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The soundtrack to the sequel to Luminous Arc features a great collection of music from a great group of composers. The staff is made up of many ex-Capcom members, including: Yoko Shimomura, who is better known for her work with Square, but also worked with Capcom early on; Yoshino Aoki, who composed music for Breath… Read More »

I tend not to expect too much from the music of handheld games, but when video game music lovers hear the name Yuzo Koshiro it’s hard not to get at least a little bit excited because of all the great work he has done on series’ in the past, such as Ys, Streets of Rage,… Read More »

Arrange albums are very largely hit or miss, with some albums taking the conservative “updated sound patches” approach where you essentially get the same soundtrack with slightly better sound patches, and others going the “I’m-going-to-mix-this-until-you-don’t-even-know-what-the-source-material-is” route. Sekaiju no MeiQ is definitely more of the former, but also has a couple vocal tracks, and no Engrish!… Read More »

This is it. This is the album I’ve been waiting for. Norihiko Hibino arranging the work of Yuzo Koshiro? It’s like the glory days of Falcom all over again. Heck, they’re even using the term “Super Arrange Version.” The “Piano and Strings” title is deceiving. Yes, for the most part it is piano and bowed… Read More »

Etrian Odyssey is very much a “love it or hate it” sort of game. Sometimes it could be ridiculously cruel and most of the time it was entirely rewarding. Unquestionably, however, the first game had a stellar soundtrack that thankfully was not tiring to listen to even when you visited that one particular stratum for… Read More »

Mixed emotions. That’s really the term I’d use to describe the Etrian Odyssey 2 Super Arrange Version. On the one hand the main stratum themes are absolutely gorgeous. On the other hand… there’s some real musical butchery going on here. And that butchery is named Jeff Curry. I don’t know who he is, I don’t… Read More »

Note: our normal sample policy is to do 5 tracks sampled at one minute each. There is such a strong diversity of music on this album, we decided to sample 8 tracks at 40 seconds each. And now, the review… I. Love. Masashi. Hamauzu. Yes, Hamauzu had a couple of flops in years past, including… Read More »

The World Ends With You was a drastic, but excellent departure for Square Enix. So with this in mind, they chose Takeharu Ishimoto to do the music for the game (who also did the music for Crisis Core) since he is a newcomer on the rise. I was a fan of what he did with… Read More »

I probably shouldn’t be reviewing this soundtrack. But I can’t help myself. Dracula X Chronicles was released in Japan and North America for PSP. On it was a new, 3D version of Rondo of Blood, an action-oriented, stage-based Castlevania from over a decade ago. It is not, in any way, an RPG. However, in the… Read More »

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen some DJs and remix artists take hold of some Final Fantasy music and get it published with Square’s sanction. Last time we saw it, really, was with an album called “Final Fantasy Mix.” A lot of people didn’t like it. Now, over a decade later, we get “Final Fantasy… Read More »

Note: the ten “bonus tracks” are unlisted on the tracklist, and hence don’t have official titles. Jeremy Soule is a legend among game composers. Along with being one of the first (and only) Western composers to bridge the East/West gap with his score to “Secret of Evermore,” Soule has written music for many of the… Read More »

Hideaki Kobayashi has been doing the Phantasy Star series since PSO first hit the market a decade ago. Now, we have our first expansion to Phantasy Star Universe, a spiritual successor to Online. “Ambition of the Illuminus” has a score that, as far as we know, was solely composed by Kobayashi-san (though technically, the liner… Read More »

Arranged video game soundtracks, still a fairly niche genre of music, are meant to improve upon already solid musical ideas within the original game’s music. Second Evolution’s arranged album breaks this cardinal rule. None of the songs sound all that different and almost none are improved. In fact some are made worse. “Stab the Sword… Read More »

While Star Ocean: Second Evolution’s soundtrack is not the massive overhaul and improvement that First Departure was, it is still a decent collection in its own right. The set may not be worthwhile to those own the original soundtrack from the PlayStation version. The new opening song “START” by the schoolgirl J-rock band SCANDAL is… Read More »

We’re finally getting some arranged albums for the Tales series. After a rock-band-style battle arrange album, we get a piano solo album arranged and performed by Sakuraba himself. How is it? Well…that depends on how you like your piano. In this case, the piano has been overcooked by Sakuraba. It seems to me that there… Read More »

Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall started their own tour of live VGM performances called “Video Games Live” around the same time that Arnie Roth and crew started “PLAY!”. They keep a friendly, healthy rivalry going by joking about each others’ performance styles. One thing we can say for sure: Tallarico likes to have fun. He… Read More »

Welcome to Dragon Quest in Brass II! The “in Brass” series features a traditional, high school band setup. It’s a full symphony orchestra minus one section: strings. So you have the brass, but you also have woodwind and percussion. Those are the nature of these albums. These arrangements essentially force the brass and winds to… Read More »

There have been other “Best” DQ Symphonic albums in the past, such as the Roto and Tenku albums. This two-part collection contains music for Dragon Quest I through VII, and is from the London Philharmonic recordings. Other than the Overture (which they pulled from DQVII), we find the track ordering by title number. We literally… Read More »

It’s hard to take the incredible music from the Dragon Quest series and make a “best of” collection that fits in one disc (about 70 minutes) of music. So when they made a follow-up album a year later, they went for a two disc set. Not a bad decision. These two discs are from the… Read More »

Performed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Brass Quintet (a subsection of the larger Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra that has recorded the most recent batch of DQ albums), Brass Quintet Dragon Quest contains a variety of songs from Dragon Quest I through VIII. The key to this album’s greatness? Extremely difficult arrangements performed with stellar execution by the… Read More »

Well, the Tokyo Metropolitan Brass Quintet, who put out one of the best Dragon Quest arranged albums of all time, decided to do a follow-up. This time, they included a guest percussionist for certain songs, and even re-recorded some tracks that they wanted to improve upon from last time (such as “Comrades” from DQIV). If… Read More »

Recorded and published in 1994, this live concert covered a selection of songs from Dragon Quests I through V (with the most emphasis being put on V). The arrangements are usually the same as those applied to the “Symphonic Suite” albums, though I did notice a few differences, particularly with solos (and solo instruments) chosen… Read More »

The sequel to Dragon Quest in Concert is a live performance from the NHK Orchestra with music from Dragon Quest I, II, and III. Released in 1988, it was the first orchestra recording to contain a collection of music from the entire Roto trilogy on one disc. Tracks 1 through 9 cover Dragon Quest I… Read More »

This is a special collection of Dragon Quest music arranged for brass and performed by “Cincinnati Brass and Percussion.” The music was arranged by Sam Pilafian, who teaches at Arizona State University (as of the time this review was written) and was a founding member of the Empire Brass Quintet. Koichi Sugiyama has done a… Read More »

Ahh, the Electone. A simple, synthesized orchestra sound. Sugiyama and crew stopped releasing these albums after Dragon Quest VI, likely due to their lack of popularity. But once upon a time, they were part of the standard Dragon Quest music release schedule. They were the closest thing to an “OST” that you would get. And… Read More »