Note: regarding the title, we acknowledge that it would make most literal sense to romanize the title as “Kimi no Yuusha,” but the game’s logo comes with its own romanization, so we’ll leave it at that. For those interested in knowing, “Kimo no Yuusha” can be translated as “Your Hero.”
SNK (now SNK Playmore, technically) isn’t exactly known for RPGs. They’re known for fighting games, like the never-ending “King of Fighers” series. But just like how Square Enix is happy to dabble in other genres, SNK Playmore readied themselves for a traditional, console-style RPG. And with it, a full two disc’s worth of music that best fits a traditional RPG. Town, character, exploration, dungeon, and battle themes abound!
Alright, so this musical opus (from VGM newcomer Yoshiaki Hori) has 90 tracks. 90 tracks for 105 minutes of music. Do the math, and we’re averaging a little over a minute per track. Is that accurate? Unfortunately, yes. The average is a little skewed, because this album is decorated with all manner of jingles and fanfares (anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds long).
However, most of the “lengthy” compositions fail to exceed two minutes. In fact, with only one exception, not a single track breaks the three minute mark. Even the staff roll comes in at 2 minutes 50 seconds. The one exception is “Prologue (Extra Version),” and the only reason it’s 10 minutes long is because most of that time is silence to leave space for a hidden track. And, as a matter of fact, that hidden track is actually three different songs placed one after the other. They could’ve just been broken into separate tracks themselves, which would allow the “no exceeding 3 minute” rule to hold.
There were a lot of great musical ideas on this soundtrack, but the fact is that they need to be fleshed out for anyone to enjoy theme. Even a simple “loop them all once” would’ve been nice. But I think Yoshiaki Hori’s problem is that he’s not developing his melodies. Instead, we get these mini-songs that sound great, but go nowhere. This fits the nature of the RPG, which SNK Playmore described as being “casual,” to the point where you could finish individual quests in 30 minutes or less, compared to the multi-hour affairs of major events in large-scale RPGs. Nonetheless…the musical concepts deserve better treatment. An arranged album would be great.
If I had to compare this soundtrack to a contemporary on the market, I would have to go with the new Sting RPGs for GBA and/or PSP: Riviera, Yggdra Union, and now Knights in the Nightmare. This soundtrack isn’t nearly as aggressive as those three, basically because of a lack of electric guitar in favor of “oldschool” synth sounds; but the in-your-face heartrate-increasing rhythms of the music are quite similar. The soundtrack is consistently good. Every single track is worth listening to. But, again, there’s not a lot of meat to each track. This is the one and only downfall of the album, and it’s a big one.
I’m very glad I was notified by a friend of mine about this game’s existence. Though I doubt it has any hopes of coming to North America–though I could be wrong, it is still too early to say at the time of this review’s being written–it’s clear that the music, if nothing else, is above average. I would like to play the game itself, and take in the artwork and the gameplay to see what all SNK is capable of. In the meantime, I’ll stick with this surprisingly good soundtrack to hold me over.
