They even fucked up Cyrus' theme. In the original after the first loop, it changes slightly to be more intense but ig no one told the developers about this because they just remade the first part
@@EPOCHGAMER64 A very cool glitch imo. Also, they recreated the squiggly lines on the walls of protag's room, even though IIRC it was an emulation error (though granted, one is way more noticable than the other, so they aren't really comparable).
I never bought or played BDSP so the remade OST was mostly foreign to me. You gave me knowledge which I now wish I hadn't... The choice of cheap sounding midi, the synthesizers, the dinky piano playing in the wrong key... I am honestly shocked and really sad, that just about every thing is terrible about these games. The impact and tension of any battle theme is completely gone. Almost impressive to fuck up that bad. And it is also really emberassing that the midi from DS games from 2006 is better than those of Switch games from 15 years later... Legends Arceus really is the true Sinnoh remake, even when it comes to the OST. Looking forward to more vids from you!
HELL YES FINALLY SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT THIS Something about the "jingly" effect that the piano has in this game has always ticked me off, it made songs like Jubilife city **genuinely** hurt my ears to listen to, compared to the gentle piano notes from the DS. I think the most horrible thing they messed up in this games' ost is route 228. In the original, the piano had a couple of sudden high notes that kept the song engaging and overall pretty fun ...In the remake, they made them a **LOW NOTE???** It was the first time I was ever blueballed by a song
I'd like to take a moment to argue that BDSP were a Psy-Op by Gamefreak to make us never ask for something ever again. Based off the concept arts and whatnot ILCA has revealed, Legends Arceus and BDSP were going to be one game. A modern sinnoh setting with an open world. They've also confirmed they were forbidden from adding platinum features and they even had plans to give us the battle frontier. Let's just face it, they got sticker starred.
That's actually really interesting, I didn't know Game Freak had such an active role in kneecapping this game. But that part about them not being allowed to add Platinum features definitely checks out, the language from the trailers reinforcing the idea of a "faithful remake" tells me that it was some kind of directive from the suits at The Pokemon Company. You either die a Thousand Year Door or live long enough to see yourself become a Sticker Star :/
@@SodaCrab "You either die a Thousand-Year Door or live long enough to see yourself become a Sticker Star" is a surprisingly profound parody with a lot more nuance than the original Dark Knight quote.
@@SodaCrab Game Freak prevented Pokemon platinum content in BDSP since "Pokemon legends of Arceus" was more important ,for them i mean "Pokemon Legends of Arceus "had all new ideas put into it, so they must of decided that "Pokemon legends of Arceus" would be their main attraction it makes sense Game developer wise.
@@JJSquirtle Game Freak prevented Pokemon platinum content in BDSP since "Pokemon legends of Arceus" was more important ,for them i mean "Pokemon Legends of Arceus "had all new ideas put into it, so they must of decided that "Pokemon legends of Arceus" would be their main attraction it makes sense Game developer wise.
@@1BadAssArchAngelvs14 I would advise you to reread my comment, I mentioned they were originally one and the same. You REALLY don't need to defend gamefreak, I still throw money at them, but I can also step back and say that splitting the dev direction, deadlines, and teams into two led to worse products for us as both are lacking in their own respective areas that a bigger team with more time could handle as long as the original direction was maintained.
10:38 I’ve been playing the piano for 17 years, going on 18 this fall. I’m not Curtis or Carnegie Hall material, but I know enough with music theory, and having been studying music composition. I took a few classes on mixing and mastering audio. With the legendary theme, it’s a couple aspects. For one-as you pointed out-the Tom or the Timpani being swapped from Up->Down, to Down->Up is frustrating, cuz the track loses a lot of momentum. On top of that though, they chose to drop the gain on the bass-line to where you can barely hear (assuming it’s even still there). They butchered what worked and gave most of these tracks identity and life, either using whiny synths when it wasn’t appropriate, or obfuscating the good parts of the tracks within the mix. Issues of lower instruments either not being as present in the mix or hidden that badly, makes me think someone was working with only Beats Headphones. Those things are made to listen to pop music and they’re specifically crafted to increase the gain for lower instruments in a mix, most things below 300Hz. They’re deceptive at making the lower instruments-such as the bass-line or timpani drums-sound a lot louder and present than they really are by the time you’re exporting the track. I bought a pair freshman year of college, and noticed how a lot of my projects weren’t as nice as I wanted them to be mainly cuz the bass was non-existent. Audio Technica has been doing wonders for me since. Another tip I learned at Uni, always, ALWAYS listen to anything you intend to export and/or upload on multiple devices, and hear it coming out of multiple stereo systems. What works comfortably from your laptop in any DAW or with home speakers will sound way different in AirPods, a Gaming Headset, your smartphone, or a Spotify playlist in your car.
One of the best American rock albums of all time suffers from a tinny mix precisely because the producer listened back to the mix through studio headphones and not speakers. It's _Tim_ by The Replacements. Tommy Erdelyi did a great job coaxing really awesome performances out of the notoriously undisciplined band, but then screwed up the mix. Rumour has it he was going deaf at the time, though he denied it. The difference between Tim's original mix and Ed Stasium's recent remix is night and day.
The legendary theme always had the down up pattern no matter what game it’s in, the timpani had 2 samples in dp and how much stronger the lower sample is, it gave this illusion of up down. Sad it wasn’t replicated here but it was in pla.
7:23 It would be funnier if before you started showcasing the BDSP ost, you instead played the wild encounter theme from Super Smash Bros Brawl first and played it straight as the remake OST, before revealing it was actually from a completely different franchise title from 14 years ago that STILL has better Pokemon music than the modern titles are releasing to this day. 🤣
LMAO I wish I had thought of that! I had actually considered mentioning how good the Smash rendition of the Dialga and Palkia battle theme was, but when I was writing the script I didn't want to stray too far from the Pokemon games themselves
I think the biggest gripe I have with this game's soundtrack is much less on the MIDI, I wouldn't knock that down as much, I feel you could make it sound good, even when using MIDI. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX does a fantastic job of using mostly MIDI to remake their tracks, even using some of the old instruments, and knock it out of the park. The biggest issue for me is the effects they use to "remaster" the songs. Almost every track has a ton of reverb and delay on every instrument, where every instrument sounds really large and expansive, but drowns out every other instrument, fighting for its own spot. Not to mention, the original didn't have anything of that sort, with instruments sounding punchy with the lack of effects, so we end up with a lot of sounds and instruments sounding discordant as they overlap each other. Now, reverb and delay aren't that bad, and in fact, most music nowadays have a lot of it, in every instrument. The only issue is, the fact that they never even tried to rearrange any of the instrumentation to fit the sounds they use. Like, I think my favorite example to show how the reverb and delay really ruin it is the encounter with a black belt, because it sounds so good on the original, where you can hear every note, but the remaster is just drowned out with notes, you can't tell when one starts and ends. If you want to see a good way on how using effects on instrumentation can be done well for the diamond and Pearl soundtrack, just look at the smash remix for route 209. It sounds fantastic, because they rearrange the track to fit with the instruments they use, wowa weewa. It's crazy.
"MIDI" is really just a language, or more precisely a set of instructions anyway. Back in the 90s choosing the right sound card for your PC was very important because although they'd be receiving the same instructions they handled the maths differently and used different banks of samples so the result would be very different. Towards the end of the 90s prerecorded audio on CD became the norm and the importance of having a quality sound card faded. When younger people talk about "MIDI", they usually mean the specific way Microsoft's General MIDI decoder sounds (not great). If they play DOS-era games via emulation they often don't tinker around with soundcard emulation, so they're getting a false idea of what the game actually sounded like on real hardware. In BDSP's case the audio is prerecorded (it's not decoded in real time as MIDI files are) but it was generated with audio synthesis software. The issue is the samples chosen suck and the transcription's of D/P's tracks is faulty. You wouldn't make mistakes like reversing the down/up cadence of the Regi theme's drums if you had a half-decent ear for music.
I haven’t bought a game since Shield. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and somehow it looked even worse here. They outsourced it to inexperienced game devs and rushed it. It shows. It’s a de-make of a game that you should have on DS ending with m.
It's depressing that BDSP makes Sword and Shield look good in comparison. A de-make is the perfect way to describe it, even with some of the quality of life improvements BDSP gets just by being a newer gen game, the presentation is such a downgrade in every way that I honestly would rather just dust off my DS and play through Diamond. And that's really saying something, because we often forget that Diamond and Pearl themselves were fairly flawed games, and Game Freak only really made Sinnoh shine when they got to polish it further with Platinum.
I haven't bought a new Pokemon game since Sun and Moon. Feel like I've been spared 😂 (though I really really love Legend Arceus' music and concept so there's something to look forward to)
I just wanted to say something here: MASUDA WAS ONE OF THE DIRECTORS ON THIS PROJECT. I don’t believe he was involved in Legends: Arceus, which makes it crazy when you realize that the game he was more involved in has a worse soundtrack, despite being from his first ever Pokémon game.
I remember really hating the Galactic Grunt theme in BDSP first came out. Like when the main melody of the song is first introduced, it's in a much lower key that doesn't really match the intensity of the original track at all. And the guitar riff that plays throughout the song is super quiet, too
100% agreed. It feels like every song in this game has at least one major problem with the mixing where an important element of the song is really muted and hard to hear.
I could be misunderstanding how soundtracks are handled in video games, but it seems like Junichi Masuda and Shota Kageyama were the two composers who handled the rearranged BDSP OST. Given that Kageyama also handled the Let's Go OST and I didn't rate that very highly either, and that this was only a few years after that, I'm not surprised that the BDSP OST sounds this way (though it is puzzling). To be clear, I do really like Kageyama as a Pokémon composer: he did a lot of great rearrangements for HGSS (like the Kanto Wild Pokémon battle theme you mentioned), as well as composing a bunch of great tracks for Black & White like the N's Castle music, Professor Juniper's theme, Accumula Town, I could go on. Just a shame that Let's Go and BDSP sound the way they do, for whatever reasons.
For BDSP, Shota Kageyama handled all the arrangements, and possibly even composed the new Ramanas Park battle themes, according to a reply he made to an inquiry on Twitter. Junichi Masuda technically worked on the music too but it's pretty much 1 original composition that goes unused for some reason.
It's genuinely hard to believe that the same guy who headed the soundtracks for generations V & VI, Shota Kageyama, the man who brought you classic tracks like the Dragonspiral Tower theme, N's theme, Nimbasa City, Emotion (An Unwavering Heart), Lumiose City, Zinnia's theme, etc. is also the exact same person who rearranged the original music for BDSP. What an absolute career-turning moment right there.
My dear god, I thought you were exaggerating with the legendary pokemon music thing, but the remake version is legitimately the worst thing I have yet heard out of a pokemon game. Like it doesn't suit what you're doing even remotely.
i knew something felt off and this was exactly it! it all feels very artificial and sterilised. with the original dialga and palkia battle theme i can see myself atop spear pillar with the wind rushing past me, looking up at these gods, but in the bdsp version i can only feel a hint of that as if it was just a dream. great video!
Thank you! I like the way you described the difference in vibe between the original and the remake, I know exactly what you mean, the remake just lacks that majesty and intensity that the original absolutely nailed.
New viewer here, really surprised you're as small as you are. It's been a while since I laughed -out loud- at a joke pitched in a video, and you got a few. Subbed, hope to see more!
FINALLY, someone puts my exact feelings into words. Do you know how sad it made me to hear them slaughter sunyshore city’s theme? Hearing it completely neutered? No energy? No drive? I played trumpet for a decent amount of time and while I’m nowhere near any sort of expert every brass instrument in this game sounds like how touching wet food in the sink feels. Combine that with the absolutely dookie midi snare drums and I wanted to see how far I could fit my fist through my drywall
10:25 The original sounds like there's a heart beat, either the player characters heart from facing off against such a beast or the legendaries aura pulsing out with the beat of it's own heart. While I don't dislike the remake's version in a vacuum, it does sound like you're at a house party and it's just background noise or you're at a pretty underwhelming rave
To be honest I didn't like or play bdsp even though I loved Platinum because I coulnd't vibe with the chibi fisher price store art style. I was hoping the music would have saved it but unfournately I was wrong. The gravest offences to me besides the ones you mentioned are the lake trio theme, the took out the epic base and route 210 which they also took out bass. Not to mention the Giratina theme which is missing a lot of eerie sounds that made Giratina sound more imposing and scary in the original track.
Honestly even if they had 100% nailed everything else in this game, I would still have a hard time coming to terms with the art style. It really does look atrocious.
Xenoblade 2 is good It's got the strongest character work in the series Want an example look no further than morag few characters have come from videogames with more complexity in moral and messaging Morag is built as an antagonist this evil force from a colonizing empire but as you get to know her more you find her struggles with purpose are what drive her She was raised to be a queen, from a young age all she knew was being a ruler, but then her cousin Niles was born and her county is patriarchal meaning her purpose was stolen from her. Instead of resentment morag decided her new purpose was to protect Niles she would become the strongest so no harm could come to him. During the story she fails at this task causing a loss of faith only for Niles to tell her that protecting him is not her purpose and that she should join the party and find her purpose. In the end of the game morag expresses that she feels kind of empty like saving the world has not given her the fulfillment she so desperately looked for since childhood and her friend who she went on this journey with just looks at rex, nia, and Tora and gose "maybe we don't get to find purpose, maybe it's enough we helped them find theirs" in a truly bitter sweet moment we realize her and zeek are in similar situations and morag is forced to come to terms with her lack of purpose It's art dude (Also yes I do plan to take this joke way too far mark my words)
Loathe as I am to give any sort of "praise" to this game, I will give it credit that its rendition of Cyrus' battle theme is the only... "passable" remix of it that Pokémon has had. It's not a particular favorite among most, but I've always loved Cyrus' theme, and it's disappointing to see how even with USUM, Masters, and BDSP existing, the original is still the only one I'd actively call good. The original just feels like the perfect summary of him as a character; This hypocritical would-be tyrant who puts on a front of emotionlessness all while his anger at the world and trauma from his childhood broil inside of him, incapable of truly keeping his contradictory emotions contained, so they just manifest as a whole bunch of repressed indignation that seeps out at every opportunity, much to his own dismay. How the main melody throughout the entire song has long stretches of notes that feel very drawn out while the piano and percussion go nuts in the background, how the big booming drums at the 1 minute mark are the same sample used in Arceus' battle theme, symbolizing his desire to become a god himself, and the part after that where the synth is droning in the background, as if he's getting slowly backed into a corner and is still deliberating on how he can get out of this situation, which is then followed by a series of escalating riffs as he's in the midst of a breakdown, with that breaking point being signified by the climactic reprise of the first motif of the song with a key change. He's still barely trying to hold himself together as he's losing, but it's not working, and his emotions once again betray his desires before he recollects himself and the song loops. This entire song feels like he's pissed as hell but is desperately trying and failing not to be pissed as hell, and I love it. The others don't sound like that. Masters' remix just doesn't sound like anything. They're clearly capable of making their battle themes feel like the characters in question, but this one just... Doesn't? There's only so many ways I can describe something feeling like nothing. Which I guess you could argue works for Cyrus given his desire for a world without spirit, but that front isn't supposed to actually be who he is lmao. He wants to be emotionless, but he himself isn't that yet. That's the point. USUM disappoints me much more because there's a lot here that is obviously could've been good. The beginning 7 seconds or so are fantastic and feels far more threatening than the original, but then it very quickly takes a dive into both relying on the main melody too much when so much of what makes Cyrus' theme great is how the depth of his character is mostly communicated through what isn't in the main melody, and that the choice of instrumentation for most of the song after that point feels like "The Space Team Leader Guy," as if the composer wasn't actually told much about Cyrus' character. It almost sounds... bouncy, at points? Almost whimsical? Which fits Cyrus the least out of any Rainbow Rocket member because he got to enjoy the fruits of his labor the least; Giratina foiled his plans before he could see the world he would have created. The part around the 0:55 mark of the USUM theme is fantastic, and recontextualizes a rising sequence throughout the song that preceded the Arceus drums of the original (which to me symbolizes his desire to ascend to godhood before the Arceus drums make it explicit) into an almost sort of godlike decree. An unquestionable order from a deity that you HAVE to obey, or face your punishment. But then after those 7 seconds, it takes a turn back into the almost whimsical to the generic space sounding again. The song continues, the rising sequence of riffs arrives... And then it ends. No climactic reprise included whatsoever, because Gen 7 hates having battle themes last for more than 1 minute and 30 seconds. It loops back to the start, and feels anticlimactic and bleh. BDSP is obviously not faring much better with its rather poor instrumentation choices, but having to follow the structure of the original at least means there are inevitably shades of Cyrus' character communicated through the remix, something that's much more sparse in the other two remixes. All this to say that it just makes me sad. Cyrus had so many opportunities for a good remix somewhere down the line, and he's just never gotten that. I get he's not most peoples' favorite evil team leader by any means, but he deserves more than to get snubbed time and time again. He's a really underrated character already for me, and the only good version of his theme being the very first version of his theme, something no other leader in the range of Giovanni (who's famous for his lack of a theme never being remedied in either Kanto remake) to Lysandre has to deal with.
Honestly I kinda DID forget about it until I was doing some work and the Dialga and Palkia battle theme started playing on a UA-cam mix I was listening to, which then led to this video
@@shiny-piplupIf you’re not beating a DS game you’re failing as a remake. HGSS and FRLG smack down everything on GB classic. Even ORAS compared to Emerald offer different benefits. I miss Frontier, yet I can’t say that definitively makes Emerald better than ORAS which I CAN say for Platinum, so I can’t defend BDSP.
Thats what they WANT you to do FORGET and don't ask questions, just consume product and get excited for next product. Forget that we had literally over double the amount of pokemon on 3DS than any of the nintendo switch games. Forget how good the stories used to be in games like Black and White Forget how good the online was back in X and Y Forget how good the animations for pokemon were in all the games made by G.S. on gamecube and wii Forget all the improvements Platinum made from Diamond and Pearl FORGET ALL of the quality of life improvements made with every iteration Forget post games like the battle frontier. Forget literally every time they deceived and outright lied to their customers in their interviews and promotional material. Forget the exploitative anti-consumer marketing tactics Forget EVERYTHING except pre-ordering that next big Pokemon title! its "One more step in the right direction" and not an inch more!
5:17 YES YES YES! I am definitely biased because Leaf Green was the first Pokemon game I've seen (and the only one I knew for a while), but FRLG's champion theme is _peak._ Combined with Blue's unique sprite, it shows you that he _really_ means business and won't give up his champion title that easily. It _feels_ like a battle between rivals. Sorry for fanboying over a video game song. I just couldn't help myself. 😅 One more thing: this "remakes always greatly improve upon the original soundtrack" thing even extends to original compositions. In 2018, Pokeli made an original theme for trainer Gold, inspired by Red/GSC Champion's theme. It was cool, but it didn't _quite_ sound authentic. Then, one year later he released a HGSS arrangement of the song and _holy crap_ it's pretty much perfect.
I could do a whole movie-length review of everything wrong with this game. It feels like a loaf of wonder bread that is under-cooked yet also somehow burnt.
The second the trailer started for these games on that god forsaken direct I knew instantly the music was doomed, there is zero chance a team that made a game looking like this would be able to carefully adapt a soundtrack that was built from the ground up to cater to the dog ass DS sound card
i always knew something was off about the music but never really spoke up about it. you perfectly vocalized how i feel about the music and where these issues come from. your explanation was great! dude how do you have so little views and subs? you've earnt a new sub :)
I was mostly disappointed with the Eterna City (Night) theme. I thought the day theme was nice in BDSP, but the mid section of the night theme got messed up. The mid section of the original had this sort of rolling string instrumental sound to it that sounded very tranquil, but the remake uses the same harmonica type sound from the day theme and to me it just doesn't have the same impact or feeling at all. It kind of sucked because Eterna City (Night) is my favorite track from DPPt
i think the worst remix in bdsp is the lake trio theme. everything wrong with bdsp can be summed up with the fact that they removed the slap bass in that song
i hosently dont think the remake music sounds that bad, but it does sound very uninspired. just like the rest of the game, it feels like they took the original and made it sound more "modern" it genuinely feels like they used the exact same original midis and just updated the soundfonts oh and about the percussion part, a very common way to write percussion parts that sound more enegetic is to have the snare drum hit on beats 2 and 4 which is called the backbeat. it can sound cool if used in the right context but it is very overdone which adds to the remake of the legendary theme sounding more generic
12:00 BDSP's version sounds like they tried to layer a piano with an "E. Piano" (electric piano?) in a really easy but lazy attempt to "enhance" the piano. It definitely doesn't have the same feeling to it, though. 12:50 Yeah, they definitely could make songs sound as high quality as they want because Game Freak made the deal with the devil in generation 6 and started using stupid streamed sound files instead of the sequenced (MIDI-like) music used in generation 4 (and other older ones). With the insane amounts of money they have, they could even pay an orchestra to play the songs and put those recordings into the game. That's the advantage of streamed audio (even though I still hate it compared to sequenced music due to how "locked down" it is). 13:20 Suddenly, it feels like some of the "atmosphere" that the original was building up to vanished. BDSP's version is so basic by comparison, and it's *streamed* so they had no excuse! 13:50 I know the game wasn't _made_ by Game Freak themselves, but knowing more modern Pokemon game soundtracks, it wouldn't be surprising if they replaced the original drum beat with an Addictive Drums or Stylus RMX loop or something...uninspired. 14:42 BDSP's version doesn't sounds as "dissonant", and therefore doesn't give me this oppressive feeling like the original. 15:40 I'd actually love more videos on bad remade soundtracks and other songs in BDSP in general; I like how you talk about the songs, describe things, and compare the old, sequenced music against the modern, streamed music like this.
I have 12 years of choir experience and i honestly dont think i could have said it better than you did. Surprisingly, if you listen well enough, you can explain the things that music people have given big words to
Nobody talks about how the original DPP has a lot of electronic/guitar bass (not sure which one). The bass backing in Gen 4 is the best part of its soundtrack and the remake lacking it is... Disappointing.
For me Pokemon BDSP was a disappointment I didn't expect to feel from a GEN IV remake. I knew the style was off and the 1 day 2GB patch was a minus, the amount of bugs and overall glitches were all bad. But the main thing is that besides the underground, NOTHING was different, and like the video mentioned the music was underwhelming. In comparison to HGSS and ORAS, they expanded and were the peak of their respective generations. I even went back to my old DS and played the original Diamond and had a WAY better experience. I recently bought a copy of Platinum and had an enlightenment. Pokemon has reached its peak on the DS including Gen V. But BDSP killed my faith in future remakes and unfortunately is the last Pokemon game I will purchase.
It really is just because Game Freak passed the project off to a random third party dev instead of even doing the dang thing themselves isn’t it. Turns out we don’t get that Game Freak-quality music in a game GF didn’t bother to make. Yikes
You know what they say, if you want something done right, do it yourself (and if you want something done poorly, give it to the guys whose greatest previous achievement was developing Pokemon Home and then give them a deadline so strict they don't even have time to ship the game with a finished soundtrack)
The thing that offends me most about the ost is it has no identity. The original used woodwind sounding instruments, and they're replaced by shitty synths and midis. Everything feels cheap and sad. Listening to the osts side by side really show how intense the drop of quality is.
I thought I was crazy too, because when I was doing research for this video, most of the comments on the OST were praising BDSP and its music. Even the comments that acknowledged BDSP as being subpar usually said something along the lines of "even if these remakes weren't perfect, Pokemon always nails it with the soundtrack!", so I'm really glad to see I'm not alone in thinking the OST is just another trash bag in the BDSP dumpster fire.
Not sure if u needed to start off with a mini SV rant in a video about BDSP of all things. Like yeah, you were trying to give an example that even if the games aren't great as of late, the music usually pops off. But IDK it simply sounds like an excuse to discuss/show SV glitches which I just seemingly cannot escape from. I guess they're the latest Pokémon games after all & you merely wanted to give some of your thoughts on them w/o making a separate video covering them. Other than that, I agree with everything you said here.
I'm sorry... I'm trying so hard to see your side here. But as a musician and general music lover, the remake is objectively better to me. It sounds fuller, better mixed, and the parts where you are bothered by instrument choice make no sense. The instruments chosen in the new songs feel to me as though they tried as hard as they could to pick something that sounded similar to the original. If anything, it feels held back by then trying to hard to keep it as close to the original as they could. I feel like this is nostalgia keeping you from enjoying something new and, in my personal opinion, quite good. I played the originals, they were and still are my favorite Pokemon games. I am incredibly nostalgic about them and their soundtracks. However, I cannot deny that the new music sounds more full, more dynamic, and in a lot of ways, better. Better mixed, better instrumental choice in a lot of ways, but not perfect of course. I feel like your opinion that the original soundtrack was practically perfect is getting in the way of you recognizing that the new ost is incredible, as well.
I see your point, but I still don't agree. I don't think the nostalgia argument really works here, because you could argue nostalgia either way, you could say I only dislike it because of nostalgia, but I could say you only like it because of nostalgia. This game's soundtrack sticks out to me like sore thumb not because of how it compares to the original (that's just a helpful tool to show how some of the songs could've been better), but because it's the ONLY Pokemon game I've played with a soundtrack that I think is bad. For the record, I played a lot more of Gen 3 growing up than Gen 4, and I have nothing but good things to say about ORAS's soundtrack. There are some songs that I think are marginally better in RSE than ORAS, but for the most part I think ORAS's soundtrack is fantastic. And as far as battle themes go, I actually think Legends Arceus has a better OST than DPPt. So I don't believe it's some kind of nostalgia blindness. I also think the idea that they were held back by their attempts to stick to the originals doesn't really work either. Just going off of the main example from the video, aside from the poor quality midis themselves, my whole problem with the Dialga and Palkia theme is the departures from the originals in ways that don't really make sense. Even small things like replacing the backing strings with that cheap sounding synth in the intro changes the vibe of the song in ways that don't really work. I don't think that is them holding themselves back by sticking to the original, those are two VERY different instruments. Same with the keyboard in the remake, I'm no expert on the DS midi, but the sound they replaced with the keyboard in the remake sounds like a bass or something. Not 100% sure, but keyboard is definitely not the best approximation they had on hand. That's not to say you have to stick rigidly to the original, the Origin Forme theme from Legends is barely recognizable from the original but it's still an absolute banger. It's not about making a perfect copy, it's about making a good song. And I just can't agree with the instrumentation and mixing being better, because to me the mixing is just bad. Going back to the Dialga and Palkia theme again, you can't hear the timpani. It's still there if you pull up the OST and turn the volume up and listen very closely, it's just unusually quiet. And even if the compositions were all quality, the midis are simply cheap and low quality feeling. That's a problem that pervades the entire soundtrack, even the songs that I am neutral on or I like. I don't think the original soundtrack is "perfect" by any stretch, it's kind of hard to quantify what a perfect soundtrack even is, because while I don't dislike any songs in the original, that doesn't mean every track is a standout that perfectly fits the situation it's used in. I think the originals had a fantastic soundtrack, but so does every other Pokemon game. The thing is, even if the original soundtrack didn't exist, BDSP's OST wouldn't suddenly be more appealing to me, the midis would still be low quality, the mixing would still be bad, and I still wouldn't like a lot of the instrument choice. I appreciate you watching and sharing your opinion though, this kind of discussion is part of what I wanted with this video! And at the end of the day, if anything, I'm glad this game brought enjoyment to someone.
Honestly I don’t just like BDSP’s soundtrack, I actually think it’s the best Pokemon OST in a long time. Eterna Forest and Route 216 are bangers, as are the Galactic battle theme, and many of the route themes. I think that it greatly improves on the instrumentation of the original games.
@@SodaCrab the orchestral versions of a bunch of songs sound nice. The ones that sound worse than DPPt aren’t that much worse imo, and the ones that are better (Mt Coronet, Eterna City) are a lot better imo
@plat6559 Hard disagree on Eterna City, I really don't like how shrill the flute is, and the mixing is bad too, the guitar squeaks from the original are barely audible in the remake. The Mt. Coronet theme is alright as far as this game's soundtrack goes, but the problem to me will always loop back around to the midis they used being low quality and sounding cheap, so even if an arrangement is good, it still has an unpolished feel to it. You're entitled to your opinion though, and if anything I'm glad at least someone enjoys this game's soundtrack
I'd actually argue that BDSP's take is LESS orchestral than the original. They both just use MIDIs of course, but the choice of instruments in the originals is more in line with orchestral arrangements. Like how the intro of the original Dialga and Palkia battle theme is backed by strings (or at least the DS's best approximation of strings), while in the remakes it's backed by what sounds like a synth. I think the real downgrade just comes from how cheap the music feels.
"stacks up like the postgame of jenga" LMAO
I literally was just gonna comment that. It is soo good!
They even fucked up Cyrus' theme. In the original after the first loop, it changes slightly to be more intense but ig no one told the developers about this because they just remade the first part
That was actually a glich in the games programming
@@EPOCHGAMER64 A very cool glitch imo.
Also, they recreated the squiggly lines on the walls of protag's room, even though IIRC it was an emulation error (though granted, one is way more noticable than the other, so they aren't really comparable).
That moment when Super Smash Bros. Brawl, from 2009, does a better remix of Battle [Dialga/Palkia] than the official remake.
I never bought or played BDSP so the remade OST was mostly foreign to me. You gave me knowledge which I now wish I hadn't...
The choice of cheap sounding midi, the synthesizers, the dinky piano playing in the wrong key... I am honestly shocked and really sad, that just about every thing is terrible about these games. The impact and tension of any battle theme is completely gone. Almost impressive to fuck up that bad.
And it is also really emberassing that the midi from DS games from 2006 is better than those of Switch games from 15 years later...
Legends Arceus really is the true Sinnoh remake, even when it comes to the OST.
Looking forward to more vids from you!
As a Tyler the Creator enjoyer I take offense to slander of the dinky piano played out of key
@@undeniablySomeGuy Then keep enjoying the dinky piano, my guy. More power to you!
HELL YES FINALLY SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT THIS
Something about the "jingly" effect that the piano has in this game has always ticked me off, it made songs like Jubilife city **genuinely** hurt my ears to listen to, compared to the gentle piano notes from the DS.
I think the most horrible thing they messed up in this games' ost is route 228.
In the original, the piano had a couple of sudden high notes that kept the song engaging and overall pretty fun
...In the remake, they made them a **LOW NOTE???**
It was the first time I was ever blueballed by a song
I'd like to take a moment to argue that BDSP were a Psy-Op by Gamefreak to make us never ask for something ever again. Based off the concept arts and whatnot ILCA has revealed, Legends Arceus and BDSP were going to be one game. A modern sinnoh setting with an open world. They've also confirmed they were forbidden from adding platinum features and they even had plans to give us the battle frontier.
Let's just face it, they got sticker starred.
That's actually really interesting, I didn't know Game Freak had such an active role in kneecapping this game. But that part about them not being allowed to add Platinum features definitely checks out, the language from the trailers reinforcing the idea of a "faithful remake" tells me that it was some kind of directive from the suits at The Pokemon Company. You either die a Thousand Year Door or live long enough to see yourself become a Sticker Star :/
@@SodaCrab "You either die a Thousand-Year Door or live long enough to see yourself become a Sticker Star" is a surprisingly profound parody with a lot more nuance than the original Dark Knight quote.
@@SodaCrab Game Freak prevented Pokemon platinum content in BDSP since "Pokemon legends of Arceus" was more important ,for them i mean "Pokemon Legends of Arceus "had all new ideas put into it, so they must of decided that "Pokemon legends of Arceus" would be their main attraction it makes sense Game developer wise.
@@JJSquirtle Game Freak prevented Pokemon platinum content in BDSP since "Pokemon legends of Arceus" was more important ,for them i mean "Pokemon Legends of Arceus "had all new ideas put into it, so they must of decided that "Pokemon legends of Arceus" would be their main attraction it makes sense Game developer wise.
@@1BadAssArchAngelvs14 I would advise you to reread my comment, I mentioned they were originally one and the same. You REALLY don't need to defend gamefreak, I still throw money at them, but I can also step back and say that splitting the dev direction, deadlines, and teams into two led to worse products for us as both are lacking in their own respective areas that a bigger team with more time could handle as long as the original direction was maintained.
10:38 I’ve been playing the piano for 17 years, going on 18 this fall. I’m not Curtis or Carnegie Hall material, but I know enough with music theory, and having been studying music composition. I took a few classes on mixing and mastering audio.
With the legendary theme, it’s a couple aspects. For one-as you pointed out-the Tom or the Timpani being swapped from Up->Down, to Down->Up is frustrating, cuz the track loses a lot of momentum. On top of that though, they chose to drop the gain on the bass-line to where you can barely hear (assuming it’s even still there). They butchered what worked and gave most of these tracks identity and life, either using whiny synths when it wasn’t appropriate, or obfuscating the good parts of the tracks within the mix.
Issues of lower instruments either not being as present in the mix or hidden that badly, makes me think someone was working with only Beats Headphones. Those things are made to listen to pop music and they’re specifically crafted to increase the gain for lower instruments in a mix, most things below 300Hz. They’re deceptive at making the lower instruments-such as the bass-line or timpani drums-sound a lot louder and present than they really are by the time you’re exporting the track. I bought a pair freshman year of college, and noticed how a lot of my projects weren’t as nice as I wanted them to be mainly cuz the bass was non-existent. Audio Technica has been doing wonders for me since.
Another tip I learned at Uni, always, ALWAYS listen to anything you intend to export and/or upload on multiple devices, and hear it coming out of multiple stereo systems. What works comfortably from your laptop in any DAW or with home speakers will sound way different in AirPods, a Gaming Headset, your smartphone, or a Spotify playlist in your car.
One of the best American rock albums of all time suffers from a tinny mix precisely because the producer listened back to the mix through studio headphones and not speakers.
It's _Tim_ by The Replacements. Tommy Erdelyi did a great job coaxing really awesome performances out of the notoriously undisciplined band, but then screwed up the mix. Rumour has it he was going deaf at the time, though he denied it. The difference between Tim's original mix and Ed Stasium's recent remix is night and day.
The legendary theme always had the down up pattern no matter what game it’s in, the timpani had 2 samples in dp and how much stronger the lower sample is, it gave this illusion of up down. Sad it wasn’t replicated here but it was in pla.
7:23 It would be funnier if before you started showcasing the BDSP ost, you instead played the wild encounter theme from Super Smash Bros Brawl first and played it straight as the remake OST, before revealing it was actually from a completely different franchise title from 14 years ago that STILL has better Pokemon music than the modern titles are releasing to this day. 🤣
LMAO I wish I had thought of that! I had actually considered mentioning how good the Smash rendition of the Dialga and Palkia battle theme was, but when I was writing the script I didn't want to stray too far from the Pokemon games themselves
the way the game sounds accurately reflects how it looks
I will give it that. It sucks not having soundtracks that do not fit the quality of the game they are in.
“It feels less menacing and more meandering, like watching your pet slowking, I dunno, hit the griddy” is the greatest line I’ve heard all day 😂
Oh no, it's the beat boxing crab from my nightmares
I think the biggest gripe I have with this game's soundtrack is much less on the MIDI, I wouldn't knock that down as much, I feel you could make it sound good, even when using MIDI. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX does a fantastic job of using mostly MIDI to remake their tracks, even using some of the old instruments, and knock it out of the park.
The biggest issue for me is the effects they use to "remaster" the songs. Almost every track has a ton of reverb and delay on every instrument, where every instrument sounds really large and expansive, but drowns out every other instrument, fighting for its own spot. Not to mention, the original didn't have anything of that sort, with instruments sounding punchy with the lack of effects, so we end up with a lot of sounds and instruments sounding discordant as they overlap each other.
Now, reverb and delay aren't that bad, and in fact, most music nowadays have a lot of it, in every instrument. The only issue is, the fact that they never even tried to rearrange any of the instrumentation to fit the sounds they use.
Like, I think my favorite example to show how the reverb and delay really ruin it is the encounter with a black belt, because it sounds so good on the original, where you can hear every note, but the remaster is just drowned out with notes, you can't tell when one starts and ends.
If you want to see a good way on how using effects on instrumentation can be done well for the diamond and Pearl soundtrack, just look at the smash remix for route 209. It sounds fantastic, because they rearrange the track to fit with the instruments they use, wowa weewa. It's crazy.
"MIDI" is really just a language, or more precisely a set of instructions anyway. Back in the 90s choosing the right sound card for your PC was very important because although they'd be receiving the same instructions they handled the maths differently and used different banks of samples so the result would be very different.
Towards the end of the 90s prerecorded audio on CD became the norm and the importance of having a quality sound card faded. When younger people talk about "MIDI", they usually mean the specific way Microsoft's General MIDI decoder sounds (not great). If they play DOS-era games via emulation they often don't tinker around with soundcard emulation, so they're getting a false idea of what the game actually sounded like on real hardware.
In BDSP's case the audio is prerecorded (it's not decoded in real time as MIDI files are) but it was generated with audio synthesis software. The issue is the samples chosen suck and the transcription's of D/P's tracks is faulty. You wouldn't make mistakes like reversing the down/up cadence of the Regi theme's drums if you had a half-decent ear for music.
I haven’t bought a game since Shield. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and somehow it looked even worse here.
They outsourced it to inexperienced game devs and rushed it. It shows. It’s a de-make of a game that you should have on DS ending with m.
It's depressing that BDSP makes Sword and Shield look good in comparison. A de-make is the perfect way to describe it, even with some of the quality of life improvements BDSP gets just by being a newer gen game, the presentation is such a downgrade in every way that I honestly would rather just dust off my DS and play through Diamond. And that's really saying something, because we often forget that Diamond and Pearl themselves were fairly flawed games, and Game Freak only really made Sinnoh shine when they got to polish it further with Platinum.
I haven't bought a new Pokemon game since Sun and Moon. Feel like I've been spared 😂 (though I really really love Legend Arceus' music and concept so there's something to look forward to)
I just wanted to say something here: MASUDA WAS ONE OF THE DIRECTORS ON THIS PROJECT. I don’t believe he was involved in Legends: Arceus, which makes it crazy when you realize that the game he was more involved in has a worse soundtrack, despite being from his first ever Pokémon game.
That's honestly baffling, this game does not feel like it had any of Pokemon's heavy hitters involved
I remember really hating the Galactic Grunt theme in BDSP first came out. Like when the main melody of the song is first introduced, it's in a much lower key that doesn't really match the intensity of the original track at all. And the guitar riff that plays throughout the song is super quiet, too
100% agreed. It feels like every song in this game has at least one major problem with the mixing where an important element of the song is really muted and hard to hear.
I could be misunderstanding how soundtracks are handled in video games, but it seems like Junichi Masuda and Shota Kageyama were the two composers who handled the rearranged BDSP OST. Given that Kageyama also handled the Let's Go OST and I didn't rate that very highly either, and that this was only a few years after that, I'm not surprised that the BDSP OST sounds this way (though it is puzzling).
To be clear, I do really like Kageyama as a Pokémon composer: he did a lot of great rearrangements for HGSS (like the Kanto Wild Pokémon battle theme you mentioned), as well as composing a bunch of great tracks for Black & White like the N's Castle music, Professor Juniper's theme, Accumula Town, I could go on. Just a shame that Let's Go and BDSP sound the way they do, for whatever reasons.
For BDSP, Shota Kageyama handled all the arrangements, and possibly even composed the new Ramanas Park battle themes, according to a reply he made to an inquiry on Twitter. Junichi Masuda technically worked on the music too but it's pretty much 1 original composition that goes unused for some reason.
It's genuinely hard to believe that the same guy who headed the soundtracks for generations V & VI, Shota Kageyama, the man who brought you classic tracks like the Dragonspiral Tower theme, N's theme, Nimbasa City, Emotion (An Unwavering Heart), Lumiose City, Zinnia's theme, etc. is also the exact same person who rearranged the original music for BDSP. What an absolute career-turning moment right there.
My dear god, I thought you were exaggerating with the legendary pokemon music thing, but the remake version is legitimately the worst thing I have yet heard out of a pokemon game. Like it doesn't suit what you're doing even remotely.
i knew something felt off and this was exactly it! it all feels very artificial and sterilised. with the original dialga and palkia battle theme i can see myself atop spear pillar with the wind rushing past me, looking up at these gods, but in the bdsp version i can only feel a hint of that as if it was just a dream. great video!
Thank you! I like the way you described the difference in vibe between the original and the remake, I know exactly what you mean, the remake just lacks that majesty and intensity that the original absolutely nailed.
I will NEVER forgive them for what they did to Cynthia's theme. They took out all of the OOMPH
New viewer here, really surprised you're as small as you are. It's been a while since I laughed -out loud- at a joke pitched in a video, and you got a few. Subbed, hope to see more!
FINALLY, someone puts my exact feelings into words. Do you know how sad it made me to hear them slaughter sunyshore city’s theme? Hearing it completely neutered? No energy? No drive?
I played trumpet for a decent amount of time and while I’m nowhere near any sort of expert every brass instrument in this game sounds like how touching wet food in the sink feels. Combine that with the absolutely dookie midi snare drums and I wanted to see how far I could fit my fist through my drywall
10:25 The original sounds like there's a heart beat, either the player characters heart from facing off against such a beast or the legendaries aura pulsing out with the beat of it's own heart. While I don't dislike the remake's version in a vacuum, it does sound like you're at a house party and it's just background noise or you're at a pretty underwhelming rave
To be honest I didn't like or play bdsp even though I loved Platinum because I coulnd't vibe with the chibi fisher price store art style. I was hoping the music would have saved it but unfournately I was wrong. The gravest offences to me besides the ones you mentioned are the lake trio theme, the took out the epic base and route 210 which they also took out bass. Not to mention the Giratina theme which is missing a lot of eerie sounds that made Giratina sound more imposing and scary in the original track.
Honestly even if they had 100% nailed everything else in this game, I would still have a hard time coming to terms with the art style. It really does look atrocious.
BDSP's Dialga and Palkia theme makes me feel like I'm about to play patty cake with the gods of time and space 😂💀
This helped me appreciate Sinnoh's soundtrack a lot more! The majesty conveyed by the sound is so cool
I couldn’t even edge to this, I busted immediately!!!! Clean up aisle… MY PANTS!!!!
🤨
Tf
hey babe wake up SodaCrab dropped another banger
she shine my pearl til im diamond
Thumbnail game is on point
THANK YOU I was so proud of this one
Rock music and symphonic music are great because they make you feel you are adventuring or in a battle.
Soda, does floatzel SHIT OUT ice beam in the remakes????
Even better, it shits out EVERY special attack :D
@@SodaCrab they massacred my boy… D;
Xenoblade 2 is good
It's got the strongest character work in the series
Want an example look no further than morag few characters have come from videogames with more complexity in moral and messaging
Morag is built as an antagonist this evil force from a colonizing empire but as you get to know her more you find her struggles with purpose are what drive her
She was raised to be a queen, from a young age all she knew was being a ruler, but then her cousin Niles was born and her county is patriarchal meaning her purpose was stolen from her. Instead of resentment morag decided her new purpose was to protect Niles she would become the strongest so no harm could come to him. During the story she fails at this task causing a loss of faith only for Niles to tell her that protecting him is not her purpose and that she should join the party and find her purpose. In the end of the game morag expresses that she feels kind of empty like saving the world has not given her the fulfillment she so desperately looked for since childhood and her friend who she went on this journey with just looks at rex, nia, and Tora and gose "maybe we don't get to find purpose, maybe it's enough we helped them find theirs" in a truly bitter sweet moment we realize her and zeek are in similar situations and morag is forced to come to terms with her lack of purpose
It's art dude
(Also yes I do plan to take this joke way too far mark my words)
Thank you Xenoblade 2 guy, your commitment is an inspiration
(I love Morag, good opinion)
Cyrus theme was the worst offence to me they messed that up so bad
Loathe as I am to give any sort of "praise" to this game, I will give it credit that its rendition of Cyrus' battle theme is the only... "passable" remix of it that Pokémon has had. It's not a particular favorite among most, but I've always loved Cyrus' theme, and it's disappointing to see how even with USUM, Masters, and BDSP existing, the original is still the only one I'd actively call good.
The original just feels like the perfect summary of him as a character; This hypocritical would-be tyrant who puts on a front of emotionlessness all while his anger at the world and trauma from his childhood broil inside of him, incapable of truly keeping his contradictory emotions contained, so they just manifest as a whole bunch of repressed indignation that seeps out at every opportunity, much to his own dismay.
How the main melody throughout the entire song has long stretches of notes that feel very drawn out while the piano and percussion go nuts in the background, how the big booming drums at the 1 minute mark are the same sample used in Arceus' battle theme, symbolizing his desire to become a god himself, and the part after that where the synth is droning in the background, as if he's getting slowly backed into a corner and is still deliberating on how he can get out of this situation, which is then followed by a series of escalating riffs as he's in the midst of a breakdown, with that breaking point being signified by the climactic reprise of the first motif of the song with a key change. He's still barely trying to hold himself together as he's losing, but it's not working, and his emotions once again betray his desires before he recollects himself and the song loops. This entire song feels like he's pissed as hell but is desperately trying and failing not to be pissed as hell, and I love it.
The others don't sound like that.
Masters' remix just doesn't sound like anything. They're clearly capable of making their battle themes feel like the characters in question, but this one just... Doesn't? There's only so many ways I can describe something feeling like nothing. Which I guess you could argue works for Cyrus given his desire for a world without spirit, but that front isn't supposed to actually be who he is lmao. He wants to be emotionless, but he himself isn't that yet. That's the point.
USUM disappoints me much more because there's a lot here that is obviously could've been good. The beginning 7 seconds or so are fantastic and feels far more threatening than the original, but then it very quickly takes a dive into both relying on the main melody too much when so much of what makes Cyrus' theme great is how the depth of his character is mostly communicated through what isn't in the main melody, and that the choice of instrumentation for most of the song after that point feels like "The Space Team Leader Guy," as if the composer wasn't actually told much about Cyrus' character. It almost sounds... bouncy, at points? Almost whimsical? Which fits Cyrus the least out of any Rainbow Rocket member because he got to enjoy the fruits of his labor the least; Giratina foiled his plans before he could see the world he would have created. The part around the 0:55 mark of the USUM theme is fantastic, and recontextualizes a rising sequence throughout the song that preceded the Arceus drums of the original (which to me symbolizes his desire to ascend to godhood before the Arceus drums make it explicit) into an almost sort of godlike decree. An unquestionable order from a deity that you HAVE to obey, or face your punishment. But then after those 7 seconds, it takes a turn back into the almost whimsical to the generic space sounding again. The song continues, the rising sequence of riffs arrives... And then it ends. No climactic reprise included whatsoever, because Gen 7 hates having battle themes last for more than 1 minute and 30 seconds. It loops back to the start, and feels anticlimactic and bleh.
BDSP is obviously not faring much better with its rather poor instrumentation choices, but having to follow the structure of the original at least means there are inevitably shades of Cyrus' character communicated through the remix, something that's much more sparse in the other two remixes.
All this to say that it just makes me sad. Cyrus had so many opportunities for a good remix somewhere down the line, and he's just never gotten that. I get he's not most peoples' favorite evil team leader by any means, but he deserves more than to get snubbed time and time again. He's a really underrated character already for me, and the only good version of his theme being the very first version of his theme, something no other leader in the range of Giovanni (who's famous for his lack of a theme never being remedied in either Kanto remake) to Lysandre has to deal with.
Bdsp should just be forgotten
Honestly I kinda DID forget about it until I was doing some work and the Dialga and Palkia battle theme started playing on a UA-cam mix I was listening to, which then led to this video
I like bdsp it’s just slightly better bdsp and slightly worse then platinum
@@shiny-piplup then again (imo) dp are some of the worst games in the series but they really should have based it around platinum
@@shiny-piplupIf you’re not beating a DS game you’re failing as a remake. HGSS and FRLG smack down everything on GB classic. Even ORAS compared to Emerald offer different benefits. I miss Frontier, yet I can’t say that definitively makes Emerald better than ORAS which I CAN say for Platinum, so I can’t defend BDSP.
Thats what they WANT you to do
FORGET and don't ask questions, just consume product and get excited for next product.
Forget that we had literally over double the amount of pokemon on 3DS than any of the nintendo switch games.
Forget how good the stories used to be in games like Black and White
Forget how good the online was back in X and Y
Forget how good the animations for pokemon were in all the games made by G.S. on gamecube and wii
Forget all the improvements Platinum made from Diamond and Pearl
FORGET ALL of the quality of life improvements made with every iteration
Forget post games like the battle frontier.
Forget literally every time they deceived and outright lied to their customers in their interviews and promotional material.
Forget the exploitative anti-consumer marketing tactics
Forget EVERYTHING except pre-ordering that next big Pokemon title!
its "One more step in the right direction" and not an inch more!
5:17 YES YES YES! I am definitely biased because Leaf Green was the first Pokemon game I've seen (and the only one I knew for a while), but FRLG's champion theme is _peak._ Combined with Blue's unique sprite, it shows you that he _really_ means business and won't give up his champion title that easily. It _feels_ like a battle between rivals.
Sorry for fanboying over a video game song. I just couldn't help myself. 😅
One more thing: this "remakes always greatly improve upon the original soundtrack" thing even extends to original compositions. In 2018, Pokeli made an original theme for trainer Gold, inspired by Red/GSC Champion's theme. It was cool, but it didn't _quite_ sound authentic. Then, one year later he released a HGSS arrangement of the song and _holy crap_ it's pretty much perfect.
High key every time I heard you play the remake sound I actually kind of liked them although the original is better
Edit: 14:44 I retract my statement
Thank you!!! I knew something was off with the music…
the trgidy was the secrat bases and removing furniture and traps like in the og
I could do a whole movie-length review of everything wrong with this game. It feels like a loaf of wonder bread that is under-cooked yet also somehow burnt.
The second the trailer started for these games on that god forsaken direct I knew instantly the music was doomed, there is zero chance a team that made a game looking like this would be able to carefully adapt a soundtrack that was built from the ground up to cater to the dog ass DS sound card
i always knew something was off about the music but never really spoke up about it. you perfectly vocalized how i feel about the music and where these issues come from. your explanation was great!
dude how do you have so little views and subs? you've earnt a new sub :)
I was mostly disappointed with the Eterna City (Night) theme. I thought the day theme was nice in BDSP, but the mid section of the night theme got messed up. The mid section of the original had this sort of rolling string instrumental sound to it that sounded very tranquil, but the remake uses the same harmonica type sound from the day theme and to me it just doesn't have the same impact or feeling at all. It kind of sucked because Eterna City (Night) is my favorite track from DPPt
i think the worst remix in bdsp is the lake trio theme. everything wrong with bdsp can be summed up with the fact that they removed the slap bass in that song
i hosently dont think the remake music sounds that bad, but it does sound very uninspired. just like the rest of the game, it feels like they took the original and made it sound more "modern" it genuinely feels like they used the exact same original midis and just updated the soundfonts
oh and about the percussion part, a very common way to write percussion parts that sound more enegetic is to have the snare drum hit on beats 2 and 4 which is called the backbeat. it can sound cool if used in the right context but it is very overdone which adds to the remake of the legendary theme sounding more generic
12:00 BDSP's version sounds like they tried to layer a piano with an "E. Piano" (electric piano?) in a really easy but lazy attempt to "enhance" the piano. It definitely doesn't have the same feeling to it, though.
12:50 Yeah, they definitely could make songs sound as high quality as they want because Game Freak made the deal with the devil in generation 6 and started using stupid streamed sound files instead of the sequenced (MIDI-like) music used in generation 4 (and other older ones). With the insane amounts of money they have, they could even pay an orchestra to play the songs and put those recordings into the game. That's the advantage of streamed audio (even though I still hate it compared to sequenced music due to how "locked down" it is).
13:20 Suddenly, it feels like some of the "atmosphere" that the original was building up to vanished. BDSP's version is so basic by comparison, and it's *streamed* so they had no excuse!
13:50 I know the game wasn't _made_ by Game Freak themselves, but knowing more modern Pokemon game soundtracks, it wouldn't be surprising if they replaced the original drum beat with an Addictive Drums or Stylus RMX loop or something...uninspired.
14:42 BDSP's version doesn't sounds as "dissonant", and therefore doesn't give me this oppressive feeling like the original.
15:40 I'd actually love more videos on bad remade soundtracks and other songs in BDSP in general; I like how you talk about the songs, describe things, and compare the old, sequenced music against the modern, streamed music like this.
I have 12 years of choir experience and i honestly dont think i could have said it better than you did. Surprisingly, if you listen well enough, you can explain the things that music people have given big words to
You deserve more views than you get ngl man
Nobody talks about how the original DPP has a lot of electronic/guitar bass (not sure which one). The bass backing in Gen 4 is the best part of its soundtrack and the remake lacking it is... Disappointing.
For me Pokemon BDSP was a disappointment I didn't expect to feel from a GEN IV remake. I knew the style was off and the 1 day 2GB patch was a minus, the amount of bugs and overall glitches were all bad. But the main thing is that besides the underground, NOTHING was different, and like the video mentioned the music was underwhelming. In comparison to HGSS and ORAS, they expanded and were the peak of their respective generations.
I even went back to my old DS and played the original Diamond and had a WAY better experience. I recently bought a copy of Platinum and had an enlightenment. Pokemon has reached its peak on the DS including Gen V.
But BDSP killed my faith in future remakes and unfortunately is the last Pokemon game I will purchase.
It really is just because Game Freak passed the project off to a random third party dev instead of even doing the dang thing themselves isn’t it. Turns out we don’t get that Game Freak-quality music in a game GF didn’t bother to make. Yikes
You know what they say, if you want something done right, do it yourself (and if you want something done poorly, give it to the guys whose greatest previous achievement was developing Pokemon Home and then give them a deadline so strict they don't even have time to ship the game with a finished soundtrack)
The thing that offends me most about the ost is it has no identity. The original used woodwind sounding instruments, and they're replaced by shitty synths and midis. Everything feels cheap and sad. Listening to the osts side by side really show how intense the drop of quality is.
I made a Reddit post in relation to this. I now know I’m not crazy.
I thought I was crazy too, because when I was doing research for this video, most of the comments on the OST were praising BDSP and its music. Even the comments that acknowledged BDSP as being subpar usually said something along the lines of "even if these remakes weren't perfect, Pokemon always nails it with the soundtrack!", so I'm really glad to see I'm not alone in thinking the OST is just another trash bag in the BDSP dumpster fire.
i feel like i could like the video
did taint survive?
i was disappointed with the soundtrack but then dr pez released their diamond and perl medley hehehe
Why did you only use the battle themes as the examples? Imo gen 4's route and city themes are waaaaay better than their battle themes
Not sure if u needed to start off with a mini SV rant in a video about BDSP of all things. Like yeah, you were trying to give an example that even if the games aren't great as of late, the music usually pops off. But IDK it simply sounds like an excuse to discuss/show SV glitches which I just seemingly cannot escape from. I guess they're the latest Pokémon games after all & you merely wanted to give some of your thoughts on them w/o making a separate video covering them.
Other than that, I agree with everything you said here.
Damn your battle against that bug type elite four member was rigged😂.
I'm sorry... I'm trying so hard to see your side here. But as a musician and general music lover, the remake is objectively better to me. It sounds fuller, better mixed, and the parts where you are bothered by instrument choice make no sense. The instruments chosen in the new songs feel to me as though they tried as hard as they could to pick something that sounded similar to the original. If anything, it feels held back by then trying to hard to keep it as close to the original as they could. I feel like this is nostalgia keeping you from enjoying something new and, in my personal opinion, quite good.
I played the originals, they were and still are my favorite Pokemon games. I am incredibly nostalgic about them and their soundtracks. However, I cannot deny that the new music sounds more full, more dynamic, and in a lot of ways, better. Better mixed, better instrumental choice in a lot of ways, but not perfect of course. I feel like your opinion that the original soundtrack was practically perfect is getting in the way of you recognizing that the new ost is incredible, as well.
I see your point, but I still don't agree. I don't think the nostalgia argument really works here, because you could argue nostalgia either way, you could say I only dislike it because of nostalgia, but I could say you only like it because of nostalgia. This game's soundtrack sticks out to me like sore thumb not because of how it compares to the original (that's just a helpful tool to show how some of the songs could've been better), but because it's the ONLY Pokemon game I've played with a soundtrack that I think is bad. For the record, I played a lot more of Gen 3 growing up than Gen 4, and I have nothing but good things to say about ORAS's soundtrack. There are some songs that I think are marginally better in RSE than ORAS, but for the most part I think ORAS's soundtrack is fantastic. And as far as battle themes go, I actually think Legends Arceus has a better OST than DPPt. So I don't believe it's some kind of nostalgia blindness.
I also think the idea that they were held back by their attempts to stick to the originals doesn't really work either. Just going off of the main example from the video, aside from the poor quality midis themselves, my whole problem with the Dialga and Palkia theme is the departures from the originals in ways that don't really make sense. Even small things like replacing the backing strings with that cheap sounding synth in the intro changes the vibe of the song in ways that don't really work. I don't think that is them holding themselves back by sticking to the original, those are two VERY different instruments. Same with the keyboard in the remake, I'm no expert on the DS midi, but the sound they replaced with the keyboard in the remake sounds like a bass or something. Not 100% sure, but keyboard is definitely not the best approximation they had on hand. That's not to say you have to stick rigidly to the original, the Origin Forme theme from Legends is barely recognizable from the original but it's still an absolute banger. It's not about making a perfect copy, it's about making a good song.
And I just can't agree with the instrumentation and mixing being better, because to me the mixing is just bad. Going back to the Dialga and Palkia theme again, you can't hear the timpani. It's still there if you pull up the OST and turn the volume up and listen very closely, it's just unusually quiet. And even if the compositions were all quality, the midis are simply cheap and low quality feeling. That's a problem that pervades the entire soundtrack, even the songs that I am neutral on or I like.
I don't think the original soundtrack is "perfect" by any stretch, it's kind of hard to quantify what a perfect soundtrack even is, because while I don't dislike any songs in the original, that doesn't mean every track is a standout that perfectly fits the situation it's used in. I think the originals had a fantastic soundtrack, but so does every other Pokemon game. The thing is, even if the original soundtrack didn't exist, BDSP's OST wouldn't suddenly be more appealing to me, the midis would still be low quality, the mixing would still be bad, and I still wouldn't like a lot of the instrument choice. I appreciate you watching and sharing your opinion though, this kind of discussion is part of what I wanted with this video! And at the end of the day, if anything, I'm glad this game brought enjoyment to someone.
😮
Honestly I don’t just like BDSP’s soundtrack, I actually think it’s the best Pokemon OST in a long time. Eterna Forest and Route 216 are bangers, as are the Galactic battle theme, and many of the route themes. I think that it greatly improves on the instrumentation of the original games.
They sound fine to me. Don't see the issue
Not sure about this one, dawg
What is it that you like about BDSP's music? Not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely interested in your opinion.
@@SodaCrab the orchestral versions of a bunch of songs sound nice. The ones that sound worse than DPPt aren’t that much worse imo, and the ones that are better (Mt Coronet, Eterna City) are a lot better imo
@plat6559 Hard disagree on Eterna City, I really don't like how shrill the flute is, and the mixing is bad too, the guitar squeaks from the original are barely audible in the remake. The Mt. Coronet theme is alright as far as this game's soundtrack goes, but the problem to me will always loop back around to the midis they used being low quality and sounding cheap, so even if an arrangement is good, it still has an unpolished feel to it. You're entitled to your opinion though, and if anything I'm glad at least someone enjoys this game's soundtrack
I do
the more orchestral take was for sure a downgrade imo
I'd actually argue that BDSP's take is LESS orchestral than the original. They both just use MIDIs of course, but the choice of instruments in the originals is more in line with orchestral arrangements. Like how the intro of the original Dialga and Palkia battle theme is backed by strings (or at least the DS's best approximation of strings), while in the remakes it's backed by what sounds like a synth. I think the real downgrade just comes from how cheap the music feels.