Archives

It’s SaGa. It’s in orchestral form. It’s Orchestral SaGa! Strangely enough, this single CD is not an audio-only reissue of the Blu-ray Orchestral SaGa Live Disc. In fact, Orchestral SaGa is no reissue at all, given it was published four months prior to the Live Disc Blu-ray. While it has significantly less content (50-minute CD… Read More »

Alright, people, Let’s GO! This Pokémon remake is the most extensive and far-reaching of any to date, taking the original titles from the first generation, spinning it to its Pokémon Yellow variant in Let’s Go, Pikachu!, and adding a new pairing with Let’s Go, Eevee! For more information about the nature of the games themselves,… Read More »

The Tunic Original Soundtrack is pinnacle chill. This score from Terence Lee (aka “Lifeformed”) and Janice Kwan brought the perfect aesthetic touch to the colorful indie darling game Tunic. This game has many Zelda-esque traits, intentionally so, but the soundtrack is a clear departure from the Koji Kondo repertoire. And yet… if you’ll indulge me,… Read More »

It is no small feat to build a cohesive musical framework for a long-running series, especially when there is no guarantee from the outset that any given series will live a long life. By now, of course, it’s obvious that Pokémon isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The 7th-gen flagship title, Pokémon Sun & Moon, demonstrated… Read More »

In 2015, SuperSweep published Masaya Game Music Collection Vol.1 ~Langrisser I•II•III~, a fantastic six-CD collection of classic music from a small yet beloved Japanese RPG franchise. In 2018, SuperSweep doubled down on this formula with Glory of Heracles Sound Chronicle. The Glory of Heracles JRPG series, created by the long-defunct Data East, hasn’t even known… Read More »

Kentucky Route Zero’s wispy daydreams flicker with black and white fragments echoed through time. There’s a rhythm and a logic to the acclaimed game, but it doesn’t quite adhere to our spacetime continuum as our collective reality is refracted through prisms to the point of only faint recognition. Signposts fade away and we’re all left… Read More »

Whether you love him, loathe him, or tend to ignore mainstream music, you should check out Ed Sheeran’s “Celestial” if you love game music. Why? Because this new single has been confirmed as a theme song for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet! You know, the ninth generation flagship Pokémon title? It’s all very exciting. But first,… Read More »

First released as a special edition bonus CD in Japan for purchasing Collection of SaGa, this five-track EP got an enhanced digital version with a sixth track tagged on for good measure. Before delving into this short album’s content, I urge even the most ardent collector of physical media to consider going digital-only with this… Read More »

Ghost Song is a haunting, atmospheric “Metroidvania” style game that was nearly a decade in the making. During the long development cycle, the original composer slated to work on the title (Roger “rekcahdam” Hicks) stepped away—as he too is in a long development cycle for his crowdfunded roguelike game Band Saga. In his place, newcomer… Read More »

The renaissance of great arranged albums from Square Enix has been quite the boon for fans like myself. If there is any one franchise that has benefited most, at least so far, it has to be the SaGa series. In the past decade, there have been half a dozen rock albums, nearly as many orchestra albums, the… Read More »

Sweet Home is one of the most influential horror games of all time. Released in 1989 in Japan, it was based on a film of the same name. The elements in this game turn out to be a huge reason Resident Evil exists. In fact, Resident Evil was originally going to be a Sweet Home… Read More »

In 2016, The Pokémon Company (through distributor Overlap) published Pokémon Red·Green Super Music Collection. This album is a compilation of Game Boy Sound of “Pokémon” Will All Come In And Play CD (the OST to Red/Green) and GBA Pokémon Firered & Leafgreen Music Super Complete. And by compilation, I mean complete reissues of both albums in one package. The first… Read More »

Final Fantasy V exists in an almost mystical place in my mind. It was noticeably absent between IV and VI in the West, and it, along with III, felt like whispers in the wind. However, Final Fantasy V would leave its mark on the series in many meaningful ways, not the least of which was… Read More »

Hush Hush – Only Your Love Can Save Them is the latest dating sim/visual novel from developer Sad Panda Studios and serves as a follow-up to their breakout 2016 hit Crush Crush. This newest entry came into being through a crowdfunding campaign, and the noticeable result of this added funding was more and higher quality… Read More »

It has been six years since the release of Zero Time Dilemma, the third and presumably final game in the Zero Escape trilogy. While many players were disappointed with this last entry compared to predecessors Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue’s Last Reward, Shinji Hosoe’s masterful compositions helped ZTD to maintain the haunting, percussion-driven soundscape of past entries. Time passed after Zero Time Dilemma‘s… Read More »

I can hardly believe it. The LIVE A LIVE HD-2D remake exists, and it’s everything I could have wanted (and then some)! Teaming with Square Enix, composer Yoko Shimomura oversaw the production of the LIVE A LIVE HD-2D Remake Original Soundtrack, featuring a team of ten arrangers and over 90 musicians to build a musical… Read More »

I was over the moon when news first broke that NieR was getting an HD remaster with additional content. I loved the original game and said as much at time of release. But critique of the game for dated graphics, obtuse and clunky mechanics, and the choice to only port the Gestalt version of the… Read More »

Music was an essential part of what made Horizon Zero Dawn so special to me. The game didn’t just look great, run well, have a good story, and star a fantastic leading lady; it also had a gorgeous, atmospheric soundtrack that immediately stood out from practically the first cutscene to the ending credits. Hearing that… Read More »

Final Fantasy VI (FFVI) has become a nigh game of legend in the RPG community. Longtime, die-hard fans who have loved the franchise since its origins often tout the sixth entry as the series’s peak. Whether you agree or disagree, the fact remains that the game is incredible and iconic. Big names like Sakaguchi, Kitase, Ito,… Read More »

NORCO’s pixelated, Southern Gothic dystopia offers a regional aesthetic imprint that seemingly hasn’t been touched in gaming before. Those initiated to the region know there’s something in the water in pockets of the Deep South, a mystic presence that’s less objective than it is intuitive. It’s a creeping feeling, a sentiment sensed with every inhale… Read More »

Final Fantasy IV is one of, if not the most, important game in the series. It established Square Enix’s franchise into what it would ultimately become. The original Final Fantasy could be seen as more of a Dragon Quest knock-off, with Final Fantasy II and III being very experimental in nature, but it was IV… Read More »

The music for the entire NieR series should be described as nothing less than legendary. Every single song written by composer Keiichi Okabe is filled with passion and love and has an identity all of its own. Anyone who knows the soundtracks, though, knows the vocal tracks stand out the most as a true highlight.… Read More »

When all my news and social media feeds blew up with praise about the music in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster titles, I falsely assumed that these would be amped-up chiptune arrangements. After all, if the goal of these remasters was to make a sort of high-definition experience of the original pixelated games, wouldn’t the… Read More »

Considering how ornate his music has become over the series, it’s easy to forget, Nobuo Uematsu is no trained maestro. The Final Fantasy series’ signature composer taught himself how to play music, and by his own account, he is not great at reading or scoring in the traditional sense. From interviews, I get the idea… Read More »

I went into the Triangle Strategy Original Soundtrack with a mess of confusing, mutually exclusive musical expectations. Seeing the HD-2D art style in full effect, my early expectation and desire was that Octopath Traveler composer Yasunori Nishiki would be working on this title. Nope! Another part of me thought, perhaps Square Enix would go all-out… Read More »