Yoko Shimomura stated on a fan selected album that she composed Dark Impetus while going through some personal troubles that left her devastated, but creating the piece helped her get out of the mentality and start feeling better.
I remember watching a guide from a KH pro for this boss and him referring to how broken this fight is by saying something along the lines of "realize that if the game wants you dead, you're dead"
That's basically Mysterious Stranger in a nutshell. Beating him is complete Rng. If he wants you dead, you're fucking dead. You cannot fight back, the game will simply refuse to let you.
@@jonahbrown5669 Unlocking Mysterious Stranger requires you to have beaten Vanitas' Lingering Remnant, which is a boss that has the capability to completely copy your command deck, including your healing spells. It's most definitely meant for adults And he's not even the hardest boss fight, just the most infuriating to fight.
You are 100% correct on the fast-paced / anxiety inducing feel of the song. For those who played the series, and fought the optional bosses. This song will be engraved into their memory, for how many times they'd have to restart that fight. Because yes, the fight is broken and unfair. But it's a guilty pleasure of mine, I like the fight.
It's probably an example of how not to make a boss but even with that I still really enjoyed this fight a lot, especially with the song that goes with it! It's funny though cause Jessie said he drew one of my requests and the one he happened to draw was the remix of the remix of this song lol! (L'Impeto Oscuro KH3 version)
There's something about the initial versions of Kingdom Hearts' optional superbosses that hit the hardest; Dark Impetus has been remixed a few times, but this version also sticks out the most in my memory for the sheer frenetic energy and desperation it invokes.
No lie, all the remixes, this one is my favorite, and the one I have downloaded. Nothing else hits quite as different as fighting this dude in a hood who came from literally nowhere with such frantic violins.... I love the solo
I personally prefer L’Impeto Oscuro to Dark Impetus, mainly cause I feel like all the elements of the track are a lot better emphasized there and each instrument really gets to shine, especially the solo violinist. They’re both very similar though, to me it’s just a Dark Impetus ran so L’Impeto Oscuro could sprint at lightspeed type of situation. Any iteration live sounds like ass tho lmao, I haven’t heard a single live performance where the orchestra could keep up with the pace of the song, especially the percussionists.
Nah the final fight with the three Xeha clones in KH3 that one is good and the Data YX fight is amazingly composed. This one will always be classic for sure
@@handsoaphandsoap fair enough, I don't even think L'lmpeto Oscuro is bad, just not my cup of tea Dark Impetus just feels more... raw to me, more powerful
There's something missing in this song. I'm not hearing the non-stop Kingdom Hearts low health warning siren, and the sounds of dodge rolling/cartwheeling 👀
He staggers surprisingly easily. As long as you don’t go for too many hits and activate his renewal block there’s a lot of weak points in his endless stream of combos where you can shove a Thunder Surge or a Teleport/Reversal into basic combo.
Fun fact: The fast and frantic pace of this theme perfectly matches how fast and frantically the boss moves... as well as how fast and frantically _you_ have to move to not die! HAHAHAHA... hahaha... ha... I do not have good memories of this superboss (lingering memories of sore fingers come to mind)... but the music kept me trucking along. There _is_ a motif in there, though. It's in the violin solo you hear about halfway through the loop. It belongs to one of the final bosses of the series, and you hear the motif again in Forza Finale, which you reacted to last December (which also occurs during a violin solo in the track's calmer moments). There is a tendency among KH final/climax bosses to appear in an earlier game as a much harder superboss, and this one has the most infamous reputation as being particularly ludicrous and unfair in its difficulty. It's not an ordeal I want to go through again, but I still listen to this theme from time to time. And yes, it's composed by Yoko Shimomura (as well as the rest of BBS's soundtrack). P.S.: Birth By Sleep was released well after KH2, but chronologically, it's one of the earliest stories in the franchise. KH tends to jump around the timeline a lot with their games.
Most of Bbs's ost was composed by her but a few tracks are by Takeharu Ishimoto and one other person who I can't remember the name of but I believe also did some tracks from Ddd and kh3. That other composer is responsible for some of the dreameater (Ddd) and gummiship (Kh3) related tracks iirc.
I swear I love seeing how spot on you are about your educated guesses of the context of the song and it’s construction. All without knowing almost anything of the context, you’re so dead on it’s frightening.
The best way to tell who wrote a KH song is to listen for those violins and piano, if you hear them together like this it's usually Yoko Shimomura. Violins tend to be her trademark and she loves to pair the piano with them. Specifically if the the violin sounds like like it's crying and the piano sounds like it'll catch fire. Edit: KH music also has a lot of high intensity to it's pieces, it just tends to correlate with how dificult or endgame it is, and how intense of a plot reveal is. Anything involving Xemnas tends to go wild
so, context on how broken this boss is: he attacks very quickly and pretty much never stops attacking. he has an attack that steals all of your attacks so you have to pick them up. he can also clone himself into 4 additional copies, all of which attack independently. he is also able to turn invisible. he also has the ability to reverse time, undoing damage that you did to him. he can also create a bunch of laser shooting drones that persist while he's using other attacks. and he can combine any one of these moves, and more, together. this game has 3 playable characters. the usual strategy is to mash the dodge button until you have an opening, then use one attack. 2 of the playable characters have dodge rolls with 100% I-frames, as long as you keep mashing the dodge button, you'll never get hit. one playable character, however, does not have this. you can imagine how that goes.
You've heard this song remixed already in "Forza Finale: from KH3 but if u get around to hearing the other versions of this song they'd probably be more KH feeling to you l, because at this point this character wasn't known so it was kinda geared for battle only. And the violin(the crazy part) is in every version of the song including Forza Finale Also this fight is basically a russian roulette with one of the characters ( u basically can't win ig u get unlucky with the attack pattern) so it's broken as in bad game design not only difficultly
It's actually funny that the last KH song you did was Nachtflügel and now you do Dark Impetus. Both songs are for optional superbosses, both of which are incredibly difficult. But whereas the boss associated with Nachtflügel is widely accepted to be a very fairly designed kind of difficulty... The boss for Dark Impetus, which at the time was known as "Mysterious Figure"... is not. MF as he's called (in part perhaps to allude to another name he could be given with those initials) is the most insanely unfair thing in the series. Funnily enough, it's not ENTIRELY MF's fault. Birth by Sleep has some design issues which creates some imbalance in abilities, and MF kind of throws a wrench in that. Higher end players have said that if you copy and pasted MF into another KH game with better core mechanics, then he would be relatively easy. As to motifs, this is the first time anything like Dark Impetus was used, but it has been used since. Most notably in Forza Finale (if you go back and listen to Forza Finale now, I'm sure you'll recognize the melody from one of the solo violin parts in Dark Impetus), but an arrangement of Dark Impetus was made into a song called L'Impeto Oscuro (which is Italian for... The Dark Impetus). I actually prefer L'Impeto Oscuro, but the original Dark Impetus is still really good. And as for Birth by Sleep's placement in the series... It's complicated. The short answer, though, is that BbS is a prequel that was actually the 5th game in the series (for context, KH3 was the 9th or 10th game in the series, depending on how you count things). So the series was established, but at the same time, at the point in which it was made, it was the earliest game in chronologically, so it also had a lot of freshness in its music because it had to establish a lot of new things.
Just to add that the unfairness of the MF as a boss was made on purpose. Among all the superbosses in bbs, they wanted to add one unfair superboss to make players cry while fighting him.
@@Much_Ado You can think of it as roughly the same philosophy but without the unfairness aspect. KH3 Remind Secret Boss needs the player to carefully and calmly study his patterns in order to overcome the difficulty. MF superboss is more like "f*ck the game design, just try dodging everything and praise that your attacks work"
It really does capture the feeling in the title. The whole piece just feels like a huge wave bearing you irresistibly forward at mach speed, especially when that second solo violin comes in.
These Xehanort-esque fights (Zay-a-nort) are the bane of any Kingdom Hearts player's existence. It's even scarier because a player who isn't aware these fights exist can absolutely stumble into one unprepared and die. All of this anxiety and dread from a game originally played on the PSP. Every Kingdom Hearts game has this set of motifs and tempos that relate back to the characters they embody. For instance 'Organization XIII,' 'The Thirteenth Dilemma,' and 'The Thirteenth Struggle' are all songs that use the same basic motif, that being most prevalent in the first song. But The Thirteenth Struggle is an absolutely different beast because the character behind it is an agile hypeman, and the song reflects his wild frenzy. They all sound similar, but just different enough to induce dread if you're bad at a particular fight. Generally the songs tend to get darker or more fast-paced the further into the game you are, giving a feeling that the stakes are rising as you get closer to the final world. Secret bosses like this are usually designed to throw you off and set up future story beats. In this fight, the boss is wearing a specific uniform that has only appeared in the future of the games. It makes him feel like he's out of his time, and also sets the player up to misjudge who they're fighting. Every wearer of that uniform is known up to that point, and they all have several fights in the other games.
My favourite song in all of Kingdom Hearts, I think. Hearing the rumor of this "boss nobody at Square Enix could beat" or something to that effect at the time built so much hype. The reveal of what the Mysterious Figure was in a later entry made it even better. The thing is... you don't typically hear this song in "pure" fashion because the boss is "Dark Souls-like" to the extreme. Your HP will always be low or you grunting while dodging 98% of the time. People like to think Kingdom Hearts is some "kid game" just because Disney is involved, but these superbosses are pure Final Fantasy but in action genre tier. This game in particular released a year *before* Dark Souls.
Thank you! FINALLY a decent battle theme that's SO Yoko Shimomura. Most KH songs you got suggested so far just weren't to ones with action and fast epic electronic vibes because those are the most unique ones. I just love that fast synth. She is the only one I know who does that. When I listen to those pieces I always think of KH. There are even Mario RPG Games with a similar song since Yoko also composed them. It's kinda weird that we haven't seen even one Mario RPG title on this channel
So here is an explaination on why "Mysterious Figure", later known as Young Xehanort, the character this ost belongs to, is so broken: First thing to know is that instead of the normal MP bar that is linked to magic doesn't exist in Birth by Sleep. Instead you have 8 slots you can put spells and moves into which go into cooldown after use. When equiping 4 or more healing spells, Mysterious Figure will spam a move called Doom in which he grabs you and if you don't escape until the doom counter of 5 secs runs out you die. The problem with that is that the counter for Doom is reduced with each grab. Meaning, no matter what you do you will die eventually, forcing you to remain at 3 healing spells and take healing items with you if you need them that much. If you somehow get to damage him while he spams Doom he will switch to another broken attack. An attack in which he transforms his two energy blades into multiple spheres that rapidly form a spear with infinite length that heal Mysterious Figure on hit. While that happens the dickhead taunts you by doing the typical slow and menacing anime walk which only gets accentuated by his black coat with a hood that completely hides his face. So if you did start the fight with 3 heals then now the problem becomes his constant combo and move spam. He can make copies that can do combos and moves as well, he can surround himself with fire and then sprints and teleports around the battlefield to then seemlessly transition into his standard and unescapable combo, he can shoot a high speed tornado at you that makes you lose your spell slots until you collect them from the ground, he can make himself invisible which makes it impossible to lock on to him, he can jump into the air to pierce you with the infinite length spear and catapult you into the air, he can summon meteors, he can make cross cut projectiles that home in on you and he can zoom around the battlefield while spinning and looking like a giant drill. The two op attacks I described before are part of his base kit so he'll use those as well. Oh wait I forgot to mention THAT HE WOULD ONE SHOT YOU ON EVERY HIT if you didn't have the talent called sturdy, which lets you survive with 1 hp if you had more than 1 before getting hit, by that time. For all the ridiculous BS Mysterious Figure can do, all you need to do is spam dodge roll for the invincibilty frames and elemental dash moves for the ranged damage and protection from close range attacks. The normal KH combat system got completely scrapped for the 2 superbosses of the game who btw are a snoozefest.
It's kinda funny hearing you say that this doesn't sound like Kingdom Hearts. To me this is quintessential Kingdom Hearts, and by extension, Yoko Shimomura. I remember reading an interview where she mentioned that composing this piece got her through a tough moment in her life. She didn't go into details though
@@JessesAuditorium which i understand. i have the advantage of having played the series and she's my favorite composer, so i'm more familiar with her work and style. sorry, i wasn't very clear Edit: also, certain songs you've listened to were arranged by other composers. Such as Vector to the Heavens, the original piece is much more somber with heavy emphasis on piano
@@JessesAuditorium Kingdom Hearts is a really weird franchise OST to listen to out of context because it's huge and diverse, and its initial uses of leitmotifs are generally too simple to get recommended even though use of leitmotifs to reflect story connections is one of the OST's defining attributes. It would be interesting to look at, like, Sora's Theme, Roxas' Theme, the original version of Xion's Theme, Ventus' Theme, and Vanitas' Theme, then look at how this crazy web of connections fits into boss tracks like The Other Promise, Vector to the Heavens, and Enter the Darkness/Enter the Void. Doing something like that would take quite some time, though! (The list I gave is non-exhaustive, lol.)
If memory serves this theme has leitmotifs from Ansem and Young Xehanort’s leitmotifs/character themes. I think there was one more theme sharing a leitmotif with it
This song practically gives me PTSD because of just how unfair this boss was... no wonder people call him "MF" ...btw, there's another version of this called "L'Impeto Oscura," literally Dark Impetus in Italian, which is used when you fight this guy in another game and you can see his face this time. Now _THERE'S_ an actually fun superboss lol
Eyy! Look who showed up in my feed again. Let's see. I think the last time I checked out your reaction work, it was for Pentakill's Mortal Reminder. And now you're back with my favorite video game series of all time! Kingdom Hearts...You know, I think there's an argument to be made for the music of this series: It's as important to the series as the main characters. It's clear that a tremendous amount of time and effort has been put into crafting such incredible and varied pieces. And yeah, as someone who's 100% completed every game in the series not named Coded...I hate this superboss. Such a massive pain.
Birth By Sleep is like maybe 5 games or so into the franchise (although some of those games reused music from the earlier games, to some degree, I think), but it's set some time before the first game... So it's somewhat established, but while not very different musically, it also has scope for difference, being that it is set within a different era of the game's timeline... This boss seems to be an optional super boss too... So that might partly account for the difference as well.
Ah, yes. THE reason why so many poor PsPs' square button paint went missing. And those are the lucky ones! I love this version of Dark Impetus over the other. I also really liked Enter The Void and ESPECIALLY prefer BBS's version of Dismiss! I hope he gets to those one day.
Think my fav version is KH3 version since it combines all the previous version with new stuff, but this original version is really special. Song kinda hits different once you learn more about YXs past. Bbs is a prequel to KH1, but there are games set before it, that cover early days of the universe.
Birth by Sleep is a prequel to the very first KH and is like the 5th game in the series and was released on the PSP. FFVII Crisis Core has a lot of influence in this game like the Materia Fusion (Command Meld in BBS) and the game actually feels like playing Crisis Core in some ways. I don't know if this counts as a spoiler since you mentioned before that you don't plan to play the KH series anyway, but Zack actually appears in this game voiced by his original voice actor, Rick Gomez lol. There are a lot of other great tracks in the KH series particularly the special/super boss fights that people remember a lot like "Rage Awakened", "The Other Promise", "Lord of the Castle", among a few. Even the regular boss fights are great like "The 13th Struggle". Also surprised that "Dearly Beloved" isn't requested yet which is KH's most well known track and also the staple one similar to FF's Prelude although I think it's more appropriate to reserve it on an anniversary stream or something where Jesse listens to all versions of it haha. That would be cool.
Ah yes, this boss. This is already the KH I like the least to play because the gameplay feels rigid, but this boss is located in a really small arena and feels like something you'd be able to fight in KH2, not something as limiting as BBS lol
I didn’t recognize the song at first, but I know it from it’s newer version L’Impeto Oscuro which is from a newer game, while the one you’re listening to is from 10 years ago and still good
Not sure if you picked up on this but the isolated violin track is part of a song you reacted to a while back. Forza Finale has a combo of a bunch of boss themes might be worth re-listening to now you have listened to 2/3 of the 3 tracks now that is a combination of.
You know that one of the reason the players like the superbosses songs is because they are seared into their brains through hours of game over and retries hahaha..
When it comes to this boss being broken, there's a good reason for that. After KH2 the original development team of the KH series went on to work on Versus XIII, which later became FFXV. BBS and everything after was made by a different team, so they were new to it during BBS, but by the time KH3 came along they definitely learned a lot, considering most people think the superbosses of KH3 are much better than the KH2 ones.
Sure would be nice if there was a chance of a reaction to entire soundtrack all in one video... not just because more content be good, but youd get the sense of the theme and overall motifs of the game and its world/story.
Shimomura apparently wrote this while dealing with some emotional/mental struggles iirc, which might help explain the frenetic energy You've heard it remixed as one part of Forza Finale
Soooo, how much do I gotta pay you to play through the series? Asking for a friend. In all seriousness, FF8 is one of my favorite games ever, but this series is my favorite as a whole. They both tend to share a similar feel and both soundtracks range widely, there is definitely a lot more range you have yet to hear and I am very excited for you to experience them. My favorite is called "lord of the castle".
Kingdom hearts is actually very dark . Yes Disney is the catalyst for the universe it’s set in but the original characters made for kingdom hearts set a darker tone in the background
The worst part about recommending KH tracks is you can’t help but want to recommend the remixes of them in later games/original versions in previous games.
I think the fact that this sounds so out of character for you with Kingdom Hearts for you is that you've heard it starting from the end, and KH3 which is the source of a lot of the versions you heard tuned down the violins in favour of more piano focus. KH1/2/BBS were much more frequent with high energy violins and ominous chanting for boss battles. I think the difference between the BBS versions of Rage Awakened and Dismiss versus the KH3 versions also show this. "L'Impeto Oscuro" which is the KH3 version of this song is still pretty high speed but it sounds more techno than violin focused.
I'm currently playing the OG BBS final Mix on the PSP and this boss broke me. It deadass took me over 200 tries in a row to finally beat him on proud difficulty. I love this game and its music but this boss is probably the most broken bullshit fight ever. I'm terrified of even trying to 100% it on critical difficulty lmao.
Fighting this guy on the PSP..... I still shudder at that fight and wonder how I did it with Terra. The Remasters nerfed this guy. He's still tough as nails, but it's a bit less unfair.
@@darkerrex1442 he rarely if ever used time rewind since I specifically went for countering him when he attacked. He usually rewinds if you try to take the offensive when he's not busy. I had plenty of fights where he never used the rewind
a lot of games have super bosses, some games have uber bosses, but this theme is for a bullshit boss. a lot of people hate the character this theme is attatched to, and half of it is because of this bossfight. he has broken not only controllers, but PSP square buttons across the globe. I beat him without cheese like a decade ago and I'm still salty AF. you do not beat this boss, the boss decides when you've suffered enough. this is also the best version of the song, IMHO all the remixes make it worse. appropiate since the guy you fight comes back in later games and is a complete joke every time.
Yoko Shimomura stated on a fan selected album that she composed Dark Impetus while going through some personal troubles that left her devastated, but creating the piece helped her get out of the mentality and start feeling better.
I remember watching a guide from a KH pro for this boss and him referring to how broken this fight is by saying something along the lines of "realize that if the game wants you dead, you're dead"
Dark Souls by Disney
Considering this game was made for children, imagine this boss meant for adults
That's basically Mysterious Stranger in a nutshell. Beating him is complete Rng. If he wants you dead, you're fucking dead. You cannot fight back, the game will simply refuse to let you.
@@jonahbrown5669 Unlocking Mysterious Stranger requires you to have beaten Vanitas' Lingering Remnant, which is a boss that has the capability to completely copy your command deck, including your healing spells. It's most definitely meant for adults
And he's not even the hardest boss fight, just the most infuriating to fight.
Thunder Surge, and lots of Cures
You are 100% correct on the fast-paced / anxiety inducing feel of the song. For those who played the series, and fought the optional bosses. This song will be engraved into their memory, for how many times they'd have to restart that fight. Because yes, the fight is broken and unfair. But it's a guilty pleasure of mine, I like the fight.
It's probably an example of how not to make a boss but even with that I still really enjoyed this fight a lot, especially with the song that goes with it! It's funny though cause Jessie said he drew one of my requests and the one he happened to draw was the remix of the remix of this song lol! (L'Impeto Oscuro KH3 version)
How come you watched his reaction ? 😮membership ?
@Frionel Zrl Watched this one early bc of membership but the other one I know bc he told me it got drawn but I'm not sure if it's been reacted to yet.
There's something about the initial versions of Kingdom Hearts' optional superbosses that hit the hardest; Dark Impetus has been remixed a few times, but this version also sticks out the most in my memory for the sheer frenetic energy and desperation it invokes.
No lie, all the remixes, this one is my favorite, and the one I have downloaded. Nothing else hits quite as different as fighting this dude in a hood who came from literally nowhere with such frantic violins.... I love the solo
I personally prefer L’Impeto Oscuro to Dark Impetus, mainly cause I feel like all the elements of the track are a lot better emphasized there and each instrument really gets to shine, especially the solo violinist. They’re both very similar though, to me it’s just a Dark Impetus ran so L’Impeto Oscuro could sprint at lightspeed type of situation.
Any iteration live sounds like ass tho lmao, I haven’t heard a single live performance where the orchestra could keep up with the pace of the song, especially the percussionists.
Nah the final fight with the three Xeha clones in KH3 that one is good and the Data YX fight is amazingly composed. This one will always be classic for sure
@@handsoaphandsoap fair enough, I don't even think L'lmpeto Oscuro is bad, just not my cup of tea Dark Impetus just feels more... raw to me, more powerful
There's something missing in this song. I'm not hearing the non-stop Kingdom Hearts low health warning siren, and the sounds of dodge rolling/cartwheeling 👀
You forgot to mention Terra's "how could this be?"
@@bichoestranhocomcaudas6543 Only foolish fools even try this with Terra 👀
@@steve_yu Either that or a Masochist XD
Beating this fight on critical as Terra is certainly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
He staggers surprisingly easily. As long as you don’t go for too many hits and activate his renewal block there’s a lot of weak points in his endless stream of combos where you can shove a Thunder Surge or a Teleport/Reversal into basic combo.
Fun fact: The fast and frantic pace of this theme perfectly matches how fast and frantically the boss moves... as well as how fast and frantically _you_ have to move to not die! HAHAHAHA... hahaha... ha...
I do not have good memories of this superboss (lingering memories of sore fingers come to mind)... but the music kept me trucking along. There _is_ a motif in there, though. It's in the violin solo you hear about halfway through the loop. It belongs to one of the final bosses of the series, and you hear the motif again in Forza Finale, which you reacted to last December (which also occurs during a violin solo in the track's calmer moments). There is a tendency among KH final/climax bosses to appear in an earlier game as a much harder superboss, and this one has the most infamous reputation as being particularly ludicrous and unfair in its difficulty. It's not an ordeal I want to go through again, but I still listen to this theme from time to time. And yes, it's composed by Yoko Shimomura (as well as the rest of BBS's soundtrack).
P.S.: Birth By Sleep was released well after KH2, but chronologically, it's one of the earliest stories in the franchise. KH tends to jump around the timeline a lot with their games.
Most of Bbs's ost was composed by her but a few tracks are by Takeharu Ishimoto and one other person who I can't remember the name of but I believe also did some tracks from Ddd and kh3. That other composer is responsible for some of the dreameater (Ddd) and gummiship (Kh3) related tracks iirc.
"sheer amount of Stress" lmfao you have NO IDEA how accurate that statenebt is!!!!
I swear I love seeing how spot on you are about your educated guesses of the context of the song and it’s construction. All without knowing almost anything of the context, you’re so dead on it’s frightening.
It's almost like he's got a musical background...
@@Ingiseneven with that, its still impressive he can guess whats happening in the game
The best way to tell who wrote a KH song is to listen for those violins and piano, if you hear them together like this it's usually Yoko Shimomura. Violins tend to be her trademark and she loves to pair the piano with them. Specifically if the the violin sounds like like it's crying and the piano sounds like it'll catch fire.
Edit: KH music also has a lot of high intensity to it's pieces, it just tends to correlate with how dificult or endgame it is, and how intense of a plot reveal is. Anything involving Xemnas tends to go wild
The violins and piano are also the way to recognize the similarity between KH and Shimomura's contribution to FFXV, lol. I love them.
so, context on how broken this boss is:
he attacks very quickly and pretty much never stops attacking. he has an attack that steals all of your attacks so you have to pick them up. he can also clone himself into 4 additional copies, all of which attack independently. he is also able to turn invisible. he also has the ability to reverse time, undoing damage that you did to him. he can also create a bunch of laser shooting drones that persist while he's using other attacks. and he can combine any one of these moves, and more, together.
this game has 3 playable characters. the usual strategy is to mash the dodge button until you have an opening, then use one attack. 2 of the playable characters have dodge rolls with 100% I-frames, as long as you keep mashing the dodge button, you'll never get hit. one playable character, however, does not have this. you can imagine how that goes.
You've heard this song remixed already in "Forza Finale: from KH3 but if u get around to hearing the other versions of this song they'd probably be more KH feeling to you l, because at this point this character wasn't known so it was kinda geared for battle only. And the violin(the crazy part) is in every version of the song including Forza Finale
Also this fight is basically a russian roulette with one of the characters ( u basically can't win ig u get unlucky with the attack pattern) so it's broken as in bad game design not only difficultly
It's actually funny that the last KH song you did was Nachtflügel and now you do Dark Impetus. Both songs are for optional superbosses, both of which are incredibly difficult. But whereas the boss associated with Nachtflügel is widely accepted to be a very fairly designed kind of difficulty... The boss for Dark Impetus, which at the time was known as "Mysterious Figure"... is not. MF as he's called (in part perhaps to allude to another name he could be given with those initials) is the most insanely unfair thing in the series. Funnily enough, it's not ENTIRELY MF's fault. Birth by Sleep has some design issues which creates some imbalance in abilities, and MF kind of throws a wrench in that. Higher end players have said that if you copy and pasted MF into another KH game with better core mechanics, then he would be relatively easy.
As to motifs, this is the first time anything like Dark Impetus was used, but it has been used since. Most notably in Forza Finale (if you go back and listen to Forza Finale now, I'm sure you'll recognize the melody from one of the solo violin parts in Dark Impetus), but an arrangement of Dark Impetus was made into a song called L'Impeto Oscuro (which is Italian for... The Dark Impetus). I actually prefer L'Impeto Oscuro, but the original Dark Impetus is still really good.
And as for Birth by Sleep's placement in the series... It's complicated. The short answer, though, is that BbS is a prequel that was actually the 5th game in the series (for context, KH3 was the 9th or 10th game in the series, depending on how you count things). So the series was established, but at the same time, at the point in which it was made, it was the earliest game in chronologically, so it also had a lot of freshness in its music because it had to establish a lot of new things.
Just to add that the unfairness of the MF as a boss was made on purpose. Among all the superbosses in bbs, they wanted to add one unfair superboss to make players cry while fighting him.
@@Nhoadkoko i remember that being the design philosophy behind the last superboss of 3's ReMind DLC
@@Much_Ado You can think of it as roughly the same philosophy but without the unfairness aspect.
KH3 Remind Secret Boss needs the player to carefully and calmly study his patterns in order to overcome the difficulty.
MF superboss is more like "f*ck the game design, just try dodging everything and praise that your attacks work"
It really does capture the feeling in the title. The whole piece just feels like a huge wave bearing you irresistibly forward at mach speed, especially when that second solo violin comes in.
These Xehanort-esque fights (Zay-a-nort) are the bane of any Kingdom Hearts player's existence. It's even scarier because a player who isn't aware these fights exist can absolutely stumble into one unprepared and die. All of this anxiety and dread from a game originally played on the PSP. Every Kingdom Hearts game has this set of motifs and tempos that relate back to the characters they embody. For instance 'Organization XIII,' 'The Thirteenth Dilemma,' and 'The Thirteenth Struggle' are all songs that use the same basic motif, that being most prevalent in the first song. But The Thirteenth Struggle is an absolutely different beast because the character behind it is an agile hypeman, and the song reflects his wild frenzy. They all sound similar, but just different enough to induce dread if you're bad at a particular fight. Generally the songs tend to get darker or more fast-paced the further into the game you are, giving a feeling that the stakes are rising as you get closer to the final world. Secret bosses like this are usually designed to throw you off and set up future story beats. In this fight, the boss is wearing a specific uniform that has only appeared in the future of the games. It makes him feel like he's out of his time, and also sets the player up to misjudge who they're fighting. Every wearer of that uniform is known up to that point, and they all have several fights in the other games.
This song is used for a superboss that's all about messing with time. Super fitting imo
The most accurate description of this boss: "This is supposed to be an RPG. What role am I playing? The victim?
My favourite song in all of Kingdom Hearts, I think. Hearing the rumor of this "boss nobody at Square Enix could beat" or something to that effect at the time built so much hype. The reveal of what the Mysterious Figure was in a later entry made it even better. The thing is... you don't typically hear this song in "pure" fashion because the boss is "Dark Souls-like" to the extreme. Your HP will always be low or you grunting while dodging 98% of the time. People like to think Kingdom Hearts is some "kid game" just because Disney is involved, but these superbosses are pure Final Fantasy but in action genre tier. This game in particular released a year *before* Dark Souls.
Thank you! FINALLY a decent battle theme that's SO Yoko Shimomura. Most KH songs you got suggested so far just weren't to ones with action and fast epic electronic vibes because those are the most unique ones. I just love that fast synth. She is the only one I know who does that. When I listen to those pieces I always think of KH. There are even Mario RPG Games with a similar song since Yoko also composed them. It's kinda weird that we haven't seen even one Mario RPG title on this channel
He has covered Forest Maze on the channel before
@@AREAlhero True but not an intense epic battle theme from the Mario and Luigi RPG series
This song was young Xehanort he was a secret boss after completing all the characters in Birth by Sleep
So here is an explaination on why "Mysterious Figure", later known as Young Xehanort, the character this ost belongs to, is so broken:
First thing to know is that instead of the normal MP bar that is linked to magic doesn't exist in Birth by Sleep. Instead you have 8 slots you can put spells and moves into which go into cooldown after use.
When equiping 4 or more healing spells, Mysterious Figure will spam a move called Doom in which he grabs you and if you don't escape until the doom counter of 5 secs runs out you die. The problem with that is that the counter for Doom is reduced with each grab. Meaning, no matter what you do you will die eventually, forcing you to remain at 3 healing spells and take healing items with you if you need them that much.
If you somehow get to damage him while he spams Doom he will switch to another broken attack. An attack in which he transforms his two energy blades into multiple spheres that rapidly form a spear with infinite length that heal Mysterious Figure on hit. While that happens the dickhead taunts you by doing the typical slow and menacing anime walk which only gets accentuated by his black coat with a hood that completely hides his face.
So if you did start the fight with 3 heals then now the problem becomes his constant combo and move spam. He can make copies that can do combos and moves as well, he can surround himself with fire and then sprints and teleports around the battlefield to then seemlessly transition into his standard and unescapable combo, he can shoot a high speed tornado at you that makes you lose your spell slots until you collect them from the ground, he can make himself invisible which makes it impossible to lock on to him, he can jump into the air to pierce you with the infinite length spear and catapult you into the air, he can summon meteors, he can make cross cut projectiles that home in on you and he can zoom around the battlefield while spinning and looking like a giant drill. The two op attacks I described before are part of his base kit so he'll use those as well.
Oh wait I forgot to mention THAT HE WOULD ONE SHOT YOU ON EVERY HIT if you didn't have the talent called sturdy, which lets you survive with 1 hp if you had more than 1 before getting hit, by that time.
For all the ridiculous BS Mysterious Figure can do, all you need to do is spam dodge roll for the invincibilty frames and elemental dash moves for the ranged damage and protection from close range attacks. The normal KH combat system got completely scrapped for the 2 superbosses of the game who btw are a snoozefest.
Hoooooooo this ooooone
It's kinda funny hearing you say that this doesn't sound like Kingdom Hearts. To me this is quintessential Kingdom Hearts, and by extension, Yoko Shimomura. I remember reading an interview where she mentioned that composing this piece got her through a tough moment in her life. She didn't go into details though
Doesn't sound like KH I've heard so far~
@@JessesAuditorium which i understand. i have the advantage of having played the series and she's my favorite composer, so i'm more familiar with her work and style. sorry, i wasn't very clear
Edit: also, certain songs you've listened to were arranged by other composers. Such as Vector to the Heavens, the original piece is much more somber with heavy emphasis on piano
@@JessesAuditorium Kingdom Hearts is a really weird franchise OST to listen to out of context because it's huge and diverse, and its initial uses of leitmotifs are generally too simple to get recommended even though use of leitmotifs to reflect story connections is one of the OST's defining attributes.
It would be interesting to look at, like, Sora's Theme, Roxas' Theme, the original version of Xion's Theme, Ventus' Theme, and Vanitas' Theme, then look at how this crazy web of connections fits into boss tracks like The Other Promise, Vector to the Heavens, and Enter the Darkness/Enter the Void. Doing something like that would take quite some time, though! (The list I gave is non-exhaustive, lol.)
If memory serves this theme has leitmotifs from Ansem and Young Xehanort’s leitmotifs/character themes. I think there was one more theme sharing a leitmotif with it
This song practically gives me PTSD because of just how unfair this boss was... no wonder people call him "MF"
...btw, there's another version of this called "L'Impeto Oscura," literally Dark Impetus in Italian, which is used when you fight this guy in another game and you can see his face this time.
Now _THERE'S_ an actually fun superboss lol
Eyy! Look who showed up in my feed again. Let's see. I think the last time I checked out your reaction work, it was for Pentakill's Mortal Reminder. And now you're back with my favorite video game series of all time!
Kingdom Hearts...You know, I think there's an argument to be made for the music of this series: It's as important to the series as the main characters. It's clear that a tremendous amount of time and effort has been put into crafting such incredible and varied pieces.
And yeah, as someone who's 100% completed every game in the series not named Coded...I hate this superboss. Such a massive pain.
Birth By Sleep is like maybe 5 games or so into the franchise (although some of those games reused music from the earlier games, to some degree, I think), but it's set some time before the first game... So it's somewhat established, but while not very different musically, it also has scope for difference, being that it is set within a different era of the game's timeline... This boss seems to be an optional super boss too... So that might partly account for the difference as well.
Ah, yes. THE reason why so many poor PsPs' square button paint went missing. And those are the lucky ones!
I love this version of Dark Impetus over the other. I also really liked Enter The Void and ESPECIALLY prefer BBS's version of Dismiss! I hope he gets to those one day.
Think my fav version is KH3 version since it combines all the previous version with new stuff, but this original version is really special. Song kinda hits different once you learn more about YXs past. Bbs is a prequel to KH1, but there are games set before it, that cover early days of the universe.
The boss attached to that song is Stress itself.
Birth by Sleep is a prequel to the very first KH and is like the 5th game in the series and was released on the PSP. FFVII Crisis Core has a lot of influence in this game like the Materia Fusion (Command Meld in BBS) and the game actually feels like playing Crisis Core in some ways. I don't know if this counts as a spoiler since you mentioned before that you don't plan to play the KH series anyway, but Zack actually appears in this game voiced by his original voice actor, Rick Gomez lol.
There are a lot of other great tracks in the KH series particularly the special/super boss fights that people remember a lot like "Rage Awakened", "The Other Promise", "Lord of the Castle", among a few. Even the regular boss fights are great like "The 13th Struggle".
Also surprised that "Dearly Beloved" isn't requested yet which is KH's most well known track and also the staple one similar to FF's Prelude although I think it's more appropriate to reserve it on an anniversary stream or something where Jesse listens to all versions of it haha. That would be cool.
Holy @#@*, this was in Birth By Sleep?
WHO IS PLAYING THAT VIOLIN?
YX while he is kicking your ass with blue lightsabers
Ah yes, this boss. This is already the KH I like the least to play because the gameplay feels rigid, but this boss is located in a really small arena and feels like something you'd be able to fight in KH2, not something as limiting as BBS lol
I didn’t recognize the song at first, but I know it from it’s newer version L’Impeto Oscuro which is from a newer game, while the one you’re listening to is from 10 years ago and still good
Not sure if you picked up on this but the isolated violin track is part of a song you reacted to a while back. Forza Finale has a combo of a bunch of boss themes might be worth re-listening to now you have listened to 2/3 of the 3 tracks now that is a combination of.
Good to hear that you appreciate context, cuz Im always worried about saying what the song is for in the request details...
You know that one of the reason the players like the superbosses songs is because they are seared into their brains through hours of game over and retries hahaha..
Not sure if anyone asked you yet, but Edge of Existence from Kingdom Hearts 3 is a good song to react to.
When it comes to this boss being broken, there's a good reason for that. After KH2 the original development team of the KH series went on to work on Versus XIII, which later became FFXV. BBS and everything after was made by a different team, so they were new to it during BBS, but by the time KH3 came along they definitely learned a lot, considering most people think the superbosses of KH3 are much better than the KH2 ones.
Oh no this BOSS music again 😂
Oh god just hearing this gives me ptsd all over again lol.
Sure would be nice if there was a chance of a reaction to entire soundtrack all in one video... not just because more content be good, but youd get the sense of the theme and overall motifs of the game and its world/story.
Shimomura apparently wrote this while dealing with some emotional/mental struggles iirc, which might help explain the frenetic energy
You've heard it remixed as one part of Forza Finale
Soooo, how much do I gotta pay you to play through the series? Asking for a friend.
In all seriousness, FF8 is one of my favorite games ever, but this series is my favorite as a whole. They both tend to share a similar feel and both soundtracks range widely, there is definitely a lot more range you have yet to hear and I am very excited for you to experience them. My favorite is called "lord of the castle".
Man with Ventus i just spam the roll, heal and thunder blitz to take him down😂 it take me 4 try to memorise his spaming laser😂
Time is a cruel prison.
The version of this song in kingdom hearts 3 is even better.
The version of the song used in KH3 is Impeto Oscuro, not Dark Impetus. These 2 songs are not very similar.
Oh boi, dis gon be gud
Kingdom hearts is actually very dark . Yes Disney is the catalyst for the universe it’s set in but the original characters made for kingdom hearts set a darker tone in the background
The worst part about recommending KH tracks is you can’t help but want to recommend the remixes of them in later games/original versions in previous games.
I think the fact that this sounds so out of character for you with Kingdom Hearts for you is that you've heard it starting from the end, and KH3 which is the source of a lot of the versions you heard tuned down the violins in favour of more piano focus. KH1/2/BBS were much more frequent with high energy violins and ominous chanting for boss battles. I think the difference between the BBS versions of Rage Awakened and Dismiss versus the KH3 versions also show this. "L'Impeto Oscuro" which is the KH3 version of this song is still pretty high speed but it sounds more techno than violin focused.
I'm currently playing the OG BBS final Mix on the PSP and this boss broke me. It deadass took me over 200 tries in a row to finally beat him on proud difficulty. I love this game and its music but this boss is probably the most broken bullshit fight ever. I'm terrified of even trying to 100% it on critical difficulty lmao.
What is the background music Jesse using when speaking? I know it but can't remember what from ^^;
Fighting this guy on the PSP..... I still shudder at that fight and wonder how I did it with Terra.
The Remasters nerfed this guy. He's still tough as nails, but it's a bit less unfair.
one hit and your full hp is gone
Either get lucky or abuse the invincibility of the Surge commands to charge through his attacks
@@craigfunk3453 And hopes he doesn't use time rewind
@@darkerrex1442 he rarely if ever used time rewind since I specifically went for countering him when he attacked. He usually rewinds if you try to take the offensive when he's not busy. I had plenty of fights where he never used the rewind
@@craigfunk3453 OOOH i was trying to attack when he idle well that explains why he does that a LOT
@@darkerrex1442 its why i use the surge commands. They have invincibility so you can charge right through most of his attacks and counter him
the hardest boss in the series other than yozora
That violin is not calming homie. Those are some intense/fast paced cords. Also kinda lamenting imo. Thank you for another cool KH reaction man!
This boss is garbage but the song is so damn fucking good. But yeah it's Yoko Shimomura
a lot of games have super bosses, some games have uber bosses, but this theme is for a bullshit boss.
a lot of people hate the character this theme is attatched to, and half of it is because of this bossfight.
he has broken not only controllers, but PSP square buttons across the globe.
I beat him without cheese like a decade ago and I'm still salty AF.
you do not beat this boss, the boss decides when you've suffered enough.
this is also the best version of the song, IMHO all the remixes make it worse. appropiate since the guy you fight comes back in later games and is a complete joke every time.
why not l'impeto oscuro tho... it's just better 🤷
Why not both ? Dark Impetus and Impeto Oscuro are not very that similar.