Haters gonna hate: it's Wild ARMs 4 time!
As I said last time, WA4 was the start of a lot of different things for the series. Some of it was refreshing, some of it was clumsy. The music especially went in a new direction, and while I did find that some of the original flavor was lost, causing portions of the soundtrack to feel somewhat generic, the new flavor was something I didn't know I craved until I tasted it.
Perilous Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DDRRshza-UThis is where the flute shenanigans started. (Yeah, that might be a transverse flute, not a recorder. I'm ashamed to say I've played both in high school and still have trouble telling the difference. I was awful though, so that probably explains it.) This is where I realized there was something new going on with the music and that I didn't mind because I loved it. It has the same retro groove as "The road to tomorrow..." from last time, but applied to a sneaking-around situation instead of being bold and optimistic.
Nightless City Guara Bobelo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_cTMwAZil0I didn't know I had a favorite RPG town until I got to Guara Bobelo, and it was it. It's not exactly somewhere I want to be, but the atmosphere was incredible. It's hard to define the technology level in the game, but you get the feel that the world was almost sci-fi, until war broke it. And it's not ancient history and lost civilizations; there are still broken tanks and abandoned weapons all over the place. The party's actions determine if the world will recover, or if the ghosts of that war will finish it off. Guara Bobelo is an illusion of hope, a once-holy place where dreams now go to die, either quickly in the combat arena, or slowly in the lamplit streets littered with the destitute exploiting the destitute. But it still has that shine of glamour, that possibility that your wildest desires can be fulfilled if you're willing put it all on the line. It's a bizarre kind of honest, unmasked, bloodstained Las Vegas. And somehow it's reflected in its music, a ballsy, jazzy piece that you'll either love or hate.
Over the wind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiPxE3P2Qho&feature=relatedThere's no overworld in WA4, only a world map, so there's technically no overworld theme. That said, there are several areas that serve to represent travel between places, mostly roads and other wide-open outdoors places, and this song plays over many of them. It's an example of where the wild west flavor was turned down without the new flavor being turned up to compensate, so it doesn't especially feel like a Wild ARMs piece of any era. I still like it a lot though, I love the simple rhythm of it, and how it serves as a solid, recurring "journey" theme.
Dark Grey Back Ry (Buckeye Station)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lde4VGGAJlcThis town theme is WA through and through, almost more so than any other. It's kind of badass in a cheeky way; makes me want to kick back on the prairie with a cold beer, and I don't even drink. It also reminds me of Team Fortress 2, for some reason.
