a scrapbook, of sorts

i love that the soundtracks in different areas often have their own unique musical signatures which defines the whole area in my memory. my personal favourites are the harvest counties ('on the greydew coast') and the valley of the hidden dinosaur ('the valley of the dinosaur' and 'the mysterious people of the forgetten legends'). mistfall is a close third place ('the village by the foot of the mountain'). these titles are all real mouthfuls... i also love the original starshine legacy music for nostalgia reasons. epona's soundtrack is kind of basic to me and not memorable, but i also haven't spent a lot of time in that area recently considering i only unlocked it on my new account like.. last week.

i haven't played through wildwood + tailtop village recently, so don't quote me on this, but i feel like mistfall is the last area to release which actually felt like a more grounded real place. those which have come out since lean a lot more heavily into fantasy and perhaps reflect the shifting ideals of the game. irrc the general shift sort of began around the time of mistfall's release? i am enjoying marchenghast for sure, but i've also been replaying the mistfall questline and the place feels so so different and more like other areas my comparison (silverglade, harvest counties, epona, goldenhills etc).

a botanical survey of marchenghast + the dens of nicchus & mahr, because i think it's super neat that they designed unique dens for them and then scattered them through the forest. super fun detail.

this one was tricky because there's so much in marchenghast... so this is by no means exhaustive. it's really no wonder my game is so laggy there. it was actually marchenghast that first got me thinking about this, because as i was riding around i was noticing different recognizable species (eg. oaks, something like a huge hart's tongue fern, brambles with blackberries growing on them, etc).

a botanical survey of mistfall...