After reviewing the Dragon Force Original Soundtrack I went on to review the sequel’s soundtrack as well, and while I’ve never played Dragon Force II, everything I’ve ever read about it says that it’s mostly a rehashing of the original with a roster update and some new features. However, one of the big changes was obviously the fact that for the second game they surprisingly decided not to go with composer Tatsuyuki Maeda for the soundtrack. Instead, they enlisted the services of Hayato Matsuo, Kouhei Tanaka, and Takayuki Negishi. So while listening to this particular soundtrack, I imagined how the original Dragon Force might sound with this music while also judging the music on its own merit. That said, this official soundtrack release suffers from a couple of the same drawbacks that the original did, namely tracks not looping and the whole soundtrack being jammed all onto one disk again, which is even more noticeable this time as instead of 24 tracks being put onto one CD, there are 54 tracks on one CD, with each track averaging one minute and twenty-three seconds about. Considering the Opening Theme and Ending Theme are longer than 4 and 5 minutes respectively and that no other track even reaches 3 minutes, you get the idea of how abrupt each song feels when listening. Also, I’m betting that once again a lot of the little musical cues and such were left off this CD, although I’m not certain seeing as I haven’t played the game.
By now, you’re probably wondering how the actual music of the game is. Well, to be honest, it’s almost entirely forgettable. I’ve listened to this soundtrack several times now and I think the only tracks worth mentioning (I guess) are the Opening Theme, Two People, Epilogue 4, and the Ending Theme. Speaking in general about the soundtrack, all of the tracks are very generic sounding and they don’t seem to have any life to them at all, sounding very, very flat. The compositions tend to be minimalist and they slowly evolve but never seem to develop into anything memorable or noteworthy, leaving my ears completely bored.
I was so completely disappointed with this soundtrack I don’t even have many words to describe it, sadly. It lacks the kind of brilliant vivacity that the original tracks had, using the same sound samples over and over in a method that I’m sure only the composers and arrangers were excited by. I imagine this soundtrack is hard to find, and unlike the original, there has been no Complete Album re-release featuring extended tracks or minor tracks, which, as I said before, I’m not sure of minor tracks even existing. Even if there was a re-release, the question I ask is ‘Who would want it?’ The bulk of the work here, as stated, is dull and decidedly subdued, and I can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone in fear of them being bored to tears and hating me forever.
