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Ikenfell is a collage of elements seemingly calibrated to appeal to my inner child. It’s a turn-based JRPG with timed button presses during combat. Its setting is a seemingly idyllic magical school that hides dark secrets. Its simple but striking character designs would be perfectly at home in a modern Saturday morning cartoon. Ikenfell’s setting… Read More »

Some of the very best music lends itself to interpretation again and again. It evolves over time without ever really losing anything. Romantic era composers often took inspiration from older folk tunes in their work, and even if they did not adhere closely to the structure of the classical music that came before, their work… Read More »

“Transient” feels like a pretty perfect word to describe the music of NieR. This might sound strange, but I challenge you to listen to even one song from the game and tell me there’s not something ephemeral about the music. Every track on both the NieR and NieR: Automata soundtracks have this ethereal quality, where… Read More »

Dreamscaper is a dream-delving, monster-slaying, character-building, friend-making action RPG/rogue-lite, and it is a heck of a thing. The main story follows Cassidy, an enigmatic young woman who lives alone and seems to be dealing with some serious baggage. By night, she journeys into her subconscious to face monstrous manifestations of her own personal demons. By… Read More »

Over the past decade, it’s been great fun to see established visionaries in the Japanese video game industry try their hand at mobile RPGs. It’s fascinating to see industry creatives adapt their design sensibilities to a medium centered on shorter, more focused gameplay loops. In 2017, Wright Flyer Studios released Another Eden: The Cat Beyond… Read More »

Materia Collective’s description of Parallelus is that the album contains “vibrant, lush reimaginings of the music of Chrono Cross,” and for fans of Yasunori Mitsuda’s incredible work on Chrono Cross, that’s all you really need to know. There, the review’s over; go pick it up at your local digital storefront. Okay, you’re right, that isn’t… Read More »

One may think that after the release of 2016’s Chronicles of Time — a massive 81-track, 6-hour musical collaboration — there was no more room for a giant Chrono Trigger tribute album, because what more could we need? One would, of course, be wrong. Enter EPOCH: A Tribute to Chrono Trigger. Featuring 60 tracks, clocking in at over 3.5 hours,… Read More »

Over the past five years, Square Enix’s music division has added a new product line to their commercial items: live music concerts, recorded and released on Blu-ray. Other publishers have been doing this for decades, even on VHS cassette. Having a high-fidelity format to work with and facing increased interest, Square Enix first dipped its… Read More »

Understanding the lore of Kingdom Hearts can be overwhelming, depending on how deep a dive you want to take. Even with just a cursory look at the main entries in the trilogy, you can come away with many legitimate arguments about the central theme of the Sora and pals vs. Xehanort saga. But if there… Read More »

The always pleasant Square Enix Jazz series, overseen and (largely) performed by skilled jazz brass duo Eijiro Nakagawa and Ryu Kawamura, is back with a timely addition to the group. The first volume covered titles from the Final Fantasy series, Volume 2 branched out into the entire Square Enix catalogue with some surprising selections, and… Read More »

When Square Enix Music knows they have a good thing, they tend not to let up on it. Exhibit A: NieR. Exhibit B: Octopath Traveler. Within months of the first arrange album’s release, Square Enix decided to double down by releasing this follow-up album of additional arranged material, which would later be incorporated in a… Read More »

“When listening to this soundtrack, I suggest you imagine being with the characters and crew on a ship ready to set sail for an adventure to uncover what lies beyond the horizon.” -Rieko Kodama, producer, liner notes for Skies of Arcadia Eternal Soundtrack Vinyl Edition The sound team working on Skies of Arcadia clearly knew… Read More »

Sean Schafianski has been producing some incredible arranged content in the past few years, including some jazz albums for the first NieR title. With Chamber Works –NieR Automata–, Sean begins a line of new “Chamber Works” arrange albums. I noted in my review of the NieR Orchestral Arrangement Special Box Edition that the most interesting… Read More »

Panzer Dragoon Saga is an iconic SEGA Saturn RPG that is often hailed as the best game you’ve never played or will ever play. Though it is a staple on RPG bucket lists for most people around my age, any hope for a remaster, rerelease, or any other sort of resurrection has long been dashed… Read More »

Another mobile title in the SaGa series? I was hoping Imperial SaGa would be the end of it, but here we are with a Romancing SaGa-specific title, “Re;univerSe.” The fanboy in me would love to play it — the realist in me recognizes the exceedingly low probability that this game would be localized. Does the… Read More »

If there was ever a game soundtrack that deserved a 16-bit arrangement album, it is Octopath Traveler. Square Enix’s love letter to the classics looks and feels just like a JRPG from the mid-1990s, so why not give it a soundtrack that matches that era? Yasunori Nishiki’s outstanding score is already being celebrated in the… Read More »

“You feel the foreboding, too? Don’t worry, it will be all right.”– Schala, from Chrono Trigger (Orchestral Arrangement Review) “Time, which has been divided, will be unified again now.”– Schala, from Chrono Cross (Orchestral Arrangement Review) In a surprise move that pleased many fans, Square Enix announced a Chrono orchestral concert tour in Japan earlier… Read More »

Those of us who came of age during the 16-bit era of JRPGs fondly remember Chrono Trigger as a perennial favorite. One of the most enduring components of Chrono Trigger is its sublime soundtrack. Even with the SNES’s limited sound capabilities, the entrancing music sounded majestic and just plain epic to our ears. So it… Read More »

Serge stands alone in a failing attempt to numb himself. He has decided to abandon Kid, who lies wracked with pain from the lethal toxin that spreads throughout her body. Kid saved their lives and yet, when she needs him the most, Serge runs away. Was he having a panic attack? Does he mean to… Read More »

We at RPGFan pride ourselves on our great music coverage. But what about the truly “unsung” hero of game audio: sound effects? Listening to 99 of them back-to-back is not a particularly enjoyable experience. But when timed properly with their visual counterparts, sound effects make a turn-based RPG come to life. To that end, this… Read More »

There may be some among the collective RPG fandom who were unaware of Indivisible, the beautiful RPG with Valkyrie Profile-esque mechanics and a penchant for Southeast Asian culture and mythology, developed by Lab Zero Games, the creators of celebrated 2D Fighter Skullgirls. If that’s you, might I recommend you start by catching up on the… Read More »

Okay, folks, hear me out. It is not typical for us to review the soundtrack for a live stage play. We have written reviews for films based on RPGs (such as FFVII Advent Children), but a stage play? Think of all the Sakura Wars albums out there to review! Here is what makes this particular… Read More »

I had no idea what to make of West of Loathing when it sauntered onto the scene in August 2017. I was only passingly familiar with its spiritual successor, Kingdom of Loathing, and the advance press never managed to pique my interest. Luckily, the overwhelming number of positive reviews persuaded me to give it a… Read More »

I recently mused in my review of the Timespinner soundtrack that some of the best soundtracks do not bother exploring uncharted territory; rather, they take well-known themes, templates, and progressions and give them enough of a new twist to call them something new. In Tales of Asteria, an entirely new team of composers bring new… Read More »

The World is Square was released on Valentine’s Day this year, and it is every bit a love letter from Mustin intended for Squaresoft RPGs. Between Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana, chances are most RPG fans will find one of their top games represented here. Three major composers… Read More »