when you fight them where he casts Domina (sleep) on you and then immediately casts Sleep Forever on you which insta-kills anyone who is asleep. I have one of my demons constantly casting Patora (heal status effects) but half the time she just, I don't know, forgets? And I die. Yeah... Last time I tried I died about five seconds into the battle. Since it is only a side quest I'm just... not going to bother.


Oh! And I started a page at Backloggery. Unfortunately I don't know many people who play as many games as I do who would join and add me (sigh.) I'm a lonely lonely gamer.

Subtitle: Or - When Aeryne realizes the old rock and pop isn't doing it for her these days.


It's true, I haven't seriously listened to any "band" music in quite awhile. I mean I buy the albums and listen to it a couple of times, and I think "I really like these songs!" But I just don't, you know, have the desire to listen to them. I don't know, it's hard to explain. It's like when you know you like something but you just don't feel like it right now? Except it's all the time and has been growing stronger for the past year or so.

So what is doing it for me? Why, video game music of course! It's like I can't get enough of it. Video game music really has come quite a long ways from the old days. I remember when I first heard a console game have a song with WORDS, aka a song that wasn't obviously a midi. FFVII, One Winged Angel. I was floored. I mean not that older games soundtracks weren't great. I still love FFVI (coughpianoversioncough) and Secret of Mana soundtracks. But this song for me gave a view of what game music would be in the future.

But I've been trying to think why I enjoying listening to soundtracks (I include movie soundtracks in this) far more than "band" music. And I think, at least for me, it's the feelings I get listening to it. How it reminds me of a certain part in a game. It gives me far more of an emotional "jolt" than other types of songs that I can't connect with any particular memories. Also, songs by bands tend to follow similar formulas (I know, I know, essences of how music is made) where soundtracks tend to be, or at least give the illusion of being, free-form. Of course they are meant to be repetitive, looping, and in the background. And maybe that's another reason why I like them, they are unobtrusive. Most songs by bands demand that you pay attention to them, but that's not really what I want in a song. I like to listen to music while painting or walking, and I think soundtrack music fits that.


So I thought I'd post some of my current favorites up for others to listen to! (Youtube links.)

Kuzunoha Raidou vs. King Abaddon Opening Theme

When I first popped in this game I fell in love with the opening song. I was so happy that I got the version with the soundtrack rather than the version with Nocturne Maniacs (Since I already had the original Nocturne it seemed pointless.) I love the catchy big band feel to it. (I just decided to start playing this game again today, so I was thinking a lot about this one!)


Next up! Persona 3!

Persona 3 Final Battle

Yeah, the final battle was loooooooong. Good thing the music was awesome! It's actually a remix of a song you hear QUITE A LOT in the main portion of the game. In fact I heard it so much I rather dislike it now, but this version is still really cool.

Persona 3 "Unavoidable Battle"

I'm pretty sure this is the boss theme that plays when you have to fight human characters. I didn't think much of it at first, but when I listened to the soundtrack afterwards I realized what a cool song it was.

Persona 3 "Changing Seasons"

School theme for I think... Summer was it? I love the horns and the whispered French.

Persona 3 "Living with Determination"

Dorm theme after a "certain point". Uh... I can't say I actually am enjoying listening to it at the moment since I just finished The Answer today. I need a bit more space from it...


Persona 4! (Even better soundtrack, I'm going to have a hard time choosing...)

Persona 4 "Signs of Love"

Yes, it is in English. Hahaha. Though it has vocals, I like that the vocals aren't really a focus of the song. They are just sort of there.

Persona 4 "Theater"

Yes, it's supposed to sound like strip club music. I wish I could figure out what she is saying, it wasn't included in the booklet.

Persona 4 "A New World Fool"

One of the boss themes. Creepy theme, creepy boss.

Persona 4 "Heaven"

Heaven: Now with more Engrish! But no seriously, it's a beautiful song.

Persona 4 "The Genesis"

Another loooooong song for another loooooong final boss battle. I read he actually wanted to make the song 10 minutes long since the battle is supposed to take around 20 minutes (so it would loop twice) but it didn't work out. I love how it's all depressing at first, but it gradually gets more hopeful.


Okay, now for some Kingdom Hearts II!

Kingdom Hearts II "Tension Rising"

This song made me buy the soundtrack for this game. Really. It's a boss (sort of) theme that just... it was so different from other boss themes that I've heard.

Kingdom Hearts II "Darkness of the Unknown"

Anyone want to play a KH drinking game with me on how often the word "darkness" is used in KH games...?

Kingdom Hearts II "Desire For All That Is Lost"

I actually can't remember anything about this song, and I only replayed it last week...

Organization XIII

Self explanatory.

Kingdom Hearts II "The Corrupted"

Boss battle!


And now presenting... Shadow Hearts II!

Shadow Hearts 2 "ICARO again"

Opening theme for the game. Unfortunately the opening movie sucks, so I didn't want to post that. But seriously, if more people made music like this I would be a happy happy girl. I'm pretty sure this one (and if not this one, others on the soundtrack definitely were) written by the same guy who did Xenogears, which is also an awesome soundtrack (I probably won't post it up today though.)

Shadow Hearts 2 "Astaroth - Battle with the Fallen Angel"

Do I need to say it again? I want more music like this from any source! (Oh yeah, this is a boss battle.)

Shadow Hearts 2 "Hardcore to the Brain"

Awesome boss battle theme, plus it's called "hardcore to the BRAIN."

Shadow Hearts 2 "The 3 Karma"

Final boss battle. Why are boss battle themes made to be so awesome!?


And finally (haha) for today: Final Fantasy X!

Final Fantasy X "A Dream That Will End Sometime"

I love pretty much every song on the FFX soundtrack but this one is definitely high on my list. It makes me so sad that Uematsu considers FFX to be his worst work ever, while I consider it to be his best.

Final Fantasy X "Seymour Battle Theme"

It's, you guessed it, another boss battle theme!

Final Fantasy X "Song of Prayer"

Yeah, just... yeah.

Final Fantasy X "Auron's Theme"

Auron <3

Final Fantasy X "Lulu's Theme"

Lulu <3 (Anyone want to guess who my favorite characters are?)

Final Fantasy X "People of the North"



Anyway, I'm really tired now (if you couldn't tell by the degradation in quality of the comments.) So I think I'm going to bed. I hope you enjoy!

Correction: The interview DOES contain spoilers. So um... if you want to read about the future of KH read the last three paragraphs only!

Ultimania interviiiiieeeeewwwww.