The composer is Miki Higashino (8-bit doesn't mention her in the video). She is retired from composing at this point but Suikoden and Suikoden II are her masterpieces.

HOLY HOT DAMN YES IT'S ABOUT TIME WE START TO SEE SOME MORE SUIKODEN LOVE Miki Higashino is the composer for Suikoden and Suikoden II (as well as other Konami classics in her 15 year stint there, such as Gradius and TMNT) and deserves all the love in the world for her amazing work. She had a really unique approach to writing music for this series which made Suikoden's soundscape so distinct from other JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest at the time, by assigning different musical influences to different regions of the map (Celtic, Spanish, Japanese, Middle Eastern, etc.), which seriously upped the immersion for me of an adventure across a vast land. Suikoden II was also notably one of the largest OSTs in the genre at the time, with 105 tracks in total, and Higashino worked on 98 of those! Absolute Wonder Woman of a composer.

Suikoden's composer, Miki Higashino, is VERY underrated. Suikoden, particularly 1 and 2, have extroardinary OSTs. Off the top of my head, Confrontation with Monsters is a battle theme predominantly in 7/4 that makes great use of quartal harmony, the octatonic scale, and the whole tone scale. Gregminster is an awesome piece in Eb Mixolydian that feels very old fashioned and folksy but totally modern and catchy as hell. The Neclord theme is incredibly Baroque inspired for Gothic vampire effect. And the Suikoden 2 battle theme (I think it's called The Will?) has some CRAZY chords in it and a unique progression.

Honestly, probably one of the most important videos you've ever done. Excellent work! As composers we get lost in the "interesting" and fail to notice the "practical" all too often.

AH!! SUIKODEN!!!! DUDE, THIS IS MY FAVORITE GAME OF ALL TIME!!! AND I LOVE THIS PIECE! It was the first song I ever learned for the piano. Omg, I'm so glad you went over this song!!

Since you somehow made it through the entire video without mentioning the composer, I'll do it for you: Miki Higashino, who sadly left the industry way too soon.

This is my favorite track from my favorite game, and seeing it get so much love like this makes me so happy. Great work!

THE BEST Channel!!!

Man I'm dying for that Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars

I love to play this piece. Whole OST is magic. ❤

3 years ago, I spent most of my savings to buy a piano, spent few hundreds more for basic piano course, and countless hours of practicing basic chords. I did all of them just so I can play this piece. Now I can hear this song played from my own fingers. Does it worth all the money spent and effort sacrificed? YES.

Mel Choyce is the MVP for suggesting Suikoden! I'd love to see a few of the town tracks from Suikoden 1 analyzed. The music brought such a unique individuality to each and every town you visited. It really sold the multi-cultured setting you travel through in your recruiting campaign against the empire. "An Old Irish Song" in particular is incredible, specially considering the context of the piece and the group it represents within game.

You know what's funny? I was listening to the original soundtrack of Reminiscence just last night and then I come home and see this in my sub box! This video makes me feel even more excited for the remastered version. Hopefully it releases this year!!

One of my faves, always leaves me emotional, especially with game context. Excited for the remaster!

Never played the game, however I stumbled upon this piece on KZfaq at a certain time and fell in love with it. It is trully beautiful! Thank you for doing a breakdown of it! :)

Year after year hoping for a Suikoden 2 video here! ❤ You're the best!!!

8-bit, I've been following for a few years now. You've inspired me and taught me so much about music theory (and how little I really know). This has been a personal favourite piece from my favourite game that almost nobody seems to know about. Thanks for covering this one! Lots of love from your Prairie Neighbour!

Absolutely spectacular video, as always! Your analyses and explanations are fantastic!

I completely relate to what you were saying about trying too hard about digging for some weird technique for a video. You again have given me more influence for ideas for videos in the future! Thank you!

As a beginner to music theory and composing, videos like this explaining basic techniques are immensely helpful. Putting roman numerals on the chords would make it even more digestable for me

Dude, Suikoden is so underrated. Glad that you're putting a spotlight on the music for the best of it.

Great analysis! Learning what techniques work well should be the first step for every composer!!

Wow this analysis was so excellent, as ever. Excited to see this game is getting a remaster this year, may pick it up simply from this!

Thank you for making this. I'm currently working through it on the piano, and this video has helped me understand why certain changes and choices in this song *feel* how they feel. I'll post the cover some day (to join the rest of my Suikoden covers) Miki Higashino is an unsung hero of the video game music industry, and does not get nearly the adoration she deserves.

Suikoden II!!! One of my favourite games of all time getting covered in a video about its music. Reminiscence is one of many beautiful pieces for the OST. The white deer inn has awesome music, Gothic Neclord, the dungeon music, An Old Story amongst others are just pure class from the legendary Miki Higashino. Great analysis!

Damn i didnt expect the change in tone for the "woah" and the loud kiss vocalization from mr 8bit

That augmented chord raising up to the 6th is very reminiscent of a half cadence in terms of feel. Cool way to set up the turnaround back to 1 with an ascending feel rather than a descending feel. Can easily see it used as a launching point for key or section change too.

The. Best. Channel.

Hey. So, your videos are the best. I mean really-really, the best. Never stop.

How much can a piece exhibit the feeling of a beautiful adventure? Suikoden OST says yes!

Thank you for doing this beautiful piece justice.

This is the first time in 4 years I will not be in Winnipeg for April 18th! That sucks!! I have only been to the rec room in Calgary once and I didn't like it one bit, but I would rush to the rec room to see live videogame music. Especially if it's from you! Thanks for the great music analysis, as always.

Some of these progressions and techniques such as moving the third to the base reminds me a lot of Ryuichi Sakamoto's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

Suikoden 2 had the most heart warming and heart wrenching music in all of RPGs. Thank you Miki Higashino, for the wonderful music.

So many memories over this game. The music, the history, the gameplay, the characters... Love it.

I've been listening to suikoden 1 & 2 ost over these last months. what a beautiful coincidence that this video got recommended :)

A remarkable sublime piece of music. One can argue though that this track is equivalent to what Bobby Brown is to Zappa. Miki has so much more under the hood. Her attention to detail and orchestration is unrivaled in her era. She is easily my favorite rpg composer, the true goat!

I actually did not play Suikoden back in the day but discovered the soundtrack more recently. My favorite from Suikoden 2 is "Days Past". It's a peaceful tune, but also sad and melancholy. In a way, I feel like it reflects my attitude toward vintage JRPGs now. Certain older game and JRPG soundtracks are actually difficult for me to listen to now because they remind me so strongly of happier times, where I was a child and had fewer responsibilities. Hearing them again now is painful because I will never see those days again.

one of the first songs i learned for the piano, so good.

This has made my day and I haven't even watched the video yet.

I wonder how soon till you get around to the amazing opening from Suiko3

Beautiful analysis

YES YES YES~!!! As a music composer so many video games have been my inspiration for writing music from ambient, electronic, and even metal

I'm a simple man. I see Suikoden related content, I click

We deserved suikoden II remake

Holding back from using chords that look advanced but work against the piece's goal is vital, but also a difficult thing to master...

Suikoden II is my favorite game ever and one of my favorite soundtracks. I would love to see more videos on it. Miki Higashino is one of the most underrated composers out there.

Miki Higashino gone to be a housewife after pouring out her soul for this masterpiece.

It's not just Suikoden 2, it's also the greatest female composer on the genre: Miki Higashino. People tend to only know Yoko Shimomura in VGM. Higashino san has a great style in terms of how she uses the classical RPG formula and gives it a celtic style. She is like the female counterside to Yasunori Mitsuda in compositional style and they cite similar references. She is not composing anymore unfortunately and Suikoden 2 is her best work. Likely she focused on her family which is very rare in Japan for career people in big companies. Respect to her work.

So many amazing tracks from S1 and S2. Not to diminish the soundtracks of the other games (Tierkreis? Lovely. Tactics? Criminally underrated), but Higashino has composed some of the most moving and memorable pieces of music I've ever heard.

when they double down on the beautiful cliche at the end, well, u put it best with that "Mwah"

Suikoden 4 also has some really great music; it's usually seen as the "low-point" of the series but man they killed it with the music for that game!

Suikoden 2 is my second favorite RPG of all time behind Xenogears... I am so EXCITED for the remaster to be released. If you haven't played 1/2... DO IT! Incredible.

very cool!!

When it comes to beauty in music, and a dose of unexpected, my goto piece is "Ambivalentidea" by Yanagi Nagi. Even though this is not from a video game but from an anime, I'd love to see this track covered on this channel!

"Being pretty isn't just about doing pretty things, it's also about not doing not pretty things" --8-Bit Music Theory Truly the voice of a generation

2 and 5 are my favorite suikoden games soundtrack wise.

This piece actually make me learn how to play piano, thank you Miki higashino

Almost never seen someone who talking about music of suikoden and finally i found it ❤

I love watching your videos! It's so nice to hear someone feeling out over the intersection of music and video games! I would LOVE LOVE LOVE it if you did a video on the Area Zero theme of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet and why it does such a good job of being creepy, unsettling, and unnerving. Keep up the great work!

Would love to hear a break down of some dark cloud/dark cloud 2 music. Idk what it is about Tomohito Nishiura's melodies, but they have always felt simple yet incredibly effective.

This video is so good! Another good soundtrack to try and analyze is the N64 game Perfect Dark, it's so good

Loved this game at the time. And the music.

Please do an episode on how to compose music. I just don’t know where to start. What tools are available? What’s the project pipeline like? Do they usually write multiple songs at once or one at a time? Start with a melody or a chord progression?

Did you mention anything about the stunning vocals? That's what really elevates this piece for me from being a near-generic melancholic tune to something special.

Gothic Necrolord is by far my favourite track. Glad to see Suikoden get recognized

FINALLY music theory from Suikoden!!!

We also see the Ab chord finally get its 7th when the song sets up a resolution to Db in the B section.

YES FINALLY AN EPISODE ON SUIKODEN II !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was just sitting here at my keyboard composing while jonesing for another one of these.

I'm so fast it didn't even load the comment box

So glad to hear someone else say that Dominant 7 chords on their own just aren't pretty. Felt like I was crazy for thinking that for a long time. And yeah the m7 chords don't really convey a sense of sadness as powerfully as just a straight minor triad. My guess is probably because there's a hidden major triad in there.

If this were made in America there would for sure be a Bbm-Gb-Db-Ab progression.

This is the nicest, most polite "the song you guys like is pretty generic" I've ever seen, lol

Part 3 of asking if you could go over the music in chicory: a colorful tale

Do you plan on covering the new Zelda music that came with the new Trailer??

Holy shit I've been loving this soundtrack for the past two years, I listen to it when I do homework all the time!!! Also totally obsessed with the track 'mysterious forest' from suikoden 1 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rs5hq91lt9qRcpc.html

9:06 Can also be heard in some themes from Breath of the Wild

can you analyze suikoden's touching theme next? that piece has got me stumped

Man I need to play these games. The music kinda gives me James Horner vibes, but I couldn't tell you why

I used to play the piano part of this between college classes. Good times

nice

So you threw me off when you talked about the #4 trick, because I was like "what on earth, there's no sharp 4, there's no accidental anywhere." but then when I worked it out on my own I see you meant from the context of the chord and not by the scale. But I would actually criticize contextualizing chords and melodies like this, it makes it much more difficult to look at every interval of the chord. I think it would be much much more helpful to describe this as the IV chord with a top melody moving down from the second degree down to the tonic. This is the age old debate of which is easier and more accurate to describe a sound, in the context of the chord? or by the context of the scale. and I usually support the scale. I would like to add that this movement evokes a relative Lydian sound, which wasn't mentioned. But you're right, this is an absolutely beautiful choice and it is 100% going into my bag of tricks.

I feel like the chord at 8:00 functions more as a C∅7/Gb. It resolves down to Dbmaj7/F

Great, now I'm going to be singing the Suikoden I soundtrack all damn day. I hope you're happy... because I sure as hell am! Gregminster theme slaps. Gambling music slaps. Let's goooooooo.

11:07 WHAT? IMPOSSIBLE! Nothing happens here!

My favorite game ever

It’s so simple and elegant. There’s no excess whatsoever…

Suikoden II is always my best JRPG games of all time.

1:51 Bar 2 is missing a Db in /Ab at the top?

I like you being goofy😂

All hail Miki Higashino, the greatest video game music composer whose first name isn't "Yasunori".

I'd do anything to play Suikoden II because I've heard so many amazing things about it (I've only beat Suikoden III and Suikoden V and they were both amazing.) I've heard Suikoden II is in the league of RPGs like Xenogears, FF7, etc. so the fact I haven't experienced it yet due to its rarity is one of my life's greatest tragedies. (lol jk) Xenogears is still my favorite RPG of all time.

My childhood man

Line cliches aren’t just moving up or down a scale - they can be/include chromatic notes.

Waiting for something by Kajiura Yuki

What a great game.

As a Japanese gamer, my brain keeps glitching every time this game isn't called Gensou Suikoden 2 ... but that's just me being weird.

What is the song at 1:35 and 5:32 ? Tell me who knows please 🙏

Man, anyone can talk about the Mad Luca piece? Honestly?