I don’t think I’ve ever been overly pleased when a series replaces its musician with someone else. For instance, didn’t care as much for the Xenosaga II OST as I did for the first, although it wasn’t bad. Didn’t really take too kindly to the FF X-2 soundtrack, though I didn’t particularly hate it.
But damn it, Langrisser Millenium takes the cake. Not only did the entire design team from the excellent Langrisser series get replaced, making the gameplay a piece of ass (in the negative sense), but they replaced the musician, Nobuyuki effin’ Iwadare, with someone who has a tenth of the talent. I mean, this album isn’t horrible, but it is two discs worth of greatly unremarkable music that is often repetitive.
Going down the line of tracks, we can group them:
Strategy pieces are all bass beat ghetto thumpers, Event themes are all harpsichord airy numbers, and Battle Map themes are all fast-paced techno tracks. If you get past these midbosses, you get to the final battle of the album, which is called Battle with Libras, which is a rather mediocre boss theme.
Eventually, you’ll get to the epilogue tracks which are all bell numbers that are okay, but nothing impressive. Fortunately, the vocal number, Pigeon, isn’t bad, is sung well, and is kinda catchy in a Japanese R&B way. On the downside, after Pigeon, the rest of the first disc is so called “bonus” tracks, which are boring, with the exception of the last one, an ethereal piano piece. Aren’t bonuses supposed to be a good thing?
Disc 2 is where we get to the arranged part of the album, and I must say there are a fairly large number of tracks on it (13 to be exact). But just a note to Mr. Hisaho, the composer of the album: not everything has to have a fast-paced techno backbeat! If this was a dance album the remixes might fit better, but it would still make for a rather ho-hum collection of music. Might work as a DDR soundtrack, though.
There are a few tracks on the second disc that I did appreciate, though I emphasize the word few. Fight a Battle Against Libras was decent for its slightly trippy, techno, Matrix-esque sound, as does Theme of Nei, although the techno bass backbeat can get a bit annoying. Theme of Lumatie is okay, but the collaboration of fast techno and synth violin just don’t do it for me.
Fortunately, there is one track in the second disc that I really groove on, and that is Title Reprise. The lonely acoustic guitar backed by ambient synth is a secret weakness of mine, and it is done well here.
While Langrisser Millenium OST isn’t a terrible soundtrack, with most of the tracks being mediocre and the handful of good ones being very techno-jungle oriented, I can’t say that it was worth the 30 bucks I picked it up for. I wouldn’t recommend this to most people, but listen to the tracks and decide for yourself.
