Legend of Heroes VI, by all accounts, is Falcom’s new cash cow. With two installments released, a third on the way, and ports available on the PSP, the LoH franchise has been getting some serious loving lately. And, as is the case with everything Falcom, this means the tunes have gotten as much attention as the music-obsessed company can stand to give it. Among their releases was this selection of apparently unused music. I should make note here that this is unused music for Legend of Heroes VI, not for any other Falcom game. It doesn’t say that on the cover, but the silhouettes are of the two main characters from LoH6. Just thought I’d clear that up, it took me the longest time to realize that myself.
So, dealing with the music, we’ve got ourselves a mixed bag of mostly good and solid. I can’t really strike any of it down as being terrible (the exception being “Stars,” twenty-eight seconds of AIIGHH), but there’s a lot of generic material here. That’s probably why this music is unused, it’s compositionally uninspired. Because He’s Father is a fairly good representative of what I mean. It’s decent, if you can look past the fact that you’ve heard it hundreds of times before in some way or another. Estelle Punch is another one, which was probably meant as some sort of battle tune. I like the snare track here, it gives some forward movement that pushes the song beyond modicum and into better waters. Parts of it remind me of Iwadare’s style of pacing the song, but without his level of quality (we’ll ignore Grandia 3). Sadly, despite the fact that it’s solid, there’s just not much to hold the attention.
Mountain Path 2 and Seeking and Being Sought both heavily remind me of Breath of Fire III, which would normally be a good thing except that they would also fit in as incidental background music. They set a mood and don’t do a whole lot more than that. I Am Agatt the Red, however, rises above the others, there’s a lot more going on in this song and keeps the attention much better. There are interesting snare loops inserted here and there that refocus the listener, which helps given the base song isn’t the best ever. Some sections of it are almost Zelda-ish, and generally with them come more Mana-inspired portions. The whole song is a bit of a mish-mash really, and despite being fairly good it never really establishes a style that’s all its own.
A Tempo, unlike the other songs, is a song I really enjoy. It’s very soft and gentle, almost ethereal in nature. It works really well in the background and calms the nerves. There’s at least a dozen styles from other sources that one can pinpoint in here, but it manages to establish its own presence despite that. Still, I can easily see why it was unused. It’s pleasant, I’ll give it that, and I do like it. But there’s just so little meat to dig into.
Unlike the Unpublished Music album that Falcom released for Ys I-II Eternal and LoH IV, this Unused Music album is definitely only meant for collectors. If you can pick it up for really cheap, you might like a song or two from here. Otherwise, I’d avoid it like the plague. It’s a pit of solid, but incredibly disappointing. Thankfully they didn’t include these in the final release of the game!
