NIS America is always happy to please the consumer. Mana Khemia 2, following NIS America’s tradition with releasing games from Gust, comes with a bonus one disc soundtrack packaged inside the double-sized cardboard box.
Now, the full soundtrack (which you’d have to import from Japan, as it’s published by Team Entertainment) covers two discs. NIS America takes that full soundtrack and distills it, finding the most memorable and most enjoyable tunes from those two discs, and selects them for a single disc. It’s par for the course at NISA, and Atlus, and a host of other publishers that release these “best of” bonus soundtracks. In this sense, NISA did a great job with this particular release: the music chosen here really presents Nakagawa and Achiwa’s latest collaborative effort in the most positive light possible.
That said, the music to the game itself is a little lackluster, compared to Gust Sound Team’s past works. And not every track, no. Some tracks do shine: in particular, the battle themes are really strong. I think it might be time SSH gets back on board to do another Atelier guitar-rock arrange album, focusing on Mana Khemia 2. There is also some great usage of piano throughout the album: I specifically noticed this on tracks 17 and 26. Finally, like I said earlier, NISA did pick the best tracks, so on this particular CD you will have to be paying attention to find the “filler” music. But there definitely are some character and event themes that exist purely as novelties, and do not hold up well to scrutiny because of either uninspired melody or poor choice in instrumentation.
It is this reviewer’s personal opinion that you won’t go wrong in choosing to purchase this game, unless you absolutely loathe “oldschool” turn-based RPGs. The soundtrack is one more bit of incentive, and it really is a great “best of” album. I usually prefer having the whole OST, but in this particular case, I think music collectors are just as well off with this one disc “best of” than with the full OST from Japan.
