Japanese gamers who bought Atelier Ayesha directly via the Gust Shop received a special CD/DVD combo Atelier Ayesha Recollection Archives. The DVD has video footage and other data; for review purposes, we’ll be talking about the CD specifically.
The 30 minute bonus album has two collections of music. In the first half, additional tracks written for Atelier Meruru‘s downloadable content add-ons are presented. In the second half, unused tracks from Ayesha are found.
It’s a shame that some of those alternate version tracks from Ayesha didn’t make it into the game. Specifically, the Bouzouki Lead version of “Gnome” sounds fantastic. Gust studio session instrumentalist Dani (guitar, bass, etc) does a great job with the bouzouki on this track.
Back to Meruru, though. The “FJ” (special attack) music for the three DLC characters are really good, but like all these songs, they are hard to appreciate when they are only 30 seconds in length. The new arrangement of “Terminus” (originally from Atelier Totori) is fantastic, and this track “Alas de Luz,” I don’t know what the deal is with it, but it’s a good one. It’s a piano-driven dance-rock battle theme—that’s my kind of music.
Compared to the Japanese bonus albums for the Arland trilogy, this isn’t quite as good, but there is certainly some interesting stuff to be found on here. Let’s hope some, if not all, of it comes when NIS America publishes Atelier Ayesha in North America.
