Archives

The Last Ranker Piano Trio Arrange album, arranged by Hironori Osone and Ayako Ishikawa and featuring the performances of Yuka Narita and Ayano Kasahara, comes right on the heels of Yoko Shimomura’s excellent original soundtrack. It offers arrangements that incorporate violin, piano, and cello, and was included as a preorder bonus for the game. It… Read More »

With the recent realization that Motoi Sakuraba may be tapped musically, I began to worry that the proliferation of Yoko Shimomura these days may have had her on the same road to repetition and ho-hummery. And while to some degree her sound is becoming quite familiar (and is instantly recognizable in her work, much like… Read More »

Sega is definitely investing in their new “Valkyria Chronicles” franchise. Not long after the PS3 sleeper hit Strategy RPG was released, a TV anime was launched, a PSP sequel was published, and now a third game in the series (also PSP) is in the works. This albums contains a collection of vocal themes from the… Read More »

Word is that Final Fantasy XIV got started on the wrong foot. It was rushed to release, and that’s always bad news. But perhaps, just perhaps, the game can be understood as being in an “extended” beta, with the true release coinciding with, say, its entrance to the PS3 platform. Case in point: the full… Read More »

Word is that Final Fantasy XIV got started on the wrong foot. It was rushed to release, and that’s always bad news. But perhaps, just perhaps, the game can be understood as being in an “extended” beta, with the true release coinciding with, say, its entrance to the PS3 platform. Case in point: the full… Read More »

Welcome to a crash-course in the most successful “spin-off” ever in the realm of JRPGs. The Persona series is a cousin to the main Shin Megami Tensei series. The 3rd and 4th entries in that series (both for PS2) have proven to be wildly popular on both sides of the Pacific. This success is, at… Read More »

Like Vol.2, SE Battle Tracks Vol.3 doesn’t deserve a lot of time or attention. The best thing about the album is probably its cover art. PS1 memory card is made of win. Square Enix put out Vol.1 of this series years ago. I personally thought they wouldn’t keep it going. But they did. We’re still… Read More »

This doesn’t deserve a lot of time or attention. Square Enix put out Vol.1 of this series years ago. I personally thought they wouldn’t keep it going. But they did. We’re still only working the “Square” side of Square Enix. And some of this battle music is actually more like “environment” music. But whatever. The… Read More »

I know many people regret the fact that Danny Elfman stepped away from the Fable franchise after working on the first game. I’m also sympathetic to gamers who have said that Russell Shaw couldn’t possibly take Elfman’s place in writing “main themes” instead of mere “BGM.” Newsflash, y’all! Russell Shaw, though he has had some… Read More »

Tenpei Sato brings us Antiphona, a non-Disgaea-ish soundtrack. It’s about time, dag nabbit! There’s only so much awesome Halloween-y music I can take. Antiphona is part of the Marl’s Kingdom (Rhapsody) series; and though this series is known for having an emphasis on music, particularly vocal performance, to date no retail soundtrack release has come… Read More »

Years ago I wrote a review for the original print of this album, a rarity from Gust themselves: “hopefully someday Team Entertainment will make a reprint that increases the soundtrack’s availability.” Dear universe: you’re welcome. My predictions come true. Well, actually, Gust and TE did us one better. Gust ported Atelier Judie to PSP, with… Read More »

Blue Forest Story ~Seal of Wind~ is a Japanese RPG originally released on the 3DO and later ported to the PlayStation, albeit with a slightly altered opening. That’s about all I know about the game, as it was a fairly obscure title on both sides of the pond. But that does not really matter when… Read More »

To date, the Volkslied album series has been an outright weird mix of vocal tracks. The concept is to take instrumental tracks from previous Atelier games (including the Mana-Khemia titles) and add vocals. Sometimes the result is fantastic. Often, the result is mediocre. In the case of Volkslied 3, there are some truly enjoyable tracks.… Read More »

So Nintendo and Square team up to make Super Mario RPG back in the day. But they weren’t the only ones to take a totally not-RPG-ish franchise and create an RPG. We must not forget about Konami’s Twinbee RPG, after all. “Twinbee” was a decent “shmup”-style series from Konami, like Gradius, Darius, etc. Cute girls… Read More »

Composer Phil Hamilton, head of Deadly Sin Studios, is an up-and-coming composer using his Deadly Sin series of indie RPGs as a vehicle for his music. Although I was not particularly fond of the first Deadly Sin game, its music was easily the best aspect. The second Deadly Sin game surpassed the first in all… Read More »

I picked up the character song album for Death Connection (a PS2 Otome Visual Novel from Idea Factory) because I enjoyed the OST, written by Yuki Sugiura. Of course, I should have noticed that the character vocal themes were in no way associated with Sugiura’s work. Silly me. So the disc has seven songs, and… Read More »

I always approach remixes with cautious optimism, although said policy has often led to disappointment in the past. Remixes often are bittersweet affairs for me; some of my favorite pieces of music having excellent complements to their existing composition, but more often than not, beloved songs are mutilated by poor focus, turned into a cacophony… Read More »

I’ve long held the belief that Motoi Sakuraba has had diminishing returns in terms of his musical output due to being tapped for nearly every entry of the Tales series. Considering that the Tales series has been known to push out at least two or three games per year, it’s expected that at some point… Read More »

Suikoden Tierkreis was a game that was blessed with an excellent soundtrack that offered music that combined the traditional songs of the series with new melodies to reflect the unique setting of the game. It made for a refreshing soundtrack, as one song would pull you in and remind listeners that this is much like… Read More »

For those of you who have read my review of the first Arrange Collection, you probably know that I enjoyed the album and have been really excited for the second. So without additional preamble, let’s dig in. The theme of this second volume is, unsurprisingly, Celtic and Asian renditions of some of the most famous… Read More »

The intentional retro soundtracks continue to thrive, and this Classic Dungeon is really going to knock your socks off. If you liked Sekaiju no MeiQ (Etrian Odyssey) or the Dark Spire, you’re gonna love this. Like the aforementioned titles, this soundtrack comes in two equal parts. In the first part (in this case, the first… Read More »

Arc Rise Fantasia is, at first glance, a generic JRPG that could not be less inspired if it tried—which isn’t a bad thing, considering the game is greater than the sum of its parts, though the horrors of the English dubbing tarnish its image a fair bit. However, taking a glance at the composers the… Read More »

Who is Benyamin Nuss? He’s a young, prodigy pianist that has been performing concerts in conjunction with the WDR Radio Orchestra in Germany for a few years. He’s also an avid gamer and a big game music fan. Who is “Uematsu?” Well you had better know; Nobuo Uematsu is the composer of the vast majority… Read More »

I’m going to keep this short and sweet. I could easily ramble on for pages and pages about this recording, but I won’t. The music speaks for itself. First of all, this is the best game music arranged album of 2010. It may be the best in years, with the only things rivaling it being… Read More »

Note: If you want to know about the songs themselves, please refer to the full OST review. This will cover the selections XSEED made for the domestic release. With the recent release of Ys SEVEN in North America, XSEED offered Ys fans the choice of purchasing a collector’s edition. It includes an artbook covering three… Read More »