Final Fantasy XI / Record Keeper - Awakening | Reacting To Video Game Music!

[@menosay1912]

The theme of the Shadowlord fight. Main antagonist of the original game. And yes, this is him, and no, that is XI exclusive. Though XIV is going to do an XI crossover where he is the boss in the next expansion. As for what you recognize, that would be Memora de la Stono mixed in.

[@JessesAuditorium]

Everything checked off, ty

[@L0rdCanti]

I love how well you pinned the description of the location for this fight. You climb through a dark, inhospitable castle, full of demons to reach the throne room where this fight takes place. The tower is so large that the spires of the throne room are amongst the clouds. When you enter, the room is dimly lit by torches as a ritual to awaken the Shadow Lord is being completed. The lighter aspects of the song might be alluding to the Shadow Lord being a tragic villain, driven to darkness by fury as he lost a loved one to the intolerance of humans. As for the melody that you recognized, it's the main theme of FFXI. The melody was also in your first FFXI song Memoro De La Stono!

[@TriggerZz]

the first 15 secs of the this sound track i close my eyes and imagine and reminisce when all 2 alliances of members start casting Protect and Shell Stoneskill reraise to take on Dynamis Xacabard! oh the memories 2003-2019 RIP RAMUH server Ctrl Alt Elite Linkshell

[@TheMogrymilian]

Record Keeper had sooooo many amazing remixes! I'm still sad it's global version shut down :(

[@Sushidrew]

the hum part you were questioning is actually one of the main themes for FFXI called Recollection

[@NguFootman]

What's going to be incredible, is that at the end of this year, or maybe next, there will likely be a XIV version of this song, and I can't wait to see what Soken does with it!

[@shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...]

rest in peace record keeper

[@DRKGannon]

God, listening to this music has taken me back to the days where my Dynamis shell would farm Dynamis - Xarcabard all to finally take down the Dynamis Lord.

[@SilverKnight16]

Yessss finally! One of my favorite songs in FFXI, and genuinely a hair raising moment when you get to this for the first time. You're fighting Shadow Lord, who is the main antagonist of the original storyline, who was the leader of the beastmen tribes that nearly wiped out Vana'diel. it's some good shit. I still listen to it even today. Edit: Dammit, it ate like half my comment. The Shadow Lord's story is actually really tragic, and also epic. I'd definitely recommend looking up the story cutscenes online (because playing it yourself may cause to you tear your hair out, yay old MMO game design), it's really good.

[@gregbrown8881]

One thing I love about FFXI's music is that a lot of it really resonates with you. In FFXIV, the more popular songs tend to hit you on an emotional level, but in XI the songs that stand out the most seem to connect on a more basic or primal level. They sort of create a more general vibe that sticks with you long after you've put the game away. When I hear his song in particular, as much as I recognize it's dark or foreboding nature, I don't think of it as scary or sad. I just see it as a profound moment in the game where my friends and I accomplished something big.

[@Peppita_]

There are a lot of dark songs/themes in FFXI, we may put "happier" tracks cause they stood out the most in our FFXI advanture, but dark/sad ones are just as good and as appreciated from us 💕. And yes, FFXI OST is incredibly underrated!

[@Nesaru]

Fun fact: there's another remix of Awakening from the game "World of Final Fantasy."

[@Sushidrew]

Awakening~!!! Such a badass song! Always loved listening to this during the Shadowlord fight!

[@stef96ify]

Speaking of explosions and "controlled chaos", one of the boss's most dangerous attacks is called "implosion" and harms both the heroes and the boss himself

[@rainichan]

the section at about ~10 minutes in (during the FFRK version) after Memoro de la S^tono was Distant Worlds, the ending to Chains of Promathia :)

[@Silvist]

Yea this was probably the most hair raising battle, because just getting to this boss location is a journey in itself. In order to even reach the "Shadow Lord", you have to enter his Castle and either kill or stealth your way through the entire maze of a labyrinth. There was no map either, and the terrain and atmosphere was very eerie. So unless you had this point spoiled, you don't even know this battle is coming until you get to the throne room lol. I don't know FFRK, but FFXI came out in May of 2002 aka PS2 era!

[@Dhalin]

There was a map, but it was _extremely difficult to get_ and very few had it. And, since the place had several floors, and the map only showed you the _current_ floor, and did not in any way show you the relationship of how one floor connects to another, plus things like teleporters, the map was nigh-useless anyway.

[@at0micl0bster]

nowadays you can just buy the maps from a vendor in each town for like 3k to 30k gil

[@c.a.honeycutt5046]

I definitely prefer the drumming of the original, but the remix is pretty cool. That theme they added into it was originally composed by Nobuo. A nice addition. This arrangement is by Yoshitaka Suzuki, who did a lot of stuff on FF7R and FFXV (such as Hellfire, which I recall you listened to).

[@mechamaya]

I'm not certain but it's very possible we'll be getting a new version of this in FFXIV later this year as they're doing a crossover raid with FFXI. Very excited to see a new rendition of this in 14.

[@Malacite]

Considering they already confirmed the Shadowlord will make an appearance yeah. I hope Soken remixes it and it's available as an Orchestrion roll.

[@Nesaru]

@@Malacite Personally I hope they reuse the FFXI soundtrack like how they used FFT/FFXII music for the Ivalice raids.

[@Malacite]

@@Nesaru I *loved* Agrias' voice , hoping they voice the girls too - only Prishe and Shantotto have ever gotten a VA and just in Dissidia.

[@rainichan]

part of me wants just the origional music because it's so iconic and nostalgic to me... but then i really want to know how Soken and his team would remix this. 😩

[@xionex3165]

@@Malacite Prishe's VA was also in GBF(Granblue Fantasy)gacha game during the FFXI collab. Also get Prishe as a playable character

[@Ploxxy-JG]

damn thats crazy iv just started playing XI for the first time yesterday and see this lol

[@FrenzVorstellen]

7:33 I'm dead 😂😂

[@LARZ-g7o]

Awakening is the theme of FF11's first big boss. Thank you for listening.:D

[@fabiannarvaezdegarcia619]

FFXI dominates the most chill zone music and the most tension filled battle themes i have ever heard, like they knew how to create tension and anxiety on a whole new level, to these days some of those tracks still make my heart rate go up

[@linkpwnsevery1]

I think it's about 11yrs apart from FF11 and FF14. FF11 was released 2002 and FF14 2013. FF11 has their 20th anniversary I think last a bit ago and FF14 their 10th anniversary too. P.s. the last bit of the record keeper remix was "memoro de la stonò" Oh yeah that boss it's shadowlord the main villain of the first part of the game before expansion from doing the city missions.

[@Malacite]

Ah poor Raogrimm.... Man XI is just tragedy upon tragedy upon yet scores of more tragedies with regards to its stories - I love Vana'diel, XI is my favorite game of all time but it is NOT a happy place to live like wow. Anyhoo, yeah that's the theme for the original boss of XI, the Shadowlord (super long backstory) TL;DR teammate tried to murder him, ended up being cursed by Odin and set out to exterminate mankind. FFRK was a mobile Gacha game that ran for several years but ended service just last year I believe, and it has a tonne of amazing remixes. Lastly, yes that melody you heard should be familiar it's Distant Worlds - the ending theme for FFXI Chains of Promathia and the namesake of the FF Concerts (the version sung by Susan Calloway is phenomenal) This isn't the only really dark sounding track in XI either - kinda hoping someone requests Outer Ra'Kaznar because the intro to that piece is creepy AF and I love it.

[@Dhalin]

FFXI's soundtrack is underrated because of its sad history. It first came out in Japan only and didn't come out in the US until after its first expansion. When it first came out over here, MMOs were stuff like Evergrind, you had to play hundreds of hours to get anywhere and it kinda gave MMOs a bad name. Not too long after its release, World of Warcraft hit the market, and despite how Vanilla WoW is compared to modern Retail WoW, it was *still* 10x more accessible than FFXI was. In FFXI, you needed 6 man groups to get any XP whatsoever to level up, but in WoW, you could feasibly (with some trouble depending on your class) level up solo. You only needed 5, not 6, to go into a dungeon. This was 90% of the content in the game, and when WoW first came out, it didn't have any raids until a bit later, and even then it was only Molten Core. So, most people who wanted to get into the MMO scene would just go the WoW route and not even play XI because people probably heard bad things about how damn grindy XI was in those days, and.... well, it was. I'm not gonna put on the Rose-Colored Goggles. For all of the awesome things about XI, the sheer reliance on having at least 5 friends who were online often and could spend hours with you, made the game difficult to really enjoy for many. Some levels took 2+ hours to get 1 single levelup, and you'd kill the same enemies over and over and over and over and over. Literally the same ones, because you'd pick a spot, and just kill respawning enemies. Each battle would take a minute and a half to three minutes unless you had a really good group. You'd fight beetles, little tree saplings, and the occasional beastmen, small birds, etc. Over, and over, and over, and over again. If you died, you lost 10% of the XP needed for next level, and you would actually lose your level if you didn't have enough XP, you'd actually level down. Resting after battle took awhile, you'd kneel and it would take 5 minutes+ to full rest at level 50+ from almost empty. There's a reason why not many played FFXI. And fewer players, means fewer fans of its soundtrack, which is why it is so underrated. These days, though, they give you trust NPCs and you can level up to level 99 somewhat quickly (way faster than before, but still slow by today's MMO standards) and you're still likely to be parking it in one spot and killing the same respawning enemies for hours, but at least you don't have to rely upon friends, as Trust NPCs perform well enough. Then you can see Most of the game's story once you get to Level 99 and i119 gear which lets you solo pretty much all the game's story.

[@xellestar]

The 'dependence' on other people is why FFXI shined - I really don't see the point of playing an mmo where you never have to interact with another person, and that's 99% of how all MMOs are. People playing those games don't want to play an mmo, not really. You could say FFXI went too extreme in the other direction of not supporting enough solo opportunities, but personally if it's the choice of how FFXI was, vs how 99% of these games are, it's an easy choice.

[@Dhalin]

@@xellestar The 1% of the time when you CAN find people that are willing to do stuff with you, is awesome. The problem is, it is overshadowed by the 99% of time that you _can't_ find someone to help you do stuff. In FFXIV for example, you get all the human interaction you want, simply Q up for Duty Finder. You get to do dungeons and other group-based content with fellow human players (though you can also skip that and use NPCs if you want, but human players are usually best after the first run). In FFXI, you don't have that luxury or choice. You either find 5 other players, or you don't do it.... _at all._ And what used to happen in FFXI, is Job Discrimination in the _Extreme._ Remember the LOLDRG days? Where you'd see DRGs and MNKs LFG for literal _hours_ trying to find an XP group? I myself tried to join a Dynamis team (which I did, briefly did like 3-4 runs), and eventually decided to leave because I played a WHM and I got de-levelled to 68 and I kept asking for XP groups to replenish my XP but that never happened. Nobody in that LS would go and XP with me, they only wanted me there for being a healer, but nobody cared enough to XP with me (and I had spent a few sessions LFG for hours with no group back during the SMN/WHM and RDM/WHM healer craze), and that's about when I quit the game shortly after, too. I came back later in the ilvl days when you could solo most of the game's story and did just that, solo'd all the stuff I could never see back in the day. These days, I am in an FC in FFXIV, and we commonly talk and we group up for stuff like maps, they do Extremes (I don't join those myself as I don't really have the focus to learn them, though every once in awhile I'll join one of their learning groups), and I have far more human interaction in FFXIV than I ever did in FFXI. Between my FC and Duty Finder, I actually get groups when I need them, rather than spending hours LFG or begging people who never gave a crap because I was just some nobody that nobody cared about.

[@Daryl90]

Hope you check out recollection from FFXI

[@Blackwing02]

FF Record Keeper was a mobile gotcha game, service for it ended on September 29, 2022. Record Keeper was released 12 years after FFXI. Dissidia NT also has an arranged version of this theme, kzbin.info/www/bejne/a5DIlnSPpdlsec0si=dtQrF_WWUEtD7AHn

[@brandonspikes]

This makes me sad, I was a first month player of FFRK and they shut the global version down :(

[@rashid2898]

damn he actually got it right kinda LOL sigil, no but he is a sacrificed person who became the shadow lord.

[@jowston100]

FFRKs remixes are insanely good. This is probably the best one. (Keep in mind that FFRK is a fucking gacha game.)

[@Arvid9111]

I really hope that us yakuza fans can soon get to eat what ffxi fans been eating on your channel recently haha they've been feasting

[@JessesAuditorium]

tomorrow

[@Arvid9111]

@@JessesAuditorium idk which is more exciting the fact that we're getting a yakuza music reacttion tomorrow or that the next yakuza game is actually releasing tomorrow but yeah tomorrow is a FEAST

[@grahamsmith5975]

I'm never gonna stop finding music from FFXIV to recommend to you. Just recently did these raids for the first time and literally fell in love with the theme for Anabaseios Ninth/Tenth Circle. It's called "One Amongst the Weary," give it a listen if you get a chance, would love to see a reaction.