You ever see that gif of the guy who takes a bite out of his food and instantly gets transported back to when he was a kid? The first notes of "Time Gear" had that effect on me. For just a second, I was a kid again, hiding under my blanket so mom didn't catch me playing the DS after my bedtime and just absolutely enthralled by the little adventure of my pokemon character and his companion. As for that boss theme, I remember the frustration at how hard that fight was, the sheer joy after finally succeeding... and the genuine tears that fell following the conclusion of that boss battle. Core memories right there. Thank you so much for the nostalgia!
Man, I grew up on these games. Explorers of Sky had a jukebox feature that let you play the game music even with your DS closed, and I remember listening to it for ages. Glad that you're taking a look into this spinoff series that means so much to so many.
same feels here man the first two notes of Don't Ever Forget and A Wish for Peace always bring tears to my eyes even after a decade and a half. God PMD is so underrated.
Arata Iiyoshi remains one of the greatest composers of our time with their work on the PMD soundtrack. Even in their normal albums (Adventurer released just about a year ago) you can hear the same style, it all sounds very PMD-esque. That is when you know they're a good composer, when they have a style that not only sounds fantastic, but one that you can pinpoint from anywhere. The temporal themes (anything related to time) are all connected via the Gear's motif. It's definitely most heard within the final dungeon, Temporal Tower which to me has three phases, and three feelings. Temporal tower is fast paced, it's a race against the clock to climb up. Temporal Spire has slowed down. You're running out of time, and it's almost up. Dialga's Fight to the Finish (Also commonly referred to as Primal Dialga) signifies that you're out of time. This *will* be your last fight no matter the outcome.
That second theme absolutely plays for the player, but it plays as you fight against Dialga. It's a heroic theme that portrays the fight as the last thing you need to overcome in order to fix everything.
(as someone who doesn't understand music very well) I feel like one of the reasons why Pokemon Mystery Dungeon final boss songs don't sound like boss music to you is because they're more songs about the journey than about the fight itself. PMD compared to regular pokemon games is very story driven and always very emotional at the back end of the game.
For Dialga’s Fight to the Finish especially it runs as an almost hopeful song, because you’re not trying to _kill_ the boss, you’re trying to _save_ the boss. Dialga was never evil, just driven to madness which was corrected when time was restored.
"Time Gear" is not just any motif, it introduces the leitmotif of many of the game's music! =D There's a video breaking down the game's music by the channel "8 bit Music Theory", so once you got the whole OST down, definitely give it a watch! =D (Though that'll sure still take a ton of time! =D) "Time Gear" seems to have been composed by Arata Iiyoshi and "Dialga's Fight to the Finish" was Iiyoshi-san and Keisuke Ito (according to "Goldenrod Radio" which I referenced in my comment in the other video). Though maybe Arata Iiyoshi is listed for Dialga's theme _because_ it uses some of Time Gear. If someone already requested "Temporal Tower", that would be the main dungeon before Dialga's battle. But it has a "sub-dungeon" representing its peak called "Temporal Spire", so those two requests would go together, if they are in the pipeline! =D Regarding the "flute instrument" you referenced in Dialga's theme, that's actually on Ocarina. Though, not the same one as in "Zelda: Ocarina of Time". That would be kinda cool though, honestly! =D Dialga is the Legendary Pokémon representing time itself, so that is one of the reasons, there are so many time-related themes in the game, but the ocarina might've been a happy accident! Most Mystery Dungeon games (even those that are not Pokémon, it's crossover if you didn't know) are developed by Spike Chunsoft, so most of the time it's been their in-house composers making music, but some, like Iiyoshi-san, went freelance! Thanks for reading the comment if you did! =)
I remember reading somewhere else, that (at least in the future) the flute starts playing when you meet grovyle, introducing his leitmotiv,(also in special episode 5 you can hear this motif a lot of times) and it's curious that the time gear also has this flute, (im no musical guy but i think they might be related, maybe cause grovyle is labeled as a time gear thief or that he is collecting time gears to save the world)
Mystery dungeon music tends to lean more towards emotion than intensity. This IS the final boss theme, a culmination of the story and a battle against an opponent that has no choice but to fight you despite your good intentions. The fight and the circumstances around it carry a lot of baggage, as shown by the use of the final iteration of a melody that plays throughout many songs in the game, such as time gear as well as the dungeons preceding this encounter. tldr, Mystery dungeon songs good!!!!
The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games are criminally slept on tbh. Great music and fantastic stories that legit make me sob in their beauty. Absolutely worth playing if you get the chance. Explorers of the Sky for the DS is my personal fave but they’re all amazing.
Rescue Team DX not even breaking 2 million compared to the astronomically high numbers of the main serious made me so upset. I don't think we're ever getting a new one, or an Explorers remake.
My favorite aspect of Dialga's Fight to the Finish is how it trades a lot of the expected heavier-sounding notes and instruments you'd expect when fighting an elder time god that's going insane to focus purely on the emotional baggage you have from the game's story at this point. Once again, trying to avoid going too far in the details, but your main character is going into this fight fully at peace with the fact that it's gonna be their last, regardless of if they win or lose. That's heavy as heck for a kids game. It's a ferocious struggle where both sides are making their last stand like they have nothing to lose despite the fact that you're in control of a kid trying to fight a time god.
17:45 Since you asked, here's an explanation of the games: -Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team/Blue Rescue Team (2005): Red was for the GBA, Blue was for the DS. The games released at the same time and had minimal differences. -Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Explorers of Darkness (2007): Both for the DS and also had minimal differences, only a few exclusive Pokemon to each. -Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky (2009): Released on DS. It is basically an enhanced version of Time/Darkness. More features and content. -Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (2012): Released on 3DS. This is the least liked game from what I can tell. But I like it and it also has good music! -Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon (2015): Released on 3DS. This is personally my favorite of the games. Hope to hear some reactions to the music at some point! -Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX (2020): A remake of the original Red/Blue Rescue Team games for the Switch. There was also a set of games released exclusively in Japan for the Wii in 2009 that never got an international release. Haven't heard a lot of people talk about them or the music from the games.
The Wii games are... um, mediocre. The music is no exception, some pieces are taken from Explorers and the quality isn't particularly good (oh my god, its version of Defy the Legends makes _anybody_ cringe, so many notes are off, holy shit it's an actual trip and if you haven't heard it I suggest you do if only to get a chuckle out of this cursed mess), and the original compositions sound like cheap midi compositions. It's no good.
Since Mystery Dungeon Red and Blue were developed for two different systems, the soundtrack sounds slightly different as well. The tracks are the same, what changes is just the soundfont used: the Red one has the GBA soundfont, while the Blue one has the DS soundfont
The dungeon themes in these games have RANGE. They are groovy, funky, goofy, serious, spooky, all the fun stuff. Hopefully you get to hear some of that as well, but these main themes you've been listening to are iconic. Also, Chrono Trigger and Mystery dungeon were two of my very few DS games and I played a ton of both. Completely agree that they have a lot of similarities. Edit: and yes, the percussion in these games sounds amazing. Percussion is to PMD as Bass is to Chrono Trigger
Uh, this is one hell of a way to show this game's music to you, Jesse. Bluntly put, you were basically shown the introduction to the game's main plot's leitmotif, and the finale's final boss theme where that leitmotif pays off. That 8-note up-and-down progression, I think that was the Time leitmotif? Other people out there have made some very clean explanations of this game's soundtrack and it's _amazing_ use of leitmotifs- and no, I don't mean "main melody": The usage of certain melodies are used, several times, as a clean way of hinting and showing things in the cleanest way possible. The background dungeon themes are arguably hit-or-miss, but everything that plays during the cutscenes and the like are amazing. Hideki Sakamoto and Keisuke Ito are the suspected main composers of the soundtrack, by the way.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky is still, all these years later, my favorite video game of all time. The story, the music, the characters, just all of it, aaaah- The Time Gear theme still gives me chills. Time Gear is a cutscene theme more or less. But dungeon themes, like Sky Tower, tend to vary between chill and adventury in PMD. Also, since you were talking about consoles in the other one, rescue team was more of a GBA sound, this is pure DS.
I really struggled to choose between Xenoblade X and Explorers of Sky after playing EoS for the first time recently, and I think I've confidently settled on EoS being my favorite game. Maybe that'll change when I revisit XCX now that it's _finally_ coming to Switch, but I'm not sure. I love both of these games so much.
This game COOKED with its music. Because not only are they great compositions by themselves but pretty much every single track has two meanings, one to reflect the dungeon you’re going through and one to represent feelings, be it for important story revelations, discoveries, all sorts of themes that make sense after points in the story have met. Dialga’s Fight to the Finish has that flute that is prevalent through the whole OST which I always took as the main character and his/her partner’s theme. No matter the feeling, sadness, fear, excitement, happiness, the flute is usually there. But I also firmly believe the dungeon theme for Temporal Tower is... AMAZING too. It is the Time Gear theme but it is legitimately one of the most well structured themes ever. It has that time-clock marching tempo and percussion, sadness, tension, knowing that a LOT of things are gonna happen if the MC loses or wins and yet it sounds hopeful, heroic, melancholic....... That dungeon theme is basically Sky Tower (which you already heard) but like a 2.0 version of it. Did I mention this game has arguably THE best story Pokémon has ever had in general? It’s just... So good.
Time Gear is a repeated theme through so many songs in Sky, it's grand. In The Hands of Fate, Through the Sea of Time, just a leitmotif that hits me every time it shows up. Explorers of Sky, along with being my favorite game of all time as an experience, just really made me pay attention to the music. Certain themes are just ingrained into me due to the scenes they appeared in, in story. Man, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon just hits different, and I'll always love it.
I've replayed Explorers of Darkness (different version of the game but basically the same aside from minor differences) so many times and the music is just consistently amazing. Even now, I listen to the OST on shuffle every so often because it's so nice.
Something about Fight to the Finish that stands out is that the whistle gives it a sense of grim determination in contrast to the bombastic adventurous element the rest of the track holds Its a grand adventure, your greatest trial, but with a conviction to see things through
It is the final boss but I agree the vibe is less "you are fighting this menacing boss" as is common in bossfights and more "We are determined and this boss is not going stop us", winch also kind of fits with how pmd boss fights go when you are winning and you just keep hitting the boss untill you deplete their really big amounts of health.
If only 3 reactions were the exception this time! I’d have the Temporal Tower (the equivalent to Sky Tower) track in between these two to really drive home the motifs of Time Gear and the series’ main theme just before it kicks into high gear with Dialga’s fight theme. Hoping this game gets the remake treatment one day
A lot of the Mystery Dungeon games take a piece of music and rearrange it for numerous different purposes throughout the game. There are hints of Dialga’s Fight to the Finish in maybe a dozen songs in the game, it ties it all together nicely.
Pokémon OSTs in general have a track record of connecting an overarching theme. A song from the beginning of the game will have a song that will come back as the final battle or something big like that. That’s nothing new to Pokemon but it is something that has been more prominent in recent years. An example is the Tera raid theme that you hear early on in the game, and the AI profesor theme we heard on this channel before that takes place at the end game
Now that I'm watching this video after the Sky Tower/Defy the Legends video, I just remembered that the motif they both share are actually shared by at least another track or two in the rescue team game. Rescue team is like the gen one of pmd and explorers is basically the gen 2. Explorers Time Gear theme is the main motif for that game and it's played basically throughout the whole game leading into the finale. Though unlike the last two themes, Time Gear is not a dungeon theme and it's a theme of the objects called Time Gears that play and important part in the story. Meanwhile Dialga's Fight to the Finish is the final boss theme, at least for the main story since there's a bit more story in the form of an epilogue after the credits. It's a similar situation as the Rayquaza fight in the last game where Dialga is a legendary pokemon and isn't evil but you're fighting it because of a different set of circumstances.
The Time Gear theme motif is used at the very least about 7 times in other tracks and it's by far one of my favorites in any video game. From what I can tell Explorers of Sky is the most beloved pmd game followed by Rescue Team being just slightly behind it. Uh I'm not sure how to end these comments but I'm glad you were finally able to react to pmd osts as they were a big part of my childhood during the ds era. So thank you for reacting to these tracks and for all the other patrons who requested them!
While everyone gives context around the songs, I just want to comment how brutal the primal dialga fight can be if you go in blind and unprepared. The fight starts you a distance away from dialga so you have to walk up to him to attack. Problem is, doing that lets him take an action, and one of his actions is Roar of Time. Roar of time is map wide attack and deals insane damage...so depending on how hard you grinded it might be instant death. Basically you can enter this fight and die immediately before doing anything lol. A lot of people mitigate this with items to inflict him with status (usually sleep/paralysis) and/or hoarding countless revives as well as having some decent leveling done.
There are so many amazing songs from this game, but two of my favorites are Through the Sea of Time and Don't Ever Forget, both of which I'd love to see you react to.
First, I want to thank you for reacting to a PMD game, it brings me so much joy to see you enjoying them and commenting on them. I'm late to the video and comments but I thought I'd throw this in here regardless: PMD is a spinoff pokemon game series where you have the first entry titled as Pokemon Red/Blue Rescue team (GBA/DS), then every entry afterwards is titled PMD with the second entry Explorers of Time/Darkness with Sky being the mastered version (DS). Third entry is PMD Gates to Infinity (3DS), and the fourth is Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon (3DS). PMD DX is a remaster of Red/Blue on the Switch and is the only PMD released on Switch. The general premise is that you wake up as a pokemon in a virtually pokemon-only world and have to deal with the imbalances happening in the natural world due to one aspect or the other (the central plot of each game) but they are all extremely story heavy. Red/Blue/DX have the 'simplest' plotline and character development as the entry to the series, but has made itself shine with the music it provided. Sky is the most beloved by the fandom, I myself have replayed it beyond 5 times and lost count. It almost never gets old? The music here developed a lot more as well. Gates to Infinity was... a change. Many didn't approach this game due to the 3D models and also the pace of the plot, but it also raised the stakes for the plotline which *appeared* to be a repeating trend, but turns out it wasn't. Super is one that stands out in how it doesn't let you pace yourself, it sets the pace for you, and you have to keep up. This makes it fast-paced, and that was startling to most while the storyline/plot also introduced a lot of twists and devastations. It also has the most well developed OST overall. One thing to note: Though DX is a remaster of the first PMD entry, it updated its models and dungeon/playstyle to match Super PMD (or PSMD if you'd like) as that was the most recent entry prior, and the one with the most revamped/different playstyle, including a lot of new items and functions etc. This made DX into a fresh new experience even for players who've experienced the story several times, the update to playstyle, art, and music all but made it nearly brand new. In general, the PMD games are extremely heavy on plot, and are not afraid to go into really dark territory as well. Yes, it's a pokemon game, but the prospects most times are extremely grim, you have a lot of deaths, losses, betrayals, twists, and a lot of personal attachments thrown in there. It's also the only series that can make you fall in love with the most mundane pokemon simply because it has mastered characterization and development. There are a side stories to the main plotlines, and post-game content that is, honestly, insane levels. It's worth looking into them.
Dialga's Fight to the Finish is a boss theme (it's sort of the "final boss" theme but not really) but like with Rayquaza's theme, you're not really fighting an evil entity, you're more trying to save Dialga (who has been corrupted) than anything else. Time Gear meanwhile is a cutscene theme that plays whenever the Time Gears are relevant. They're plot items. And the theme contains Dialga's letimotif, present in both themes. That's why they sound so similar. There's also Temporal Tower and Temporal Spire which are the dungeon themes leading up to Dialga's Fight to the Finish which also contain that leitmotif and also sound very chill... even though the dungeons are really frustrating (so many Pokemon with Discharge which hits all your team and can be used from anywhere in a room and just does so much damage... or Salamences sniping you with Flamethrower out of nowhere. >.
Yeah, PMD definitely has a strong and distinct vibe, both compositionally and in terms of soundfont. It shares a lot of its instruments with some of the really beloved SNES classics (shoutouts to the “FF6 soundfont” remix of an FFXIV song that sounded like it could’ve been ripped straight out of PMD), but the way it weaves them together helps give everything a really lasting impression. And then you get into the range of sounds and genres that the dungeon themes play into, which is suuuper-broad. You compare this to something like Quicksand Pit and the difference is immediately apparent. God, I love RT and Explorers so much. They aren’t really connected in any meaningful ways (they’re separate stories through and through), but it’s hard not to group them together just due to the vibes.
Mystery Dungeon has such good bops, i have to admit I didn’t remember how beautiful Time Gear was! I’m surprised I never noticed the similarity to Chrono Trigger’s soundtrack before you pointed it out 😮 Dialga’s Fight to the Finish! is a Final Boss theme! Mystery Dungeon’s soundtrack makes a really heavy use of leutmotivs, so to me the music always feels like the culmination of a journey. There is this desperation to it, yet such hope. There is this reverence to it that I love.
Now that I think about it, this « calm and collected » vibe is still really present in the final boss theme thanks to the orchestration! No heavy metal power chords, crazy drums or latin chorus. Just a rythmic classic guitar and a whistle
The Mystery Dungeon games are still my favorite Pokemon games, they have never failed to make me tear up or even cry no matter how many times I've played through them
Actually, Dialga is the final boss of the main campaign(followed by a REALLY extensive post game campaign). In this game, he's...kinda gone mad/possibly a but on the berserk side. And unlike Rayquaza, not only does he have less weaknesses, but he also has a fairly powerful signature move that, in this series, can affect all in the boss room except the user and its team(not that Dialga has pr is on a team yet, that's a WAYS away and can't be accomplished until you reach a certain rank). So a good strategy is to get in close, put him to sleep with a sleep seed, wail on him until he wakes up, and repeat.
Yep, I used these requests to show the main macguffin theme/final dungeon/the build to that dungeon and the Final Boss of the game. Would have requested Temporal Tower/Spire - which is fantastic, and the dungeon itself - but Time Gear was there and deserves far more love than it gets. Time Gear walks so Tower/Spire can run so Dialga's FttF can sprint. Chrono Trigger makes more sense here - this game is literally Lavos 2.0. Dialga's the legendary pokemon associated with Time, and this is averting a bad future. Your character is from that bad future. Oh dear. Not much to say except Dialga went Primal before it was cool, and Mystery Dungeon is excellent. Worth noting that Mystery Dungeon was developed by Spike Chunsoft, not Game Freak/the main Pokemon Company, which is probably why there's such a different vibe to it vs. the main series - it's allowed to go a lot more full fantasy whereas the main games are, as you said in the first video, a lot more 'real world', "here's literally actually the Kanto region of Japan" "here's Poke-America/France/Britain/Hawaii", whereas Mystery Dungeon is allowed to be different worlds which have WILDLY divergent stuff going on. Hell, PMD 3 and 4 fully strip away being about you vs legendaries and instead go full on you vs concepts/etc (hence Kirby comment in previous video.) Still, glad you enjoyed.
I put a comment about this game on the previous video, copying and pasting here cause its still relevant Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky has some of my favorite game music. They have a similar sound font to Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. Black/White and Black2/White2 were also on the DS (youve heard a couple songs from these games) but came out a few years later and therefore had some extra time to refine the capabilities of the DS's sound chip. My favorite tracks from Explorers of Time/ Darkness/Sky include: -Treasure Town -Steam Cave and Upper Steam Cave -Amp Plains and Far Amp Plains -Monster House -Crystal Cave and Crystal Crossing -Brine Cave and Lower Brine Cave -Temporal Tower -Dialga's Fight to the Finish (heard here!)
I grew up on Gen 4, so when PMD Explorers came out, I was eager to get it. And by the time the main campaign was over, I had cried a fountain of tears. For a Pokémon game, man it was deep and somewhat dark. But I always come back to the music. All of these tracks are great, but some are bangers. Temporal Tower is my all-time favorite. Don’t Ever Forget, that track will always induce tears. Many have remastered these tracks over the years, the ones by TGH are my favorites for the quality and instruments added with deep respect to the melodies. And to all who remember Temporal Tower, let me trigger you all (sorry): Porygon used Discharge
One of my favorite tracks of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is Fire Island Volcano from Super Mystery Dungeon. It’ll probably never make it into the channel since it’s a more obscure track among the community.
*Aggressive Didgeridoo Noises* is not the first thing one would expect to be amazing, and yet that song is an absurd banger that comes out of nowhere to prelude one of the most hype parts of the game. Yeah, yeah, that one's a banger.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon explorers does the thing with time gear a lot. It is pretty much the games main theme and bits of the song occur all over the soundtrack, culminating in Fight to the Finish. It's a very cool thing the game does and it is very intentional
Pokemon mystery dungeon explorers of sky is a game worth playing on repeat. It is a masterpiece story wise and ost wise. This is a game you should play. If you get back into playing pokemon, play this game. I'll say this, this is gen 4 sinnoh, and Dialga is a legendary pokemon that is classified as the deity of time. That should explain a few things.
Calm and relaxed isn’t quite right somber and emotional is more like it, mystery dungeon is a very dark and sad game in fact you’d probably be considered heartless if you don’t cry playing the explorers games that’s how heart wrenching it gets and it has some of the best writing in Pokemon period
I love this game so much! For my 20 year anniversary of being a Pokémon fan I actually got the time gear tattooed on my left forearm (like seen in the game, with the green light/symbol around it). I wanted something related to the fact, that this franchise accompanied me for so long. But at the same time I wanted something, that would be recognised only by people that knew, something that wasn't as "in your face" like a Pokéball or so.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX is a combined remaster of the original 2 games released. The games are dungeon crawlers with you as protagonist turned into a Pokemon.
Glad to see that you enjoyed your first look at Mystery Dungeon! As you can probably see, it's a series that carries a lot of memories for a lot of people. Now that you've seen some of the PMD classics, I'm really hoping we eventually get some from Super Mystery Dungeon too; just like these games, Super's endgame music is excellent. The two Dark Matter Battle Themes(though those probably need the Partner's Theme for context) and the two Tree of Life themes are some of my favorite songs in the whole series, even if they don't tend to get as much attention as the soundtrack for Explorers or Rescue Team.
Time Gear sounds like Dialga's Fight to the Finish because Dialga is the god of time- every song that relates to the concept is referenced in It's theme
Time Gear is basically the motif of the entire soundtrack, you can hear the melody during a part of Dialga's Fight to the Finish (which is the final boss btw, Dialga is the boss) I'd love for you to hear more of this amazing soundtrack, and a lot of it does use variations of that melody
yes, there is a similar theme through out this song and a few others related to the story arc. imo, its kinda amazing what shifting timing does to fit each of the moments. like the repeating expression in the songs is a character going through the journey and encountering obstacles. this theme has been stuck in my head for years and its not one i'd want to forget.
You're so close and so far with Dialga's Fight to the Finish. To avoid dipping into spoilers much, while you do not play as Dialga (this is indeed his boss theme), the battle is very important for yourself (as in, the main character). I've always felt like the song conveys more your own inner struggle during the fight than the big bad guy you're battling, and your analysis really made it sound that way. Amazing game, very reccomended.
I grew up with the first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, and their soundtracks are dear to my heart. My favorite game OST of all time though is the 4th one, Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon. It is made by some of the same composers as this game if i remember right, and it has such a massive variety of instruments and drastic shifts in style, both across the ost and within individual tracks. 😊
Ah the very next song i expected There are so SO many covers and remixes of Dialgia's fight to the finish, from rock, lo'l-fi, orchestra thst fantastic melody works so good
the reason fight to the finish doesnt feel like the final boss theme is because in the grand scheme of things, its not the final boss, no, trying to hold back my tears from what happens after is truely the final boss of the game. dont ever forget is a fantastic piece of music
Dialga's Fight to the Finish is my all-time favorite piece of video game music. I've played a lot of games, but nothing since the release of Dialga's Fight to the Finish has ever compared in my mind. I even played Red Rescue Team (the alternate version of Blue Rescue Team) beforehand and am a massive fan of Generation 3, which the final boss is from. Dialga's Fight to the Finish has always captured, to me, the true essence of actually fighting to the last breath. The final boss is Dialga, the God of Time, who has reverted to a primal state, gone mad, and is threatening to put time on the planet to a complete halt, killing the world and most life on it. The player and their partner have to defeat the God of Time in order to save the planet. If you don't cheese the battle, it's an extremely tough fight. And it's not just his fight to the finish either - it's yours too. If you and your partner fail, the world is doomed. You have no option BUT to fight to the finish. As for why they seem like extensions of the same song, Time Gear is used as a Leitmotif in a LOT of the Explorers of Sky OST. From the literal start to the finish. As for the games, they're similar stories set in different generations. Blue/Red Rescue Team (Gen 3) comes first, followed by Time/Darkness/Sky (Gen 4), Gates to Infinity (Gen 5), Super Mystery Dungeon (Gen 6), and then lastly in 2020 we got the remake of Red and Blue Rescue Team, named Rescue Team DX. Also, fun fact about the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. They were developed by the same company that developed Dragon Quest and the Danganronpa franchise; Chunsoft (now Spike Chunsoft)!
Explorers of sky is easily my favorite pokemon game and the music is always amazing, the jukebox ingame too was so cool cause you could listen to any song in the game on loop etc but the music tends to fit the themes so well. Theres a reason the official copies of this game are hundreds of dollars (if its normal price its a fake cart) dialga also one shot my team so many times as a kid, not as hard as mystery dungeon red/blue but the later fights in sky were brutal, sometimes your team would get one shot before the boss when you are 30 minutes into a floor
This song goes so hard for the player. This game has a very heroic but "victory at great cost" vibe every game sacrifice and loss driving a last brutal push before oblivion. Also PMD games invoke the lord of the rings frodo and sam "at the start thinking everything will be fine, trial, loss, sacrifice and towards the end a sense that this is a one way journey to save the world." Also all games end their main story with a emotional gut punch
I know i'm a nobody here (and not many people will be requesting this either), but i figured i'd just throw a suggestion of music to hear: Spiral Knights. Some especially good tracks are "Welcome to Our Haven", "Shocking Synthesizers", "Around the Clock Workshop" (which i swear sounds like olde mafia tunes for some goons to walk with swagger to), "Two Slimes Are Better Than One" (imagine bouncy block slimes), "Sombre Reflection", and "Buzzkill" (which exists in only ONE part of the game with a very morbid showdown moment. There's Death Bells in the music too..). They were made by "Harry Mack". Maybe these could be interesting. (I wonder when anyone might make a vid listening to Spiral Knights' music.)
I don't know if you noticed this, but both this video and the last lacked the names of the requesters in the description. Just thought I'd mention it in case.
I hope someone has requested some of the music from Super Mystery Dungeon, that game's soundtrack is weirdly underrated and not talked about nearly as much. I think it's where the series peaked musically, with fantastic tracks like Fire Island Volcano and the final boss theme.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers is a game near and dear to my heart. As a kid I wasn't good enough to beat it, pretty sure I got stuck on the final dungeon (and thus share the fear of certain enemies in it that a lot of the fanbase has). People have already said it, but this game is absolutely crazy with the leitmotifs, they are everywhere and there is not just one of them either. The game does a phenomenal job of getting you to care about the characters without even noticing and when the chips are down the music absolutely does not miss. The post game also goes places I am still shocked Nintendo let them get away with. Definitely on my shortlist of best games of all time. Time and Darkness are the original release, while Sky is the definitive version with more content and most of the prior games' version exclusives. It also added more challenge dungeons, including the first official appearance of Arceus that you don't need to hack to see. It also added several side stories to flesh out the world, which was already very well done by the original version. Generation 4 was the peak for Pokemon spinoff games. Gen 3 is where they got their start, but Gen 4 was their peak. Would definitely recommend playing one of the Explorers games at some point in your life, still the best story Pokemon has told IMO. Also if you do don't skip the post game, since it has actual significant plot in it.
Dialga’s fight to the finish is indeed the final boss theme. Dialga’s driven mad and is losing control so you have to fight him and restore time to bring him back to his senses. (Sorry if that’s too much of a spoiler)
Again much like the previous video. Love to see you review PMD music. This game is one heck of a banger for story, music, gameplay and fun and unique makes to the pokemon series. Hope to see some more reactions in the future.
The PMD games tend to be *the* most story heavy pokemon games and yeah they do use recurring leitmotifs. Also Dialga's Fight to the Finish is actually a boss fight despite it's chill (specifically Dialga is the 'Disc 1 final boss' who's not evil but well, its definitely one heck of a built up boss fight all the same. You're correct in that the music is probably more about the heroic protag's feels though) and gen-wise I believe the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team games were gen 3, and the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of games were gen 4. (As for other PMD games, PMD Gates to Infinity was gen 5, and Super Pokemon Mystery Dungeon was gen 6) Would recommend absolutely ALL of their OSTs, and if you ever have the chance, to play them as they've also got some really great stories especially Explorers of Sky and Super -Gates To Infinity takes a while to build up plotwise but there's a few moments in it that kinda left me scarred so... It's good too I guess~ X'D-
Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky has so many good uses of leitmotifs. Hell, I would suggest playing it as a series just to see all the reactions to the dungeon themes.
So Time Gears and Dialga’s fight to the finish use the same Leitmotifs an very common thing PMD Sky uses is leitmotifs, Dialga in Pokémon is the god of time, and this battle takes place when an partially corrupted Dialga against the Players who are trying to restore both his sanity and the horrible future that awaits if his sanity fails him, to do that they need the time gears
@@BJGvideos Why hire quality development studios to make beloved spin-offs when you can have gacha game companies rake in that much more cash for you? Really sad world we live in 😑
You're limiting yourself SO much if you only play Pokémon. Please broaden your horizon, be it by just listening to Jesse's other videos or playing a bunch of Steam or Switch eshop demos. And try out other creature-collecting games as well, like Cassette Beasts! There's so many cool ideas in that game, and it's executed very well! =)
I agree 100% with Kniffel. Video games are amazing and any enjoyer of the medium would definitely recommend you to try something new as often as possible. It may be annoying/scary to venture outside your comfort zone, but I guarantee you won't regret it! 👍
One of the best games for the ds. If you ever got time to play it I highly recommend. The story is so so good especially if you like emotional type games
love these reactions that you do i know people like to recommend the bigger, well known songs from more well known entrees in game franchises, so i thought it'd be neat to recommend the Boss Battle theme from Learn with Pokemon: Typing Adventure - trust me, it'd be worth your time if you do c:
Leitmotif my friend! The pokemon mystery dungeon OSTs are very heavily built upon on leitmotifs. The time gear theme operates as that for the entire game and hints of it can be heard in almost every major story-driven piece of music. It's really beautifully done!
If you haven't played this game (PMD explorers of sky) do yourself a favour and play it. Truly a masterpiece of a game that deserves to be enjoyed by many more people!
MY FAVORITE GAME OF ALL TIME AAAAAH I don't have anything to say that I didn't already say in the Sky Tower video, except that I hope you listen to Temporal Tower and also reiterate how damn much i love this game Fuck it's so perfect
Actually, I do have more to say. Mainline Pokemon games only really have, like. 2.5 games known for having a deep story. Black and White, Sun and Moon, and sort of kind of also Scarlet and Violet. Mystery Dungeon is THE storytelling peak of the franchise, with more complicated, deep, and heartfelt plots, having characters befriend each other, get betrayed by each other, and go through world threatening stakes together. It's stories even manage to make some adults cry. This emphasis on story is reflected in it's STELLAR OST as I'm sure you're aware of at this point. Dialga's Fight to the Finish is the final boss theme and the only context I will give is that the main characters have seen firsthand the despair-inducing ramifications of what happens if they lose this battle, with the fate of the world resting in their hands.
I bought a slightly overpriced brand new sealed copy of Explorers of Sky at the end of 2014 just because of Dialga's Fight to the Finish. Granted Dialga is my favourite pokemon to this day, but still.
You ever see that gif of the guy who takes a bite out of his food and instantly gets transported back to when he was a kid? The first notes of "Time Gear" had that effect on me. For just a second, I was a kid again, hiding under my blanket so mom didn't catch me playing the DS after my bedtime and just absolutely enthralled by the little adventure of my pokemon character and his companion. As for that boss theme, I remember the frustration at how hard that fight was, the sheer joy after finally succeeding... and the genuine tears that fell following the conclusion of that boss battle. Core memories right there. Thank you so much for the nostalgia!
Is it the dude from ratatouille
@buccaneerguy8197 I think so, but it's been years since I've watched it so I'm not sure.
It is in fact the dude from Ratatouille
@@buccaneerguy8197yes, critic anton ego :)
Man, I grew up on these games. Explorers of Sky had a jukebox feature that let you play the game music even with your DS closed, and I remember listening to it for ages. Glad that you're taking a look into this spinoff series that means so much to so many.
I've been using Jukebox for over a decade for background music while working or studying
@@SpartanChief17CAww, same, I do that too! ^^ A game having a jukebox is one of my favourite things in games ever! X3
PMD.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.
The very first video game to make me cry.
This is the best Pokémon spinoff ever made.
same feels here man
the first two notes of Don't Ever Forget and A Wish for Peace always bring tears to my eyes even after a decade and a half.
God PMD is so underrated.
"Your journeys are reaching their end... The world rests on your shoulders now, [Player], [Partner]..."
Arata Iiyoshi remains one of the greatest composers of our time with their work on the PMD soundtrack. Even in their normal albums (Adventurer released just about a year ago) you can hear the same style, it all sounds very PMD-esque. That is when you know they're a good composer, when they have a style that not only sounds fantastic, but one that you can pinpoint from anywhere. The temporal themes (anything related to time) are all connected via the Gear's motif. It's definitely most heard within the final dungeon, Temporal Tower which to me has three phases, and three feelings.
Temporal tower is fast paced, it's a race against the clock to climb up.
Temporal Spire has slowed down. You're running out of time, and it's almost up.
Dialga's Fight to the Finish (Also commonly referred to as Primal Dialga) signifies that you're out of time. This *will* be your last fight no matter the outcome.
That second theme absolutely plays for the player, but it plays as you fight against Dialga. It's a heroic theme that portrays the fight as the last thing you need to overcome in order to fix everything.
(as someone who doesn't understand music very well) I feel like one of the reasons why Pokemon Mystery Dungeon final boss songs don't sound like boss music to you is because they're more songs about the journey than about the fight itself. PMD compared to regular pokemon games is very story driven and always very emotional at the back end of the game.
For Dialga’s Fight to the Finish especially it runs as an almost hopeful song, because you’re not trying to _kill_ the boss, you’re trying to _save_ the boss. Dialga was never evil, just driven to madness which was corrected when time was restored.
"Time Gear" is not just any motif, it introduces the leitmotif of many of the game's music! =D
There's a video breaking down the game's music by the channel "8 bit Music Theory", so once you got the whole OST down, definitely give it a watch! =D
(Though that'll sure still take a ton of time! =D)
"Time Gear" seems to have been composed by Arata Iiyoshi and "Dialga's Fight to the Finish" was Iiyoshi-san and Keisuke Ito (according to "Goldenrod Radio" which I referenced in my comment in the other video). Though maybe Arata Iiyoshi is listed for Dialga's theme _because_ it uses some of Time Gear.
If someone already requested "Temporal Tower", that would be the main dungeon before Dialga's battle.
But it has a "sub-dungeon" representing its peak called "Temporal Spire", so those two requests would go together, if they are in the pipeline! =D
Regarding the "flute instrument" you referenced in Dialga's theme, that's actually on Ocarina.
Though, not the same one as in "Zelda: Ocarina of Time". That would be kinda cool though, honestly! =D
Dialga is the Legendary Pokémon representing time itself, so that is one of the reasons, there are so many time-related themes in the game, but the ocarina might've been a happy accident!
Most Mystery Dungeon games (even those that are not Pokémon, it's crossover if you didn't know) are developed by Spike Chunsoft, so most of the time it's been their in-house composers making music, but some, like Iiyoshi-san, went freelance!
Thanks for reading the comment if you did! =)
Oh my gosh, wait, that's so perfect, Dialga and the ocarina! XD
I might not be Jesse, but thanks for writing it, from me as well! ^^
I remember reading somewhere else, that (at least in the future) the flute starts playing when you meet grovyle, introducing his leitmotiv,(also in special episode 5 you can hear this motif a lot of times) and it's curious that the time gear also has this flute, (im no musical guy but i think they might be related, maybe cause grovyle is labeled as a time gear thief or that he is collecting time gears to save the world)
Mystery dungeon music tends to lean more towards emotion than intensity. This IS the final boss theme, a culmination of the story and a battle against an opponent that has no choice but to fight you despite your good intentions. The fight and the circumstances around it carry a lot of baggage, as shown by the use of the final iteration of a melody that plays throughout many songs in the game, such as time gear as well as the dungeons preceding this encounter. tldr, Mystery dungeon songs good!!!!
The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games are criminally slept on tbh. Great music and fantastic stories that legit make me sob in their beauty. Absolutely worth playing if you get the chance. Explorers of the Sky for the DS is my personal fave but they’re all amazing.
Rescue Team DX not even breaking 2 million compared to the astronomically high numbers of the main serious made me so upset. I don't think we're ever getting a new one, or an Explorers remake.
My favorite aspect of Dialga's Fight to the Finish is how it trades a lot of the expected heavier-sounding notes and instruments you'd expect when fighting an elder time god that's going insane to focus purely on the emotional baggage you have from the game's story at this point.
Once again, trying to avoid going too far in the details, but your main character is going into this fight fully at peace with the fact that it's gonna be their last, regardless of if they win or lose. That's heavy as heck for a kids game. It's a ferocious struggle where both sides are making their last stand like they have nothing to lose despite the fact that you're in control of a kid trying to fight a time god.
17:45 Since you asked, here's an explanation of the games:
-Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team/Blue Rescue Team (2005): Red was for the GBA, Blue was for the DS. The games released at the same time and had minimal differences.
-Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Explorers of Darkness (2007): Both for the DS and also had minimal differences, only a few exclusive Pokemon to each.
-Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky (2009): Released on DS. It is basically an enhanced version of Time/Darkness. More features and content.
-Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (2012): Released on 3DS. This is the least liked game from what I can tell. But I like it and it also has good music!
-Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon (2015): Released on 3DS. This is personally my favorite of the games. Hope to hear some reactions to the music at some point!
-Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX (2020): A remake of the original Red/Blue Rescue Team games for the Switch.
There was also a set of games released exclusively in Japan for the Wii in 2009 that never got an international release. Haven't heard a lot of people talk about them or the music from the games.
Didn't read it but here's a like for the comprehensiveness lol
The Wii games are... um, mediocre. The music is no exception, some pieces are taken from Explorers and the quality isn't particularly good (oh my god, its version of Defy the Legends makes _anybody_ cringe, so many notes are off, holy shit it's an actual trip and if you haven't heard it I suggest you do if only to get a chuckle out of this cursed mess), and the original compositions sound like cheap midi compositions. It's no good.
Since Mystery Dungeon Red and Blue were developed for two different systems, the soundtrack sounds slightly different as well.
The tracks are the same, what changes is just the soundfont used: the Red one has the GBA soundfont, while the Blue one has the DS soundfont
People who like Super boggle my mind. They removed every good thign in the series and asked 40 bucks for it and you guys like it
@@Blagno4 Nah, it's good, that much is worth defending. Explorers is just leagues better, which I don't see how that's mutually exclusive.
The dungeon themes in these games have RANGE. They are groovy, funky, goofy, serious, spooky, all the fun stuff. Hopefully you get to hear some of that as well, but these main themes you've been listening to are iconic.
Also, Chrono Trigger and Mystery dungeon were two of my very few DS games and I played a ton of both. Completely agree that they have a lot of similarities.
Edit: and yes, the percussion in these games sounds amazing. Percussion is to PMD as Bass is to Chrono Trigger
Uh, this is one hell of a way to show this game's music to you, Jesse. Bluntly put, you were basically shown the introduction to the game's main plot's leitmotif, and the finale's final boss theme where that leitmotif pays off. That 8-note up-and-down progression, I think that was the Time leitmotif? Other people out there have made some very clean explanations of this game's soundtrack and it's _amazing_ use of leitmotifs- and no, I don't mean "main melody": The usage of certain melodies are used, several times, as a clean way of hinting and showing things in the cleanest way possible. The background dungeon themes are arguably hit-or-miss, but everything that plays during the cutscenes and the like are amazing.
Hideki Sakamoto and Keisuke Ito are the suspected main composers of the soundtrack, by the way.
Suspected? It isn't known?
Wow I never realized how much this Time Gear motif was used in the game. You hear it not only in the Dialga fight but also in Temporal Tower.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky is still, all these years later, my favorite video game of all time. The story, the music, the characters, just all of it, aaaah- The Time Gear theme still gives me chills. Time Gear is a cutscene theme more or less. But dungeon themes, like Sky Tower, tend to vary between chill and adventury in PMD.
Also, since you were talking about consoles in the other one, rescue team was more of a GBA sound, this is pure DS.
I really struggled to choose between Xenoblade X and Explorers of Sky after playing EoS for the first time recently, and I think I've confidently settled on EoS being my favorite game. Maybe that'll change when I revisit XCX now that it's _finally_ coming to Switch, but I'm not sure. I love both of these games so much.
After all of these years i can still feel the same emotions when i hear Dialgia's theme as i had back then such a great game.
This game COOKED with its music. Because not only are they great compositions by themselves but pretty much every single track has two meanings, one to reflect the dungeon you’re going through and one to represent feelings, be it for important story revelations, discoveries, all sorts of themes that make sense after points in the story have met.
Dialga’s Fight to the Finish has that flute that is prevalent through the whole OST which I always took as the main character and his/her partner’s theme. No matter the feeling, sadness, fear, excitement, happiness, the flute is usually there.
But I also firmly believe the dungeon theme for Temporal Tower is... AMAZING too. It is the Time Gear theme but it is legitimately one of the most well structured themes ever. It has that time-clock marching tempo and percussion, sadness, tension, knowing that a LOT of things are gonna happen if the MC loses or wins and yet it sounds hopeful, heroic, melancholic....... That dungeon theme is basically Sky Tower (which you already heard) but like a 2.0 version of it.
Did I mention this game has arguably THE best story Pokémon has ever had in general? It’s just... So good.
Time Gear is a repeated theme through so many songs in Sky, it's grand. In The Hands of Fate, Through the Sea of Time, just a leitmotif that hits me every time it shows up. Explorers of Sky, along with being my favorite game of all time as an experience, just really made me pay attention to the music. Certain themes are just ingrained into me due to the scenes they appeared in, in story.
Man, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon just hits different, and I'll always love it.
PMD is the best thing Pokemon has ever made
explorers of sky is one of the best games of all time
@@majidoujaa5592Aww, I agree, 100%
I've replayed Explorers of Darkness (different version of the game but basically the same aside from minor differences) so many times and the music is just consistently amazing. Even now, I listen to the OST on shuffle every so often because it's so nice.
Something about Fight to the Finish that stands out is that the whistle gives it a sense of grim determination in contrast to the bombastic adventurous element the rest of the track holds
Its a grand adventure, your greatest trial, but with a conviction to see things through
It is the final boss but I agree the vibe is less "you are fighting this menacing boss" as is common in bossfights and more "We are determined and this boss is not going stop us", winch also kind of fits with how pmd boss fights go when you are winning and you just keep hitting the boss untill you deplete their really big amounts of health.
If only 3 reactions were the exception this time! I’d have the Temporal Tower (the equivalent to Sky Tower) track in between these two to really drive home the motifs of Time Gear and the series’ main theme just before it kicks into high gear with Dialga’s fight theme. Hoping this game gets the remake treatment one day
A lot of the Mystery Dungeon games take a piece of music and rearrange it for numerous different purposes throughout the game. There are hints of Dialga’s Fight to the Finish in maybe a dozen songs in the game, it ties it all together nicely.
Pokémon OSTs in general have a track record of connecting an overarching theme. A song from the beginning of the game will have a song that will come back as the final battle or something big like that. That’s nothing new to Pokemon but it is something that has been more prominent in recent years. An example is the Tera raid theme that you hear early on in the game, and the AI profesor theme we heard on this channel before that takes place at the end game
Considering the AI theme pulls in so many motifs from the rest of the game, I wish he had listened to those for more context
Now that I'm watching this video after the Sky Tower/Defy the Legends video, I just remembered that the motif they both share are actually shared by at least another track or two in the rescue team game. Rescue team is like the gen one of pmd and explorers is basically the gen 2. Explorers Time Gear theme is the main motif for that game and it's played basically throughout the whole game leading into the finale. Though unlike the last two themes, Time Gear is not a dungeon theme and it's a theme of the objects called Time Gears that play and important part in the story. Meanwhile Dialga's Fight to the Finish is the final boss theme, at least for the main story since there's a bit more story in the form of an epilogue after the credits. It's a similar situation as the Rayquaza fight in the last game where Dialga is a legendary pokemon and isn't evil but you're fighting it because of a different set of circumstances.
The Time Gear theme motif is used at the very least about 7 times in other tracks and it's by far one of my favorites in any video game. From what I can tell Explorers of Sky is the most beloved pmd game followed by Rescue Team being just slightly behind it. Uh I'm not sure how to end these comments but I'm glad you were finally able to react to pmd osts as they were a big part of my childhood during the ds era. So thank you for reacting to these tracks and for all the other patrons who requested them!
While everyone gives context around the songs, I just want to comment how brutal the primal dialga fight can be if you go in blind and unprepared. The fight starts you a distance away from dialga so you have to walk up to him to attack. Problem is, doing that lets him take an action, and one of his actions is Roar of Time. Roar of time is map wide attack and deals insane damage...so depending on how hard you grinded it might be instant death. Basically you can enter this fight and die immediately before doing anything lol. A lot of people mitigate this with items to inflict him with status (usually sleep/paralysis) and/or hoarding countless revives as well as having some decent leveling done.
There are so many amazing songs from this game, but two of my favorites are Through the Sea of Time and Don't Ever Forget, both of which I'd love to see you react to.
First, I want to thank you for reacting to a PMD game, it brings me so much joy to see you enjoying them and commenting on them. I'm late to the video and comments but I thought I'd throw this in here regardless:
PMD is a spinoff pokemon game series where you have the first entry titled as Pokemon Red/Blue Rescue team (GBA/DS), then every entry afterwards is titled PMD with the second entry Explorers of Time/Darkness with Sky being the mastered version (DS). Third entry is PMD Gates to Infinity (3DS), and the fourth is Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon (3DS). PMD DX is a remaster of Red/Blue on the Switch and is the only PMD released on Switch.
The general premise is that you wake up as a pokemon in a virtually pokemon-only world and have to deal with the imbalances happening in the natural world due to one aspect or the other (the central plot of each game) but they are all extremely story heavy. Red/Blue/DX have the 'simplest' plotline and character development as the entry to the series, but has made itself shine with the music it provided. Sky is the most beloved by the fandom, I myself have replayed it beyond 5 times and lost count. It almost never gets old? The music here developed a lot more as well. Gates to Infinity was... a change. Many didn't approach this game due to the 3D models and also the pace of the plot, but it also raised the stakes for the plotline which *appeared* to be a repeating trend, but turns out it wasn't. Super is one that stands out in how it doesn't let you pace yourself, it sets the pace for you, and you have to keep up. This makes it fast-paced, and that was startling to most while the storyline/plot also introduced a lot of twists and devastations. It also has the most well developed OST overall.
One thing to note: Though DX is a remaster of the first PMD entry, it updated its models and dungeon/playstyle to match Super PMD (or PSMD if you'd like) as that was the most recent entry prior, and the one with the most revamped/different playstyle, including a lot of new items and functions etc. This made DX into a fresh new experience even for players who've experienced the story several times, the update to playstyle, art, and music all but made it nearly brand new.
In general, the PMD games are extremely heavy on plot, and are not afraid to go into really dark territory as well. Yes, it's a pokemon game, but the prospects most times are extremely grim, you have a lot of deaths, losses, betrayals, twists, and a lot of personal attachments thrown in there. It's also the only series that can make you fall in love with the most mundane pokemon simply because it has mastered characterization and development. There are a side stories to the main plotlines, and post-game content that is, honestly, insane levels. It's worth looking into them.
Dialga's Fight to the Finish is a boss theme (it's sort of the "final boss" theme but not really) but like with Rayquaza's theme, you're not really fighting an evil entity, you're more trying to save Dialga (who has been corrupted) than anything else.
Time Gear meanwhile is a cutscene theme that plays whenever the Time Gears are relevant. They're plot items. And the theme contains Dialga's letimotif, present in both themes. That's why they sound so similar. There's also Temporal Tower and Temporal Spire which are the dungeon themes leading up to Dialga's Fight to the Finish which also contain that leitmotif and also sound very chill... even though the dungeons are really frustrating (so many Pokemon with Discharge which hits all your team and can be used from anywhere in a room and just does so much damage... or Salamences sniping you with Flamethrower out of nowhere. >.
Yeah, PMD definitely has a strong and distinct vibe, both compositionally and in terms of soundfont. It shares a lot of its instruments with some of the really beloved SNES classics (shoutouts to the “FF6 soundfont” remix of an FFXIV song that sounded like it could’ve been ripped straight out of PMD), but the way it weaves them together helps give everything a really lasting impression. And then you get into the range of sounds and genres that the dungeon themes play into, which is suuuper-broad. You compare this to something like Quicksand Pit and the difference is immediately apparent.
God, I love RT and Explorers so much. They aren’t really connected in any meaningful ways (they’re separate stories through and through), but it’s hard not to group them together just due to the vibes.
Mystery Dungeon has such good bops, i have to admit I didn’t remember how beautiful Time Gear was! I’m surprised I never noticed the similarity to Chrono Trigger’s soundtrack before you pointed it out 😮
Dialga’s Fight to the Finish! is a Final Boss theme! Mystery Dungeon’s soundtrack makes a really heavy use of leutmotivs, so to me the music always feels like the culmination of a journey. There is this desperation to it, yet such hope. There is this reverence to it that I love.
Now that I think about it, this « calm and collected » vibe is still really present in the final boss theme thanks to the orchestration! No heavy metal power chords, crazy drums or latin chorus. Just a rythmic classic guitar and a whistle
The Mystery Dungeon games are still my favorite Pokemon games, they have never failed to make me tear up or even cry no matter how many times I've played through them
I'm super nostalgic for these games, and the music is bringing that out at full strength
Actually, Dialga is the final boss of the main campaign(followed by a REALLY extensive post game campaign). In this game, he's...kinda gone mad/possibly a but on the berserk side. And unlike Rayquaza, not only does he have less weaknesses, but he also has a fairly powerful signature move that, in this series, can affect all in the boss room except the user and its team(not that Dialga has pr is on a team yet, that's a WAYS away and can't be accomplished until you reach a certain rank). So a good strategy is to get in close, put him to sleep with a sleep seed, wail on him until he wakes up, and repeat.
The music seems so relaxed..., until THAT theme breaks your heart into a million pieces and then you have the Dialga theme.
Yep, I used these requests to show the main macguffin theme/final dungeon/the build to that dungeon and the Final Boss of the game. Would have requested Temporal Tower/Spire - which is fantastic, and the dungeon itself - but Time Gear was there and deserves far more love than it gets. Time Gear walks so Tower/Spire can run so Dialga's FttF can sprint.
Chrono Trigger makes more sense here - this game is literally Lavos 2.0. Dialga's the legendary pokemon associated with Time, and this is averting a bad future. Your character is from that bad future. Oh dear.
Not much to say except Dialga went Primal before it was cool, and Mystery Dungeon is excellent. Worth noting that Mystery Dungeon was developed by Spike Chunsoft, not Game Freak/the main Pokemon Company, which is probably why there's such a different vibe to it vs. the main series - it's allowed to go a lot more full fantasy whereas the main games are, as you said in the first video, a lot more 'real world', "here's literally actually the Kanto region of Japan" "here's Poke-America/France/Britain/Hawaii", whereas Mystery Dungeon is allowed to be different worlds which have WILDLY divergent stuff going on. Hell, PMD 3 and 4 fully strip away being about you vs legendaries and instead go full on you vs concepts/etc (hence Kirby comment in previous video.)
Still, glad you enjoyed.
I put a comment about this game on the previous video, copying and pasting here cause its still relevant
Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky has some of my favorite game music. They have a similar sound font to Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. Black/White and Black2/White2 were also on the DS (youve heard a couple songs from these games) but came out a few years later and therefore had some extra time to refine the capabilities of the DS's sound chip.
My favorite tracks from Explorers of Time/ Darkness/Sky include:
-Treasure Town
-Steam Cave and Upper Steam Cave
-Amp Plains and Far Amp Plains
-Monster House
-Crystal Cave and Crystal Crossing
-Brine Cave and Lower Brine Cave
-Temporal Tower
-Dialga's Fight to the Finish (heard here!)
I grew up on Gen 4, so when PMD Explorers came out, I was eager to get it. And by the time the main campaign was over, I had cried a fountain of tears. For a Pokémon game, man it was deep and somewhat dark.
But I always come back to the music. All of these tracks are great, but some are bangers. Temporal Tower is my all-time favorite. Don’t Ever Forget, that track will always induce tears.
Many have remastered these tracks over the years, the ones by TGH are my favorites for the quality and instruments added with deep respect to the melodies.
And to all who remember Temporal Tower, let me trigger you all (sorry):
Porygon used Discharge
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is one of the most emotional video games, especially Pokemon.
One of my favorite tracks of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is Fire Island Volcano from Super Mystery Dungeon. It’ll probably never make it into the channel since it’s a more obscure track among the community.
*Aggressive Didgeridoo Noises* is not the first thing one would expect to be amazing, and yet that song is an absurd banger that comes out of nowhere to prelude one of the most hype parts of the game.
Yeah, yeah, that one's a banger.
Fire Island Volcano is actually on his request list. It may take a while, but he should get to it eventually. I also love that song!
@@Zaltiz that’s great to hear! :D
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon explorers does the thing with time gear a lot. It is pretty much the games main theme and bits of the song occur all over the soundtrack, culminating in Fight to the Finish. It's a very cool thing the game does and it is very intentional
time gear never ceases to make me tear up, its gotta be my favorite on the soundtrack
Timegear is basically this games main theme its motive is remixed and incorporated in many many songs.
Pokemon mystery dungeon explorers of sky is a game worth playing on repeat. It is a masterpiece story wise and ost wise. This is a game you should play. If you get back into playing pokemon, play this game.
I'll say this, this is gen 4 sinnoh, and Dialga is a legendary pokemon that is classified as the deity of time. That should explain a few things.
Calm and relaxed isn’t quite right somber and emotional is more like it, mystery dungeon is a very dark and sad game in fact you’d probably be considered heartless if you don’t cry playing the explorers games that’s how heart wrenching it gets and it has some of the best writing in Pokemon period
I love this game so much! For my 20 year anniversary of being a Pokémon fan I actually got the time gear tattooed on my left forearm (like seen in the game, with the green light/symbol around it).
I wanted something related to the fact, that this franchise accompanied me for so long. But at the same time I wanted something, that would be recognised only by people that knew, something that wasn't as "in your face" like a Pokéball or so.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX is a combined remaster of the original 2 games released. The games are dungeon crawlers with you as protagonist turned into a Pokemon.
3:14 Yeah! You're on point... There's a time gear that's deep inside a cave..Tho there are some deep in inside forest or within an expanse of lake.
Glad to see that you enjoyed your first look at Mystery Dungeon! As you can probably see, it's a series that carries a lot of memories for a lot of people. Now that you've seen some of the PMD classics, I'm really hoping we eventually get some from Super Mystery Dungeon too; just like these games, Super's endgame music is excellent. The two Dark Matter Battle Themes(though those probably need the Partner's Theme for context) and the two Tree of Life themes are some of my favorite songs in the whole series, even if they don't tend to get as much attention as the soundtrack for Explorers or Rescue Team.
Time Gear sounds like Dialga's Fight to the Finish because Dialga is the god of time- every song that relates to the concept is referenced in It's theme
Time Gear is basically the motif of the entire soundtrack, you can hear the melody during a part of Dialga's Fight to the Finish (which is the final boss btw, Dialga is the boss)
I'd love for you to hear more of this amazing soundtrack, and a lot of it does use variations of that melody
yes, there is a similar theme through out this song and a few others related to the story arc. imo, its kinda amazing what shifting timing does to fit each of the moments. like the repeating expression in the songs is a character going through the journey and encountering obstacles.
this theme has been stuck in my head for years and its not one i'd want to forget.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon loves it's use of motifs, one of things I love about the OSTs of these games.
You're so close and so far with Dialga's Fight to the Finish.
To avoid dipping into spoilers much, while you do not play as Dialga (this is indeed his boss theme), the battle is very important for yourself (as in, the main character). I've always felt like the song conveys more your own inner struggle during the fight than the big bad guy you're battling, and your analysis really made it sound that way.
Amazing game, very reccomended.
I grew up with the first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, and their soundtracks are dear to my heart. My favorite game OST of all time though is the 4th one, Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon. It is made by some of the same composers as this game if i remember right, and it has such a massive variety of instruments and drastic shifts in style, both across the ost and within individual tracks. 😊
Ah the very next song i expected
There are so SO many covers and remixes of Dialgia's fight to the finish, from rock, lo'l-fi, orchestra thst fantastic melody works so good
the reason fight to the finish doesnt feel like the final boss theme is because in the grand scheme of things, its not the final boss, no, trying to hold back my tears from what happens after is truely the final boss of the game. dont ever forget is a fantastic piece of music
Dialga's Fight to the Finish is my all-time favorite piece of video game music. I've played a lot of games, but nothing since the release of Dialga's Fight to the Finish has ever compared in my mind. I even played Red Rescue Team (the alternate version of Blue Rescue Team) beforehand and am a massive fan of Generation 3, which the final boss is from. Dialga's Fight to the Finish has always captured, to me, the true essence of actually fighting to the last breath. The final boss is Dialga, the God of Time, who has reverted to a primal state, gone mad, and is threatening to put time on the planet to a complete halt, killing the world and most life on it. The player and their partner have to defeat the God of Time in order to save the planet. If you don't cheese the battle, it's an extremely tough fight. And it's not just his fight to the finish either - it's yours too. If you and your partner fail, the world is doomed. You have no option BUT to fight to the finish.
As for why they seem like extensions of the same song, Time Gear is used as a Leitmotif in a LOT of the Explorers of Sky OST. From the literal start to the finish. As for the games, they're similar stories set in different generations. Blue/Red Rescue Team (Gen 3) comes first, followed by Time/Darkness/Sky (Gen 4), Gates to Infinity (Gen 5), Super Mystery Dungeon (Gen 6), and then lastly in 2020 we got the remake of Red and Blue Rescue Team, named Rescue Team DX.
Also, fun fact about the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. They were developed by the same company that developed Dragon Quest and the Danganronpa franchise; Chunsoft (now Spike Chunsoft)!
Isn't Dragon Quest by Enix?
Explorers of sky is easily my favorite pokemon game and the music is always amazing, the jukebox ingame too was so cool cause you could listen to any song in the game on loop etc but the music tends to fit the themes so well. Theres a reason the official copies of this game are hundreds of dollars (if its normal price its a fake cart) dialga also one shot my team so many times as a kid, not as hard as mystery dungeon red/blue but the later fights in sky were brutal, sometimes your team would get one shot before the boss when you are 30 minutes into a floor
PMD Explorers of Sky has a very emotional story, so the OST also has that little kick to it which I absolutely adore
This song goes so hard for the player. This game has a very heroic but "victory at great cost" vibe every game sacrifice and loss driving a last brutal push before oblivion.
Also PMD games invoke the lord of the rings frodo and sam "at the start thinking everything will be fine, trial, loss, sacrifice and towards the end a sense that this is a one way journey to save the world." Also all games end their main story with a emotional gut punch
Tbh, I think Dialga's theme is for me the most emblematic music of the pmd serie
This game was my first heartbreak. Its unbelievable how sad it is, and how well the music fits
I loveeeees this game series so much my gosh. Memories of just listening to Time Gear to lure me to sleep.
Dialga's Fight to the Finish is THE song
I know i'm a nobody here (and not many people will be requesting this either), but i figured i'd just throw a suggestion of music to hear:
Spiral Knights.
Some especially good tracks are "Welcome to Our Haven", "Shocking Synthesizers", "Around the Clock Workshop" (which i swear sounds like olde mafia tunes for some goons to walk with swagger to), "Two Slimes Are Better Than One" (imagine bouncy block slimes), "Sombre Reflection", and "Buzzkill" (which exists in only ONE part of the game with a very morbid showdown moment. There's Death Bells in the music too..).
They were made by "Harry Mack".
Maybe these could be interesting.
(I wonder when anyone might make a vid listening to Spiral Knights' music.)
I don't know if you noticed this, but both this video and the last lacked the names of the requesters in the description. Just thought I'd mention it in case.
Fight to the finish will forever live rent free in my head
I hope someone has requested some of the music from Super Mystery Dungeon, that game's soundtrack is weirdly underrated and not talked about nearly as much. I think it's where the series peaked musically, with fantastic tracks like Fire Island Volcano and the final boss theme.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers is a game near and dear to my heart. As a kid I wasn't good enough to beat it, pretty sure I got stuck on the final dungeon (and thus share the fear of certain enemies in it that a lot of the fanbase has).
People have already said it, but this game is absolutely crazy with the leitmotifs, they are everywhere and there is not just one of them either. The game does a phenomenal job of getting you to care about the characters without even noticing and when the chips are down the music absolutely does not miss. The post game also goes places I am still shocked Nintendo let them get away with. Definitely on my shortlist of best games of all time.
Time and Darkness are the original release, while Sky is the definitive version with more content and most of the prior games' version exclusives. It also added more challenge dungeons, including the first official appearance of Arceus that you don't need to hack to see. It also added several side stories to flesh out the world, which was already very well done by the original version.
Generation 4 was the peak for Pokemon spinoff games. Gen 3 is where they got their start, but Gen 4 was their peak. Would definitely recommend playing one of the Explorers games at some point in your life, still the best story Pokemon has told IMO. Also if you do don't skip the post game, since it has actual significant plot in it.
Dialga’s fight to the finish is indeed the final boss theme. Dialga’s driven mad and is losing control so you have to fight him and restore time to bring him back to his senses. (Sorry if that’s too much of a spoiler)
Again much like the previous video. Love to see you review PMD music. This game is one heck of a banger for story, music, gameplay and fun and unique makes to the pokemon series. Hope to see some more reactions in the future.
The PMD games tend to be *the* most story heavy pokemon games and yeah they do use recurring leitmotifs.
Also Dialga's Fight to the Finish is actually a boss fight despite it's chill (specifically Dialga is the 'Disc 1 final boss' who's not evil but well, its definitely one heck of a built up boss fight all the same. You're correct in that the music is probably more about the heroic protag's feels though) and gen-wise I believe the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team games were gen 3, and the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of games were gen 4.
(As for other PMD games, PMD Gates to Infinity was gen 5, and Super Pokemon Mystery Dungeon was gen 6)
Would recommend absolutely ALL of their OSTs, and if you ever have the chance, to play them as they've also got some really great stories especially Explorers of Sky and Super -Gates To Infinity takes a while to build up plotwise but there's a few moments in it that kinda left me scarred so... It's good too I guess~ X'D-
Idk why but Dialga's theme reminds me of Xenoblade Chronicles for some reason.
MYSTERY DUNGEON??? HECK YEAH!!!!
Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky has so many good uses of leitmotifs. Hell, I would suggest playing it as a series just to see all the reactions to the dungeon themes.
So Time Gears and Dialga’s fight to the finish use the same Leitmotifs an very common thing PMD Sky uses is leitmotifs,
Dialga in Pokémon is the god of time, and this battle takes place when an partially corrupted Dialga against the Players who are trying to restore both his sanity and the horrible future that awaits if his sanity fails him, to do that they need the time gears
my god someone else agrees. i have never heard a soundtrack so chrono trigger esque in my LIFE
ah, my childhood
are we having a pokemon week? if so i love it
Oh please please please let there be a new mystery dungeon game announcement for pokemon day 🙏.
Omg I'd be fine with anything, even an EoS remake. Let's hope brother🙏🙏🙏
Explorers DX or even a new Mystery Dungeon would make my entire year
Another year of waiting, it seems.
Meanwhile me wanting another Conquest game...
@@BJGvideos Why hire quality development studios to make beloved spin-offs when you can have gacha game companies rake in that much more cash for you? Really sad world we live in 😑
@@darkpyro786 Could do both
Well if it isn’t my favourite game of all time. Awesome to see you react to this one. Enjoy.
;_; so much crying with this game
I havent played any other games , i have this channel subscribed for pokemon lol
Always brings me a smile when you react to pokemon
You're limiting yourself SO much if you only play Pokémon.
Please broaden your horizon, be it by just listening to Jesse's other videos or playing a bunch of Steam or Switch eshop demos.
And try out other creature-collecting games as well, like Cassette Beasts! There's so many cool ideas in that game, and it's executed very well! =)
I agree 100% with Kniffel. Video games are amazing and any enjoyer of the medium would definitely recommend you to try something new as often as possible. It may be annoying/scary to venture outside your comfort zone, but I guarantee you won't regret it! 👍
@@Kniffel101 am not too much into video games. I just like Pokemon from childhood. And like the vgc and unite
One of the best games for the ds. If you ever got time to play it I highly recommend. The story is so so good especially if you like emotional type games
Yo, two PMD reactions back to back! That doesn't happen very often.
love these reactions that you do
i know people like to recommend the bigger, well known songs from more well known entrees in game franchises, so i thought it'd be neat to recommend the Boss Battle theme from Learn with Pokemon: Typing Adventure - trust me, it'd be worth your time if you do c:
Leitmotif my friend! The pokemon mystery dungeon OSTs are very heavily built upon on leitmotifs. The time gear theme operates as that for the entire game and hints of it can be heard in almost every major story-driven piece of music. It's really beautifully done!
Quick, someone get him to listen to northern dessert, and temporal tower!!
If you haven't played this game (PMD explorers of sky) do yourself a favour and play it. Truly a masterpiece of a game that deserves to be enjoyed by many more people!
If you want a more serious song from this sound track. I'd recommend listening to battle dusknoir PMD EoS.
omg yes i love these so much
Mega Hype Song
YES, id reccomend you check out Darkrais theme from Pokemon The Rise of Darkrai, IMO its the best pokemon theme they have ever made.
MY FAVORITE GAME OF ALL TIME AAAAAH
I don't have anything to say that I didn't already say in the Sky Tower video, except that I hope you listen to Temporal Tower
and also reiterate how damn much i love this game Fuck it's so perfect
Actually, I do have more to say.
Mainline Pokemon games only really have, like. 2.5 games known for having a deep story. Black and White, Sun and Moon, and sort of kind of also Scarlet and Violet.
Mystery Dungeon is THE storytelling peak of the franchise, with more complicated, deep, and heartfelt plots, having characters befriend each other, get betrayed by each other, and go through world threatening stakes together. It's stories even manage to make some adults cry. This emphasis on story is reflected in it's STELLAR OST as I'm sure you're aware of at this point. Dialga's Fight to the Finish is the final boss theme and the only context I will give is that the main characters have seen firsthand the despair-inducing ramifications of what happens if they lose this battle, with the fate of the world resting in their hands.
I bought a slightly overpriced brand new sealed copy of Explorers of Sky at the end of 2014 just because of Dialga's Fight to the Finish. Granted Dialga is my favourite pokemon to this day, but still.
Yay dungeon
Not a huge fan of the Mystery Dungeon games but damn I love their music. Dialga's Fight to the Finish is my jam