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If this review reads as an advertisement for preordering NISA products, know that I’m doing it for your sake, not theirs. Importing a two disc soundtrack from Japan is usually an expensive endeavor: $30 minimum. If you don’t mind having a full two disc OST cut down to its most memorable tracks on a single… Read More »

It’s another in the Ar tonelico “Hymmnos Musical” series. Mostly a drama, with some vocal performance tracks strewn throughout. This one focuses on Cocona, a key character who appears as a young girl in AT2 and shows up at another continent, and now “of age,” in AT3. The background music, and the newly added vocal… Read More »

Yggdra Union is apparently a big success for Sting. The game itself is only one entry in the “Dept Heaven” series. Having originally been released on the GBA, then ported to PSP, a number of side games were developed for Japanese-only mobile phone platforms. One of them was upgraded and ported to the DS. That… Read More »

In 2008 Atlus USA released a 50-some track PSP OST for Yggdra Union. It was North America exclusive. I was psyched about that. In 2010, the Japanese publishers saw fit to change that with an official, retail release of the Yggdra Union PSP OST. This one has 60-some tracks. It’s even *more* complete. Great. One… Read More »

I’ve always found Sting games to be fairly decent, with the exception of Baroque. Sting soundtracks, on the other hand, are almost always mediocre; fine to accompany the game, but weak as stand-alone albums. You can draw the parallel to Namco’s Tales series, and much like Tales composer Motoi Sakuraba, Sting’s Shigeki Hayashi has started… Read More »

Sting’s latest PSP title, Blaze Union is a prequel to Yggdra Union. That means Shigeki Hayashi is back. And since it’s PSP and not DS, we don’t have to worry about ugly sound compression problems. Are you ready for sheer awesomeness? I was ready. I was nervous too, however, as Hayashi is quickly becoming Sakuraba-lite… Read More »

I haven’t heard a Shinji Hosoe score in awhile. I’m glad to be listening to one today. In this case, it’s the soundtrack to the horror-themed graphic adventure DS game that Aksys is bringing to North America: 999. Being a horror title, much of the “music” here is tantamount to creepy ambient sound effects and… Read More »

In case you didn’t notice, Koichi Sugiyama loves to work with all manner of different musical ensembles, re-arranging and re-recording the music from the Dragon Quest series. I think there are more ways to arrange DQ music than there are to cook an egg. The new “Wind Ensemble” series is non-string arrangements. In other words,… 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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »