Topic: Nintendo Music App

@squiddu-real
When you listen to the soundtrack on the app the ratio of great music to sparse chill ambiance is much higher. I love the way the Dungeon themes evolve and add instrumentation layers between phases.
I love the (strange phenomena) versions of the town themes as a contrast to their rosier versions. I love the creepy gloom and Hyrule Castle tracks and the boss themes are great.

Agree with @kkslider5552000 on a lot even if the post was dense. It doesn't make sense for a game you can put 100s of hours into to be beating you over the head with main themes as you roam about. I got really worried with FFVII rebirth when you first hit an open area and exactly this happens.

i don't need.. whatever "beating your head" over it means, i just want something with literally any substantial melody. i can attest to sometimes overworld themes being too much (see the ttyd remake rougeport theme, which while it is good, is probably too grand for what it covers) but there is an inbetween. the choices aren't "super loud melodic and dense music" and "sparse piano", there's a middle ground.

I like the approach Pokémon Legends: Arceus takes, having a few substantial themes in each area of Hisui that come on every now and then. It keeps things interesting without making any of the songs lose their luster over many hours spent completing the Pokédex. Sometimes it's just nice to listen to the ambience. There are also certain locations like The Heartwood or Firespit Island which play their own unique themes whenever you're there, which is good for setting the vibe. Overall, I think this makes for a really nice balance. An easy comparison to make would be Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, which have area themes playing constantly. The riding music especially gets sort of into that "beating your head" territory and overall gets unpleasant over time. That said, the Kitakami overworld theme will never be annoying.

With Breath of the Wild, the understated score feels tonally appropriate. Hyrule's largely been destroyed, so a triumphant score wouldn't really make much sense there.

I do agree there is a better middle ground, but I also just straight up think the overworld music (at least on horse) is far more memorable than most Switch era Nintendo soundtracks still.

Like wtf does a Metroid Dread boss song sound like? No one could tell me if their lives depended on it, including me, when its maybe the literal only modern video game I've done more than one 100% run on.

I also think the quantity of use is also a little overstated an issue, you go back to a lot of those towns MANY times, especially across two games. I've probably listened more in-game to Kakariko Village across playing both games (only one playthrough each btw) than any pre-2010s Zelda song in any context over my life.

wow, two music-related enemies have been formed! must be a lucky week for me~

(not serious, by the way, but also just. what are you talking about IT'S JUST SOME NICE PIANO WHAT DO YOU MEAN)

@squiddu-real It is piano that is very memorable and does its job well in a way that stands out from other game soundtracks to me, which puts it above any new song in Metroid Dread and Pikmin 4, for example. I could tell you what it sounds like, how the melody goes, and I understand how it enhances the specific mood when it is used in game and I think it works incredibly well in that context.

I think it does a very good of mixing its type of overly minimal, understated type of music while still being memorable and actively enjoyable. The fact that it is minimalist and mainly piano does not automatically make it boring or lacking merit (and I say this as someone who strongly thinks most of the popular piano heavy pop songs of my lifetime are very boring).

Edit: Anyway, before I forget, I've run into a weird issue where I can't get into the app. Like I try to sign in to my account and it just boots me to the same screen to tell me I need to try to sign in to my...account. The eShop and Nintendo Classics had similar issues but once I did log in I stayed log in, but I've never needed to log into any of them IIRC, so this is all weird.

@kkslider5552000 off the top of my head i can remember the horse piano, but i can't exactly say i view that in any higher regard memory-wise than the hundreds of other songs i love out of the switch era. me saying "nice" should've been the hint, i like piano music! but it's just so strange to me that, out of everything the switch has provided, somehow what is usually sparse piano is something you remember the most. it fits the mood pretty well, but really? a couple strings of piano rolls stuck into your head THAT well?

did you 100% botw or something? i genuinely just don't know how it could stick in your head as someone who played and beat it and cannot for the life of me remember any piano fields stuff besides the horse.

I mean I got close to 100% it. The only things I didn't do I believe were the toughest to max out outfit upgrades (usually involving dragon scales), the final part of the Master Sword DLC quest and any korok seeds beyond the ones that actually give you more room for weapons/shields. (by comparison btw, if you wanna know how large TOTK is even without having DLC, I put 60 more hours into it and still had at least four more shrines left to do, and at least a few more sidequests, among other things)

And I don't think its surprising that it would be memorable since the same exact music plays every single time you start to ride your horse in the overworld, a thing I would do many times (especially since I regularly rode around Hyrule, but was also constantly stopping when I found new things to do). It takes a while to get to the part of the song that focuses on a second instrument so the beginning part especially played constantly (and it being so much less annoying than certain other songs despite hearing it far more is why I feel strongly about it at all)