Ken Hisuag
Moriya Music Man
It's time for another themed month, but this time I'm doing something different from covering a franchise. JRPGs have always been a major contributor to the VGM metagenre by virtue of scope in narrative and setting, giving ambitious composers opportunity for extensive range in tone and instrumentation. Certain series stand out from the rest for consistently high-quality output; but there are also several significant "one-offs" that are consistently referenced as staple entries to the genre, well reputed of themselves even as their respective franchises remain niche. Myself having mentally associated some of these titles with each other, it's been difficult to prioritize any one of them for investigation over the others; my solution is to dedicate a themed month to the concept.
To start off, I took up Tales of Symphonia, one of the more successful entries from the "Tales of..." series. While the names of Shinji Tamura and Takeshi Arai are mentioned, primary credit for this game's soundtrack (and apparently most other games in the franchise) is consistently attributed to Motoi Sakuraba. As an early-2000s title, the instrumentation is of the emergent orchestra sort; certain parts still sound overly synthesized of necessity, but the overall effect is clear (I was randomly reminded of my dad playing [Old School] Runescape back in the day). All of the game's main characters (of which there are several) receive their own respective themes, and the melodies thereof become leitmotifs. Aside from that, there wasn't anything specific that stood out to me; I enjoyed many of the arrangements (especially those utilizing instrumentation unique from the rest of the soundtrack), and appreciated the evident progress being made from the SNES era into more modern sounds.
To start off, I took up Tales of Symphonia, one of the more successful entries from the "Tales of..." series. While the names of Shinji Tamura and Takeshi Arai are mentioned, primary credit for this game's soundtrack (and apparently most other games in the franchise) is consistently attributed to Motoi Sakuraba. As an early-2000s title, the instrumentation is of the emergent orchestra sort; certain parts still sound overly synthesized of necessity, but the overall effect is clear (I was randomly reminded of my dad playing [Old School] Runescape back in the day). All of the game's main characters (of which there are several) receive their own respective themes, and the melodies thereof become leitmotifs. Aside from that, there wasn't anything specific that stood out to me; I enjoyed many of the arrangements (especially those utilizing instrumentation unique from the rest of the soundtrack), and appreciated the evident progress being made from the SNES era into more modern sounds.