Action-Adventure Archives

Whoops, a little late on this #WeeklyGameMusic. We’ve got an old classic, Search a Seal ~Tethe Alla~, by Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura. This lavish variation of the dungeon-crawling music comes from the old-school JRPG, Tales of Symphonia: a seemingly innocent-looking Namco Tales Studio game that has a dark and twisted story discussing politics, religion, prejudice, and class struggle.

Welcome to Sylvarant, a fantasy world in decline. In a land where mana — the fundamental element in this universe — is rapidly depleting, humans are dealing with poverty, monsters, and Desians, a group of half-elves that enslaves humans into slave camps. But in a small village of Iselia, there’s hope: the chosen one, Collette, along with her guardians, Raine and Kratos, have just begun the journey of Regeneration. In said journey, the trio will break the five seals in the world to unlock the Tree of Mana, a renewable source of mana to bring prosper to Sylvarant and give humans a winning edge over Desians. Despite this setting, Tales of Symphonia actually follows an outsider, Lloyd, and his friend, Genis, who joins Collette’s party after the two banished from Iselia due to disrupting a neighboring Desian human ranch (and breach the two org’s peace treaty). The duo initially follows the party given they’re already familiar with its members (Lloyd is good friends with Collette, and Raine is Genis’ sister). But as the journey continues, they uncover terrifying secrets that forces them to question everything the party knew.

Tales of Symphonia is a JRPG that uses an (admittedly antiquated) real-time battle system called Linear Motion Battle System. Upon touching a generic monster in the overworld, up to four party members are teleported in battle mode. The playable characters moves towards or away from a monster, similar to 2D fighting games. Attacks are executed similar to Super Smash Bros., i.e. inputting a controller direction and button press at the same time. Naturally, each character specializes in a type of attack (e.g. ground-melee, anti-aerial, offensive magic, support magic, etc.) that enemies are weak to, so having a well-rounded party is important to success. Otherwise, the game’s exploration mode is relatively similar to most JRPG affair: in villages, talk to people; in overworld, just move from point A to point B; and in temples, use items to solve puzzles.

Tales of Symphonia was originally released for the Nintendo Gamecube. It’s been ported to PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PC via Steam.

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For some more optimistic and energizing #WeeklyGameMusic, why not enjoy the fabulous track, Shinshu Fields, composed by Masami Ueda? If you couldn’t guess from the very Japanese instrumentals, this tune is indeed from the cult-hit Clover game, Okami, an epic tale of how the goddess of the sun saves feudal Japan from great evil.

Okami wastes almost no time, with the story immediately starting with the seal of great evil Orochi being broken by an unknown troublemaker. Almost instantly, Nippon (“Japan” in Japanese) gets enveloped by a swarm of monsters and evil spirits. With the country in peril, the guardian spirits summon the sun goddess, Amaterasu, to fight against the darkness. Taking on a form of a white wolf with awesome red highlights, Amaterasu immediately springs to action…by taking a nap. Deflated and out of energy, the guardian spirits expires, literally leaving the fate of the world to one lazy female dog. Thus begins a parody retelling of many Japanese folkstories — including Issun-Boushi, Hato no Ongaeshi, Hanasaku Jiisan, and more — all uncomfortably mashed together into a single world.

True to Platinum’s spirit (a game studio which many of the main players from the now-defunct Clover Studio founded), Okami is an action-adventure game not unlike the Legend of Zelda series, but with a much tighter action component. Like any JRPG, battles takes place in an enclosed space, though in real-time with button-timing playing a critical role in stringing combos. In the midst of battle, Amaterasu can use her brush power to literally pause the game and draw over it, thus conjuring up spells to aid in battle. The genius of this combat gimmick is that it also works outside of combat, as a way to solve puzzles in dungeons.

Okami was originally developed for the Playstation 2. It was ported on the Nintendo Wii and Switch, Playstation 3 and 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam.

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Tag: Action-Adventure

#WeeklyGameMusic: Search a Seal ~Tethe Alla~ (Tales of Symphonia)

#WeeklyGameMusic: Shinshu Fields (Okami)