I didn't love 2018 -- it was always going to be rough trying to follow up a year as good as 2017 -- but there was still a lot of cool music, some of which I'm still discovering, thanks to you guys (example:
this song from Monster Boy is super sick). My thanks for keeping the SOTY tradition alive.
#5: CELESTE
Celeste is skilled at conveying primordial feelings – panic, frailty, vulnerability, tranquility, wonder, flight. I believe that this is in great part because the game and its soundtrack are so in sync. Chiptune melodies chime over a synth canvas that hums and undulates and sucks in and out like the cold winds of the mountain. It's a perfect companion to the game, where tiny pixel characters leap and stumble through a gorgeous, frigid world of color, ambiance, and splashes of warmth.
My favorite song is
"In the Mirror," which disorients with Blade Runner-synths before settling into a blissful cavern of static, whispers, and far-off melody. It's a perfect reflection of the level where it plays – a journey into the dark, into the mind.
"Reach for the Summit," which plays during the game's final climb, conveys the emotional swivel of a mountain climb by pivoting between notes of determination, peril, and exaltation.
Celeste follows the modern trend of a soundtrack that layers and changes as you move throughout a level. Yet throughout, it never fails to hit that rare sweet spot between melody and atmosphere. Its melodies engage; its atmosphere immerses. It As a standalone listen, this can make tracks feel a tad repetitive as they slowly climb towards emotional crescendos and descend into moments of respite. Close your eyes and listen, however, and soon you'll see drifting pixel snowflakes and the glow of a lantern.
#4: DELTARUNE
For me, Deltarune is confirmation that Undertale was not a fluke. Or maybe it isn't. Undertale's soundtrack is so sprawling, so crammed full of theming and leitmotif references that it could not have been a mistake.
One of the great joys in this soundtrack is that while it certainly draws parallels to several of Undertale's musical moments, Toby Fox is such an eclectic composer that the similarities never weigh the music down. With some sort of secret sauce, the man creates earworm after earworm, some of which last for under thirty seconds but don't lose their luster on loop.
"Susie" spends thirty seconds letting rock guitar notes hang in the air and still communicates the cool and menace of the character. The elegiac
"Empty Town" sounds like a lost Gameboy gem. I love all thirty-seven seconds of the lounge-y
"Hip Shop," which bobs up and down with a corny "hey baby" sensibility. It kind of drives me nuts that Toby releases his songs in single loop format, because dude, I don't want to listen to "Hip Shop" for thirty seconds, I want to listen to it for thirty
minutes.
The battle themes are fantastic all around.
"Rude Buster" is, as the kids say, hot fire. I love that the low piano and the bass are
both doing some bass-slapping. I love the twang of the synth melody and the sick improv part. I'd put this in the running for one of my favorite normal battle themes ever. I really like
"Vs. Lancer," which captures the frenetic, mischievous spirit of the little tricycle-riding gumdrop. I like
"Vs. Susie" even more. It's a pretty simple song that jams out on the "Susie" melody while also conveying a lurking sadness in a section with descending keys and murmuring string-and-bass undercurrent. The final boss theme,
"Chaos King," plays suitably like a dark reflection of Lancer's theme, profiling a cartoonish character twisted into a sadistic ghoul.
Lastly, I must mention the painfully brief credits song
"Don't Forget," sung in a whisper by YouTube singer (and To the Moon's) Laura Shigihara, which suddenly brought tears to my eyes with a brief and powerful sentiment: "Don't forget – I'm with you in the dark." Don't forget indeed, Toby. I'll be waiting.
#3: CYTUS II
Cytus II is probably the only thing that amounts to a surprise in this list. For the uninitiated, it's a mobile rhythm game.
2018 was the first time I really deep-dove into a rhythm game. I've played them before and enjoyed them. They're generally rather genre-driven, and the large collection of artists collaborating can make them pretty hit-or-miss as soundtracks overall. Cytus II isn't necessarily different in this regard. It's the story (the story!) of musicians living in a futuristic city who are invited to perform at a concert by the legendary and mysterious DJ AEsir – and who end up having their memories of the concert wiped. Each character represents something close to a "genre" of music, and as you level up and play through the game, the story is told through something akin to a twitter feed (as fictitious fans of each musician hilariously reenact Internet stupidity), as well as "recorded" conversations, images, and video.
Cytus II communicated to me the appeal of this new generation of rhythm games, many of which are on mobile platforms. In Cytus II, new songs are added continuously, but the developers tap into the same pool of composers, sometimes bringing new folks into the mix. As a result, you get to know the composers, and you get excited about hearing your favorites return. Sometimes they tap into a new "genre"; sometimes they collaborate. Some of the songs are supposed to be composed by the characters in the story, which gives them an extra layer of meaning.
This game has a lot of electronic music, which is hard for me to talk about because I'm pretty ignorant about it and its notoriously numerous subgenres. Still, I'll give it my best shake.
My favorite music is that from character PAFF, who in the story is a painfully shy girl on the cusp of an explosive career as a pop diva.
"Bullet Waiting for Me" and
"Fireflies" are some of my favorites. Composed by James Landino, these are melodic mood-boosters with crunchy percussion and pop performances from vocalist Nikki Simmons. The ethereal
Bring the Light catches me in its strange and peaceful trance.
"漂流", which translates to "Drifting," is a pop ballad sung in Japanese, with an escalation of cold, glitching electronic touches.
"Perspectives" is a standout, with swallowing dubstep synths, a sprinkling of piano, and a clear and bright vocal performance. I dig the lyrics, which broadly paint a clash between two personas: "Let's say we change the game and we can brave the days like all others do / Let's say we stay the same, delay, decay away and I never knew / It's up to you". Also:
"Neon Escape" is an 80s synth tune with Chinese lyrics! How cool is that!
There's a lot of music in Cytus II that I don't really care for – mostly the sugary, blisteringly-paced music and the hard-driving trap music that I associate with Japanese arcade rhythm games, neither of which are quite to my tastes. Every once in a while, though, I find something in these genres that's totally on my wavelength, like
"I can avoid it.", composed in canon by the hyperactive, crass gamergurl streamer NEKO #ΦωΦ (her full handle Internet handle), or
"Starlight (KIVA Remix)", and
"Atonement" . This is the kind of stuff your dad thinks is millenial garbage, but boy is it my millennial garbage.
Another one of my favorite composers is KIVA. I don't know anything about dubstep really, but one of my complaints with the genre is how formulaic "bad" dubstep can feel, checking off boxes on the way to *deep breath* The Drop. It's clear when KIVA is doing the same, but well-placed swells and touches of mechanical whirrs and murmurs and croaks and drones fill KIVA's songs with kinetic force. They're also fantastic songs to play, filled with fun touches to trace your finger over. The aforementioned "漂流," "Perspectives" and "Starlight" are all examples of this. I think one of KIVA's best is
"Chaos," the song composed in canon by DJ AEsir that wipes everyone's memory.
The character Cherry, the young lead of a now-defunct band, brings some music of the more singer-songwriter variety. I'm in love with
"Living for you," filled with syncopating drum kit, the squeak of fingers sliding down a guitar neck, and the slightly husky voice of vocalist Kat Penkin.
"I'M NOT" is a bluesy rock song sung in Mandarin -- again, very cool. I also really like
"hunted," an interestingly off-kilter rock song that sounds perpetually on the cusp of a breakdown.
Cytus II even has time for jazz, and I always have time for jazz. Clearly everything happening in the excellently-named
"Turnstile Jumper" is happening on someone's electronic keyboard, but I dig the varied instrumentation choices in this frenetic approximation of jazz. It's a treat to hear a live alto saxophone and trumpet, both dry-martini, in
"Juicy Gossip". And under the PAFF label comes the recently-released
"Winter Games," with a deliciously slight acid-jazz style and the coo of vocalist Tiger Darrow. "Dreams of nutmeg filling my head / make my memory so sweet …"
This is just becoming me rattling off a list of songs, so I'll stop there. I apologize that I couldn't really think of a better way to construct the writeup for this game, where the individual tracks
are the content, not just a complement. What I really want to convey is that Cytus II really opened a musical door for me, and I'm thankful for it. It has been a pleasure to follow these composers, both real and fictitious, as they create new music for me to enjoy (and, because this is a rhythm game, to master).
#2: XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 2: TORNA – THE GOLDEN COUNTRY
A funny thing happened after last year. For 2017's Soundtrack of the Year, I had ranked Persona 5 as my #1, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as my #2, and Nier: Automata as my #3. Then the tectonic plates shifted, Persona 5 lost some of its luster in the shuffle and dropped to #3 in my estimation, while Nier: Automata finally "clicked" with me and its powerful compositions pushed it up to #2. And my affection for the complete, emotional, satisfying journey that is Xenoblade Chronicles 2 propelled it to #1.
If I'm
really being honest with myself, there are two tracks in this eleven-track collection that utterly dazzled me, pulling the whole thing up:
"Battle!!/Torna" and
"Four-limbed Titan/Gormott". These songs are better than even most of the base Xenoblade 2 soundtrack. If I could take only take three video game songs from 2018 with me to a desert island, these would be on the list, maybe along with Deltarune's "Rude Buster".
"Battle!!" is magic to my jazz-loving ears, a rollicking caravan of only the finest ingredients – vibrant, rushing strings; slick, buoyant upright bass played by some kind of demigod; crackling drums with cymbals that splash over the whole thing; the most delicious synchronized hits. "Four-limbed Titan" is like the flipside to this coin, a more sprawling and open-sounding song thanks to a focus on string melody that throws a glistening soprano saxophone into the mix. The drums are fantastically crisp and drive the tempo; the sax sings and does these runs that make me nod involuntarily and go "yeah, man" like I'm sitting in a jazz club with some gin in my hand.
The rest of this soundtrack is no slouch, by the way.
"Kingdom of Torna," with its meandering piano and waves of string, wistfully unfurls into a diorama of an untamed kingdom. The soprano saxophone drifts in and out like a golden wind.
"Auresco, Royal Capital" deftly avoids any kitsch from its Japanese stylings and places the soulful violin melody front and center. It's a town theme you can cozy up to, and its pensive atmosphere gives it depth on repeated listens.
I really like
"Over Despair and Animus," which I'd basically call the final boss theme. It's an acoustic take on Xenoblade Chronicles 2's
"The Acting God" (spoilers in the title!), a song I thought was a bit too heavy-footed to be all that interesting. "Over Despair and Animus" is by far superior. The textured percussion, woodwind, guitar, and strings blend to create a rare kind of intimacy not usually see in boss themes. As a song in a prequel, I also like the parallel that this song draws to its use in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I won't say much more than that.
"Our Paths May Never Cross Again" is likewise an acoustic take on Xenoblade Chronicles 2's
"The Power of Jin." It's a suitably eerie rendition, especially as piano runs and chords ghost delicately overhead.
Much like with Xenoblade Chronicles 2's
"Where We Used To Be," I find that this game's piano theme,
"The Beginning of Our Memory," has that je ne sais quoi that only someone of Yasunori Mitsuda's caliber can provide. In the key of C, the song takes on poignant kind of sincerity through key changes that wander, constantly on the cusp of resolving – fitting. The vocal theme,
"A Moment of Eternity," is a welcome return for singer Jen Bird who, as she did in
"One Last You," lends the song the unforced sweetness it needs to make its simple lyrics work: "Promise me that you'll walk again / Won't you show me that smile?" It's a song that captures Torna's central relationship with simple clarity.
Torna's acoustic take ultimately gives Xenoblade Chronicles 2 an extra dimension – one of sophistication, intimacy, and mastery. The music is impressively layered and confidently executed, perhaps to an even higher degree than before. It is a perfect dessert to cap off Xenoblade Chronicles 2's sumptuous meal.
#1: OCTOPATH TRAVELER
I'm always interested in hearing new composers emerge in the JRPG space, which is often iterative and intertwines the identities of composers with certain publishers, developers, or series. That's not a slight against the JRPG industry, by the way – I actually really recognizing composers, listening to their style change and grow over the years as they become series mainstays or experiment in different games with different tones or genres. But a breath of fresh air is always good.
Enter Yasunori Nishiki's Octopath Traveler soundtrack. My immediate reaction: this is a consistently high-quality soundtrack, and high-quality over its entire length. Nishiki was confronted not only with the usual JRPG trimmings – overworld themes, battle themes, town themes, scenario themes – he had to compose themes for eight characters. Not to get too far into critiquing the game itself, but I feel like the world of Octopath just isn't richly drawn enough to inspire interesting music – not on its own, anyway. Yet despite this, this soundtrack rarely feels like it's checking boxes, and that is no small feat.
Case in point: imagine you have to compose for generic locales like "The Frostlands," "The Coastlands," and "The Highlands." I feel like these overworld themes some of the weaker songs on the soundtrack, but they are still quality compositions with skilled touches.
"Frostlands" underlines its piano with bass to give it just the slightest warmth, and the bell-like tones that ring in and out of aural "sight" give the song a frost-like shimmer – an admirable way of capturing the snow theme.
"Coastlands" is a sweet little woodwind-and-string showpiece with a bit of a Kohei Tanaka/Gravity Rush vibe. French horns in
"Highlands" lend the stately air of a ridge of ancient, foggy mountains looming overhead.
A lot of the music in this game is two things I didn't expect: lush and tranquil.
"Dark Caverns," a.k.a. "the cave theme," is pretty darn good. There's an air of romantic adventure in the mystery, the depth of the cave conveyed in the timpani, the sensation of cavern walls glistening with water in the bell-and-piano melody. I love the clarinet skulking around, hands in pockets, in
"Sunshade, City of Pleasures." The accordion in
"Clearbrook, by the Pristine Water" lends charm and warmth, sounding like a lost Breath of the Wild track. I've also got to admire anyone who looks at a mountain town filled with red dust and thinks, "I'm going to compose
'Settlement in the Red Bluffs.'"
The character themes are strong. Nishiki wisely signals each character with certain instruments, which comes in handy when it comes to the boss transitions (don't worry – we'll get to those). The character themes are all memorable and don't outstay their welcome. My favorites include
"Tressa, the Merchant," with a harmonica lead that just about sums up the twinkle in the eye of that spunky pixelated girl (the best!);
"Therion, the Thief," with the inspired choice of an oboe that, in its thin and reedy tone, signifies mischief and sorrow in equal measure; and
"H'aanit, the Hunter," a solemn and solitary piano ballad that pushes forward into beautiful, sunlit clearings.
So yes – you've no doubt heard about those boss transitions. This is the single coolest thing this soundtrack does. In effect, while there are a handful of boss themes, each character has a version of their theme that plays in the scene before the boss battle and transitions into the boss theme. There's nothing "lush" nor "tranquil" about these, but they are crazy hype – so hype that I tried to make an iTunes smart playlist that transitions each song into the boss theme. It kind of works, but for the full effect I recommend just going on YouTube and watching the actual scenes. Check out this one from
Primrose Chapter 2 – spoilers, of course.
I haven't even talked about the battle themes yet, which are also universally strong. Nishiki really is good at everything. The battle themes have got pretty much everything you want – catchiness, heft, and enough of a progression that they can suit any moment of the fight. My favorites are
"Battle I" (which I wish stuck around for longer in the game) and
"Decisive Battle II" (which never outstays its welcome), but eclipsing them for me are the final boss themes
"The One They Call The Witch" and
"Daughter of the Dark God." The latter two fittingly channel Bravely Default's final boss themes, with a stunning, ominous, operatic battle theme that opens up into an absolute rock banger. It's a hell of a closer.
All in all, this whole soundtrack is quality top to bottom, yet I can't help but wish that it moved me more. Gorgeous artstyle aside, Octopath takes place in a bog-standard medieval fantasy world. I can't help but feel like this shackled Nishiki's true potential here, because at the end of the day Nishiki still has to musically convey The Snowy Field and The Peaceful Town. Here I wonder if this game's predictable story beats and one-dimensional characters are tainting my perception of the music. I come away thinking that this is a rich soundtrack, but it's also kind of sleepy; it's pretty, but not achingly so.
Still, I can't remember the last time I listened to such a lengthy soundtrack and felt like almost every single song was thoughtfully crafted. There are moments throughout that shine brightly. So I need to give Yasunori Nishiki the tremendous credit he is due here, for a lengthy and consistently strong soundtrack with numerous gems. That's more than enough to crown Octopath Traveler this year. And it goes without saying that I am very excited to see what comes next for Nishiki. I think he has the potential to create an all-time best.
