As an exercise in the use of hard hitting and rather complex synth beats to capture the feel of a full blown electronic album, the Majin Tensei 2 soundtrack is rather good. Not being a huge fan of excessive use of synth, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the normally dull beats as they wrapped themselves around a central tune or theme in varying ways throughout a single song. That’s not to say there aren’t tracks (Special Thanks For … You, A Manii Foreigner, My Pretty Sister, and so on) that will try as hard as they can to make it obvious to you that this soundtrack is destined for midis. Nevertheless, one will still find dozens of graceful melodies and heart-pumping beats. A piano track is often used in the songs, as well, which adds a graceful compliment to electronic beats and noises.
The lengths of the songs are generally excessively short (forty eight seconds for “Desolate City” is nowhere near enough…) but considering that it is essentially the same 2-3 second rhythm, it may have been best in the end to keep them short, lest it be looped to the point of tediousness. You will see a more respectable three to four minutes plus on a quarter or so of the tracks, although those aren’t necessarily the tracks that should be four minutes long. Still, with forty songs you get a decent sized album. The packaging isn’t spectacular, but contains a fair amount of text in the liner notes on the composers, a paragraph or so on each of the songs, and a few photos and artwork (by Kagami, not Kaneko, unfortunately).
Anyone looking for a excellent example of the use of techno soundtracks in the pre-32 bit era, I highly suggest you look into this one (this collection stands as a pinnacle of sorts for SNES-era Megami Tensei music as Majin Tensei II was the second to last MegaTen game released on the system, with the lower-profile Last Bible 3 following half a month later).
