When thinking of this diverse collection, I have mixed thoughts and feelings. Every disc is different, and I have my own opinion on each one.
The first disc, vocal…well, I’d already heard all these vocals on Falcom Vocal Collection I, which I had owned for months before this one, so I didn’t really care for this disc. I never liked many of these vocals anyway. Track one is the best of all of them…Using the same melody for two different-languaged tracks for track 2 and track 5 was really cheap on Falcom’s part.
I never owned JDK Band 1 or 2, but I assume they sound like the second disc: HEAVY METAL. My favorite track is track 3, because it’s instrumental. The vocals just don’t suit my taste at all. They don’t sound heavy metal, they sound wannabe metal. But the instrumental parts of each song are simply the best. It’s quintessential Falcom hard rock.
The New Age disc is absolutely the best. I thought these tracks were better than Fujisawa’s PrePrimer CD, and that’s saying something. Departure at Sunrise is really, mmm…It’s just SO good! It’s easily the best disc on here. Be SURE to check out these samples.
The Ys “Heaven’s Sanctuary Perfect Collection” Anime soundtracks are technically arrangements to the original Ys anime. Disc 4 of this set is the actual OST…Though, it does have some crazy stuff going on in it. There are spoken voices at the beginning of some tracks, perhaps to get a feel of when the music played in the show. I couldn’t tell ya. But when I can tell ya is that if you’re looking for some fresh arrangements to the always-milked Ys music, here it is. There’s some synth, there’s some real instrument, it’s all pretty good, but nothing extraordinary.
The real rip-off of this set is the track time. It LOOKS good to have four discs right? What if I told you that three of the four are a mere twenty minutes in length, able to fit three of the four on one disc?!? Yeah, it sounds upsetting, because it is. I don’t know what the point was of wasting that kind of space, but Falcom must’ve felt like it was a good idea. So watch on the price for this one if you find it, it really isn’t worth like $80 or anything.
Look for it on eBay, and try not to pay any more than $50. This one was a personal letdown for me, but maybe my expectations were too high. I always liked the front cover, I thought the music would be as cool. Except for disc 3, however, it wasn’t that “Special”. Look for ’92 or ’94, they’re much better.
