My estimate of Xeno 3's musical quality was wildly optimistic. Most of the songs were remixes or 'mood-makers', background music meant to play along with cutscenes and not be good in and of themselves. Only a small fraction of the songs were meant to be actual musical pillars of the edifice, and some portion of those songs were lackluster. A lot relied on epic choruses humming in the background like some dumb opera instead of actual melodies. Once you've gotten rid of all the boring songs that don't go anywhere, the choirs and the remixes, there isn't much left.
Of course, 20 songs is still a lot. But a gigantic revolution it is not. Fire Emblem: Three Houses had 14 songs reach the hall of fame. 13 of those songs were 5-star. Which means Xeno 3 is actually less of a big deal than Fire Emblem, even if all 20 pass, they won't all be 5-star like Fire was. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had 27 songs reach the hall of fame, 17 of which were 5-star. Xenoblade 3 won't get anywhere close to that level of quality. Of course I had said previously that Xeno 2's music was better than 3, so this shouldn't have come as such a surprise to me. Well, there's no harm in a little optimism if it can be corrected quickly and realism prevails.
I needed something to read while judging all my new music, so I started up Railgun Side Story: Liberal Arts City. It's about as good as the average Index novel, but features the superior cast from Railgun so that's a plus. Given how big a fan I am of Mikoto and Index in general I really should have read this sooner, but I'm always leery of 'side stories' because by definition that means they don't advance the plot. I'll finish the book soon enough, but to reach 100 listens of Xenoblade 3, even pared down to only 20 songs, is going to take quite a lot longer.
No comments:
Post a Comment