[E] First Round #4 (The Price of Freedom vs. Mercurius & Vayeate)

Listen to both songs and select the one you prefer.

Download Links:

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - The Price of Freedom
Gundam Wing: Endless Duel - Mercurius & Vayeate

Streaming:

The Price of Freedom: Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:
Mercurius & Vayeate: Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:

Wow. I would never have guessed that The Price of Freedom was from a Final Fantasy game. Doesn't sound like anything else I've ever heard from the series; it's a pretty awesome surprise.

Endless Duel starts out nice, then kinda loses me. I'll have to give it to the awesome guitar in the FF track.

Awesome match here. I'm familiar with both of these songs, and I'm glad Mercurius got into this contest (though Heavy Arms is much better). However, the Price of Freedom really strikes a chord with me - it's emotionally resonant, and even though I've heard it criticized for being simple, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Price of Freedom it is.

I'm not even going to mince words here...Takeharu Ishimoto is nothing but a hack. A jack of all trades, but a master of none. A clock-puncher musician if I've ever heard one. And it's more than enough to fool Square into giving him work and damage my opinion of game music as a whole. Price of Freedom, while not as abysmal as the rest of Crisis Core, hides behind some excellent sound quality and Ishimoto falling in love with 2 different riffs enough to play them THE ENTIRE SONG - One the first minute, one the second minute. And ooooh...some power chords thrown in just for the hell of it in the background and a semblence of a solo in that last minute. Exciting stuff. If people want to start laying out generic rock comments that this contest is known for...Here's your opportunity. You won't find a better example.

The other track isn't much better. In fact, the sound quality is lacking for an SNES game. It's just better and not just Braindead Riff A meet Braindead Riff B.

The Crisis Core soundtrack overall was just awesome, but the same can be said for the Endless Duel soundtrack. I'm going to have to give the slight edge and my vote to Mercurius and Vayeate, but if it doesn't move on I can understand why.

Price of Freedom: This piece has some interesting elements. The instrumentation is nice and there's definitely some emotion. It's a rather simple piece that borders on repetitive, but it's not the worst thing I've heard.

Mercurius & Vayeate: Wow. This was pretty surprising. It's got a nice melody and pace. Quite energetic and fun.

I'm going with Mercurius & Vayeate on this one. It was really fun!

Price of Freedom really isn't that bad; generock, sure, but the melody is solid and the countermelody throughout holds up.

It's better than the mediocre SNES track, by all means.

I don't understand why "The Price of Freedom" even has a chance here, it repeats exactly the same 10 notes (5 original, and 5 variation) from the start to the end, with static backings and tiny variation in instrumentation. The advantage it has is sound quality.

"Mercurius & Vayeate" on the other had has a nice build-up, great bass line and a nice if rather simple climax. Everything is constantly changing.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - The Price of Freedom

Originally Posted by Goldfish from Hell

I'm not even going to mince words here...Takeharu Ishimoto is nothing but a hack. A jack of all trades, but a master of none. A clock-puncher musician if I've ever heard one. And it's more than enough to fool Square into giving him work and damage my opinion of game music as a whole. Price of Freedom, while not as abysmal as the rest of Crisis Core, hides behind some excellent sound quality and Ishimoto falling in love with 2 different riffs enough to play them THE ENTIRE SONG - One the first minute, one the second minute. And ooooh...some power chords thrown in just for the hell of it in the background and a semblence of a solo in that last minute. Exciting stuff. If people want to start laying out generic rock comments that this contest is known for...Here's your opportunity. You won't find a better example.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Gundam Wing: Endless Duel - Mercurius & Vayeate
Not the most stunning example of, well, anything. But it's put together well enough, has a few nice parts, and doesn't have any baggage.

Marius and Valjean. Er, Mercurius and Vayeate.

The price of freedom-
i'm in agreement that the production on the samples is great, but what a boring song.

Mercurius and Vayeate-
Bad samples, but some pretty good writing. Easily the winner.

My opinion on Price of Freedom seems to match the general consensus--playing the same two phrases over and again hardly generates interesting music.

Mercurius, on the other hand, has some genuinely good moments, and sounds like something that an actual musician might write. Certainly it could have benefited from improved sound production, but I prefer to judge songs on their own merits, rather than blaming them for the limitations of their time.

"The Price of Freedom" is pretty decent as far as "generic" VGM rock goes. Some nice acoustic touches and a solid enough melody. Does little to wow me, but does little to offend or bore me either; decent.

I felt that this "Mercurius & Vayeate" track had some much more respectable melodic lines, which were nicely complimented by the SNES-rock sound quality. Still not as engaging as I would have liked, and as such I don't think I'll be revisiting it that often, but it edges its way in front of the competitor here!

"The Price of Freedom" - 7/10
"Mercurius & Vayeate" - 7/10

Easy vote for Price of Freedom. The other song was just forgettable.

Okay I didn't mention Heavyarms's different sound quality when it popped up in SotW because I thought it sounded really cool that way, but why do these tracks have a slight but very noticeable sound quality change from the SPC set? What rip are you guys using? I don't believe MP3gain is actually capable of this if it's being used for the contest.

Anyways, Mercurius-Vayeate's theme is really cool, though nothing compared to Shenlong or Epyon's theme. It's definitely good enough to be a song with a melody I could not believe I was hearing. What the hell was that.

EDIT: What the hell is this

I agree with everything goldfish said about Ishimoto. Crisis Core was a major let down even for an FFVII spin off, this track doesn't buck that trend, I can see that it is trying to move me but it fails by the painful and uninteresting over-repetition of the motives. Basically Ishimoto came up with two, two bar melodies and put them on a loop with some chords, how boring and amateurish.

Mercurius and Vayeate doesn't blow me away but at least i can respect it musically.

Mercurius and Vayeate by default.

Originally Posted by Goldfish from Hell

I'm not even going to mince words here...Takeharu Ishimoto is nothing but a hack. A jack of all trades, but a master of none. A clock-puncher musician if I've ever heard one. And it's more than enough to fool Square into giving him work and damage my opinion of game music as a whole. Price of Freedom, while not as abysmal as the rest of Crisis Core, hides behind some excellent sound quality and Ishimoto falling in love with 2 different riffs enough to play them THE ENTIRE SONG - One the first minute, one the second minute. And ooooh...some power chords thrown in just for the hell of it in the background and a semblence of a solo in that last minute. Exciting stuff. If people want to start laying out generic rock comments that this contest is known for...Here's your opportunity. You won't find a better example.

Haha, awesome description but i like it anyway. If you don't analyze it like that it's more appealing.

Originally Posted by Stalky

Haha, awesome description but i like it anyway. If you don't analyze it like that it's more appealing.

No shit...Okay, try this:

Ishimoto fucking sucks because I could pull a random metal or rock CD off the store shelf and, with 99% certainty, come away with something better than this shit. Oh how the mighty Final Fantasy franchise has fallen with this moron at the helm. And it's one of the BETTER tracks off the OST.

Better?

Believe me, I'm tempted to diss every post that comes along crying "generic rock" for some of these, but even I was appalled by what I heard from Crisis Core. It's tragic this song has more votes than Jordan and the F-Zero song.

: Gundam Wing: Endless Duel - Mercurius & Vayeate
: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - The Price of Freedom

I guess I can see where Mercurius & Vayeate being more forgettable than The Price of Freedom comes from: it's hard to forget ten notes played fifty trillion times. More than one thing happens in the Gundam track, how am I supposed to keep track of all of that?

Natsume bass alone is enough to win this match.

I feel Takeharu Ishimoto is a hack. Sure, he can compose a good track once in a while, but most of his melodies are repetitive and dull.

Hiroyuki Iwatsuki knows how to vary his melodies and make them interesting. That shows here in his work with Haruo Ohashi. Mercurius & Vayeate has some cool sections and some sweet, sweet SNES samples. It may not be as cohesive as Iwatsuki's other works, but it's still damn good stuff.

Additional Spam:
Note that I made this post before reading others' comments about Ishimoto. Guess I'm not the only one who thinks lowly of him.