Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - Eternal Oath / Oaths Are Forever | Reacting To Video Game Music!

[@MagnyusG]

Really glad you enjoyed it! Crystal Chronicles has a very unique sound compared to the rest of Final Fantasy, definitely expect more from this series in the future, including the spin-off sequel, the spin-off of the spin-off.

[@firidream7254]

"The sun once smiled on this village more than any other. But one day, their crystal's blessing faded. The villagers eagerly awaited their caravan's return; but for them, the crystal would never shine again. It is said that not a single one of them tried to escape. All stood fast waiting for the caravan, hoping to the very end. After hearing that tale, I felt the weight of my burden like never before." This is the intro for the village of Tida, which as others said it's the location where the OST plays. And if you get into the vibes of the story, it hits hard. Yes, it is a ghost town. It is implied in a note that the boss, an haunted house, ate the caravaners(or just travelers... i think caravaners) that returned too late. The gut punch is that it could be your town someday. If you fail, if you are slow, if you decide to run away.... They would never know. They would wait, hopeful, because there is no other choice. No one else can find myrrh to help their crystal, no one else wants to help (Just to point it out: Nearby Tida there is the City of Alfitaria and they never even tried to help clearly. Our village is at the tip of a peninsula far away.) Other tracks and places share this sort of dread but there are others which are upbeat, giving you a sense of adventure, which is nice. For example "Promised Grace" in Veo Lu Sluice and "Goblin's lair" in Daemon's Court are both kinda catchy songs that let the dread steam off for a while. It is one of my favorite games for some weird reason and i just love the vibes of it, despite the many many flaws.

[@MagnyusG]

Oh yeah huh, I never really put two and two together that Armstrong is literally a haunted house.. I always chalked it up to being some kind of mega mold or fungus that happened to take root in a house. Never affiliated it with the idea of haunted houses.

[@nekorion]

FFCCs story is that the world is covered in poison and little caravans go out and fill their chalice with drops of myrrh treees every year to stave off the poison. Tida, the setting for eternal oath is one caravan that never made it back and the town fell. Big ghost town vibes I have a story I like to tell about this track. The first time I played this was the first time I was alone. Family was on vacation and I had the place to myself. It was storming and I was downstairs, far enough from phones that the rings would feel distant. I was playing and the distant ringing you hear throighout the piecd I mistook for my home phone going off and get scared that my phone was not actually going off. after checking it the first time I was somewhat relieved but when I checked the second time the phones happened to time as I picked it up. Super unsettling for the time alone. It's a good if scary memory

[@SlyHikari03]

Fun fact: the drum loop used here (Sensei from ILIO Ethno Techno) was also used in Star Fox Adventure's Krazoa Palace theme. (I have a whole playlist of tunes from games that use that sample library as well). Cheers! ^^

[@samuelmillar9918]

Damn, I love the CC OST. It might very well be my favourite in the series. If/when you come back to this game, hopefully you continue to check out both (or all 3 for Veo Lu Sluice) versions of the dungeon themes. The remaster did an excellent job on these alternate songs for the 'hard mode' dungeons.

[@pockystyx4087]

Crystal Chronicles is a side series I wished got better treatment from SE. it’s such a nostalgic series for me; and the music was part of the reason lol

[@arkdetective]

God, I love crystal chronicles' ost. I feel it's one of the most overlooked osts in gaming history. "Morning sky," "Today arrives, bringing tomorrow," & "Starry moonlight sky" are my favorites. This game was interesting for multiple reasons. Firstly, this was the game that saved square-enix's relationship with Nintendo after they left the n64 for the ps1 for Final Fantasy 7. Nintendo hated them for that move, essentially. Secondly, this game is somewhat cursed. The original version on gamecube required at least 2 game boy advance consoles to be used as controllers in order to get the best out of it, since it EXPECTED you to do multi-player do to the game balancing. Then, it got a remaster on everything but xbox, including phones, which fixed the ease of entry issue through cross-play & a free lite version where you could play through the whole game only if you played with someone who bought the complete game because otherwise i think you could only get to the 3rd area by yourself before having to pay up, but it had its own problems, including at launch not working well online, only the host keeping their progress, & weird glitches exclusive to that version, among other things. It also reviewed poorly because for some reason, the online server wasn't active until the game was released to the general public, so reviewers were stuck doing single player for the review, which again, the single-player wasn't balanced right because they EXPECTED you to play multiplayer. Most of these problems got fixed through patches, but by that point, no one cared, unfortunately. Thirdly, because of the 2nd fun fact, neither version did well, iirc. This is sad because when the stars align, the game is great. It is one of the best multiplayer games on GameCube and one of the best local multiplayer games involving cross-play (as in everyone is in the same room coordinating together to get a game going) in the modern era. It just requires a lot of hoop jumping to do it. Fourthly, it's very interesting thar somehow, this became a series that continued on the ds, wii, & wiiware despite it all, kinda becoming THE Final Fantasy series for Nintendo consoles during that time, outside of outliers like the ff3 & 4 remakes on ds, the ff4 sequel (the after years) on wiiware, a weird game called the 4 warriors of light on ds, the tactics advance series on gba and ds, a chocobo dungeon revival series of games on wii, wiiware, and ds (which the wii game is the everybuddy game on modern consoles), a tower defense spin off of tactics advance called crystal defenders on wiiware (which was also released on ps3, xbox 360, & steam for some reason), and the random ff12 sequel (revevant wings) that was a tactics advance style game on ds.

[@thend4427]

I enjoyed this game I got up to year 555 lmao

[@siverwrites]

I forgot the name of this track so I wasn't sure what it was until you said it'd be good for Halloween then it all clicked. This is a creepy place with a very sad history. Such a neat song. I'd never heard the remastered version yet. I kept forgetting to check out the remastered soundtracks, so an extra treat today.

[@RoniDraws]

the whole of the FFCC soundtrack is amazing, one of my personal favorites

[@Arksimon2k]

Oh I love this one. I had the game as a kid and I managed to get a bunch of the tracks saved as mp3s on my computer, I think I still have it. So it's just very memorable for me. This track in particular is when you visit one of the towns in the game that have just been abandoned because the crystal bearer that was sent out to save the town did not return. It was their towns version of you (the main character) except they failed. So it's pretty haunting.

[@StarfieldDisarray]

Oh I was thinking about showing this track to you if I ever got the opportunity. It's such a gloomy and haunting track, befitting of the story of the location it plays in, and genuinely one of my favorites. I hadn't actually heard the remastered version before though, never got around to it. Up until this point there's been this big feeling of whimsy in the game. You're adventuring! You're killing monsters and looting treasure! You're meeting other adventurers! The story snippets at the start of each area are a bit spooky but who cares when you got adventuring to do! Then you get slammed by Tida Village and this track. A harrowing reminder that there is a reason you're adventuring and the consequences of failure as you trek through the remains of a village claimed by the forces you're trying to stop, finding diaries of people that believed in their adventurers until the bitter end. it's a non-music thing but I would recommend at one point listening to the level intros in this game, they're so fascinating. They're all just little snippets of folklore told over a camera pan of the area told by Donna Burke who you may remember as the singer of Metal Gear Solid V's Sins of the Father.

[@Stormfall7]

Oh this is a good one. I especially like the version with vocals, which was added in the fairly recent remastered version of FF Crystal Chronicles. It just oozes atmosphere and really fits the location it plays in-- a village that met an unfortunate end, becoming haunted with undead. The vocals are beautiful, but I also feel they do fit the haunting vibe of the place. And in regards to the second version, the visuals in the video were indeed where the song plays in-game.

[@thend4427]

Those hard levels were crazy I could only beat like 3 of them solo..it was nice to hear the level songs remixed for the hard stages

[@Phelpssan]

FFCC is a multiplayer spinoff of the series. It's really fun coop game, but its popularity was hurt a lot by strange design choices. First, the original Cube version required a GBA+Link Cable for each player, which obviously made it very hard to get 4 people together to play. Then we got the remastered version which fixes that, but comes with a lot of different problems - the biggest ones being lack of local coop and making it so only the "host" player of the session gets story progress.

[@randylahey2515]

Yay crystal chronicles

[@thend4427]

The second song is played on a hard version of the first song's stage. Definitely need to hear more stage songs love the songs in this game...also i hated this stage cause those abadon used to pile up on me when i tried rushing to the end and id die lol

[@idontwannaknow0]

This sounds like it has similar vibes to FFXI world music. This would fit right into a haunted/spooky area in FFXI.

[@MagnyusG]

I believe Kumi Tanioka worked on FFXI's soundtrack.

[@yep8058]

People shit on FFCC all the time but to me it was one of the most unique FF games

[@somnus970]

I hate....HATE this place. Stupid giant moths