Further into the labyrinth of music
My favorite time-waster these days — in between prepping for upcoming recording sessions, reviewing upcoming games (yes, I still do that), and writing cool Castlevania think pieces for USgamer (new entry today! go read it!) — continues to be picking away at Etrian Odyssey Untold, the 3DS remake of the (gasp) 10-year-old first-person dungeon-crawler RPG for Nintendo DS. I played through the remake back when it first came out, but between my save file's deletion and the fact that we will be recording an Etrian Odyssey Retronauts episode at some point this year, I feel totally justified in retreading familiar territory for the third time.
Of course, the thing I keep finding myself gushing about the most as I replay Etrian Odyssey is, naturally, the music. Currently, I'm in the second stratum, which means I've been listening to a lot of this tune:
It's lovely, right? I admit I'm growing a little weary of it, though. Not that there's anything wrong with the composition, mind you, but Etrian Odyssey starts to sprawl in the second stratum. You unlock several — admittedly optional — rather grueling side quests in this portion of the game, including one that requires you to spend five in-game days on a single floor of the dungeon. Even though Untold takes considerable pains to make this less burdensome than it was in the original, it's still a heck of a chore. I'm starting to feel a little bit of shellshock whenever I hear this stratum's theme.
I guess it's a sign of how much I love this game, and how great Yuzo Koshiro's soundtrack for it was, that I want to share a tune even when I've heard it so much lately that it kind of makes me want to barf at the moment.
