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spottoOver and over again.
And again.
My fucking god. After two years back when I was wholly unimpressed with the Ten Desires' soundtrack, thinking ZUN had experimented too much or delved into genres of music I didn't like, Touhou 14 completely and utterly made up for it. You know of all the lists I've made ranking games of how fun they were, how interesting the characters and story were, and especially how the music was? I think this game is scoring high for all three of those categories. Of course when I first laid eyes on the final boss I thought it'd be Miko all over again (yes I absolutely love Miko now but first impressions are pretty important!) but with far more context I find the final boss pretty damn adorable. My last post were riddled with my sleep deprived thoughts mere hours after the first glimpses of the game were shown, so there's a lot of misconceptions and mistakes riddled in that post of the lore, characters, music, etc.
You combine the music with all the amusing-to-watch and quite challenging to play gimmicks with the random assortment of characters and the consistently eccentric plot, and you have one masterpiece of a Touhou game my friend. In terms of this theme itself, it actually reminds me a lot of Emotional Skyscraper, which probably explains why I like it so much but I also detect many stylistic choices from True Administrator in it. The song feels like a combination of the two without any (that I noticed anyway) notes that mimic the two songs. They just feel like a spiritual successor or a loving child of the two themes and that is spectacular. All the catchy and almost-pretty parts of the theme remind me of Emotional Skyscraper, while the (possibly overuse considering the entire game) use of the guitars and the notes leading up to the climax of the boss fight many minutes into the loop remind me of True Administrator. The only reason I found True Administrator lackluster was due to how incomplete it sounded. It had two really good parts, but then just looped again instead of hearing more like my ears had anticipated when comparing to so many other final boss themes. Shining Needle thankfully does not suffer from the same problem and puts two of the best choices made going into UFO and TD's final themes into one very grand theme.
In terms of ranking? I put Kobito the Shining Needle ~ Little Princess only second to Emotional Skyscraper ~ Cosmic Mind. Yes, it beats out every other final boss theme, including greats like the OTHER princess-titled themes, Flight of the Bamboo Cutter ~ Lunatic Princess and Septette for the Dead Princess. I wouldn't say the theme beats out some of my other favourite songs, but it can easily do so with the release of what I anticipate to be amazing remixes in the next few conventions. Not only with this song, but the fifth stage theme, Reverse Ideology becoming my absolute favourite fifth-stage boss theme in the series and already this game is a shining beacon. It probably doesn't help that overall I don't care for fifth boss themes really. This is almost the same for Extra barring a few especially excellent themes, but I found Primdorial Beat ~ Pristine Beat to beat out the last three game's extras (No I was not fond of Hartmann's Youkai Girl OR Heian Alien and especially not Futatsuiwa from Sado) though far from my favourite theme. Stage four's boss theme was decent as well but again, had other songs I preferred and listening to the first three stages' songs was pleasant as well. I'd probably rate DDC as fourth in best music of the games after MoF, SA, and IN.
As for the stage themes, will have to listen to them some more. I'm really not fond of songs that sound like the beginning of an older song, but then goes into a whole new melody and throws my brain off. There were a few songs from TD that did that was well as the stage five theme in DDC (and some other themes that aren't coming to mind atm) but regardless the other parts of the theme sounded good. When I played through DDC I found the very first theme (stage one) to be pretty good too, but to the extent of Night Sakura? Hmm, will need repeated listens. Still, first impressions are good and DDC made a DAMN good first impression. The music just floors me.
And yes I like the music from this game that much if an entire post is devoted to it. THIS HAS BEEN SPOTTO. Ride the rhythms!!
