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Sakura Taisen 3 Music Collection Paris Music Hall is the soundtrack to the third major installment of the Japanese anime, mecha RPG Sakura Taisen series from Sega/Overworks. Sakura Taisen 3 ~Is Paris Burning?~ is composed by the Japanese music composer Kouhei Tanaka (composer of the Alundra Original Soundtrack). Ever since playing Sakura Taisen Atsuki Chishio… Read More »

Bonjour! Welcome to Paris! Take in all the sights and sounds, and enjoy your stay. What’s that you say? You didn’t expect to hear Japanese imperial ballads in Paris? Then clearly you haven’t exposed yourself thoroughly enough to Red Entertainment’s “Sakura Taisen” (Sakura Wars) series. In the series’ third title, “Is Paris Burning?”, the Teikoku… Read More »

Sakura Taisen 4 ~Maidens, Fall in Love~ is the fourth title in the popular Japanese Sakura Taisen series from Sega/Overworks. Composed by Kouhei Tanaka, this is fourth installment he has worked on. The soundtrack comprises of 17 tracks, 5 tracks being Bonus Tracks (the last 5). The soundtrack has 2 vocal songs, the Declaration! Imperial… Read More »

Co-developed by Red (Sakura Taisen) and Atlus (Shin Megami Tensei), this traditional RPG / dating sim title that somehow managed to reach the US was one of the most unqiue PS1 titles I have ever played. Atlus was also kind enough to package together a soundtrack CD as part of a limited bonus for Americans… Read More »

KID is a Japanese game developer well known for their excellent love adventure games. One of their more compelling series is called Infinity, which includes the likes of Never7 and Ever17. The characters and plots in these games are not connected in any way, but some elements remain true, such as intellectually stimulating storylines and… Read More »

The Ever17 vocal collection is a collection of songs from a bunch of vocal singles released in a two year span. “LeMU ~Far Away Continent of Lemuria~” and “Aqua Stripe” are the two vocal numbers that are used in the game itself. A nice addition to this soundtrack is the instrumental versions of “LeMU ~Far… Read More »

For those who’ve never played Atlantis, it’s quite similar to the Myst series: 360° pre-rendered environments, riddles, otherworldly places. Cryo’s Atlantis featured rendered characters instead of real actors, and was slightly less confusing than Cyan’s games. Atlantis -The Lost Tales- was also released for the PlayStation. (This soundtrack was even officially licensed by a German… Read More »

Composed and performed by Pierre Estève, the Atlantis II soundtrack features ethnic flavored music, played with synthetic and (mostly) real instruments that you’ve probably never even heard the names of. The CD-ROM section (MacOS and PC) on CD 2 features some photos of the instruments used here, as well as some top-notch hand-painted artwork from… Read More »

Majora’s Mask was the last complete OST released by Nintendo of Europe so far (since then they have only released best of collections with about 10 tracks i.e. very incomplete STs). While the European OST for Ocarina of Time came on two seperate CDs, MM is a 50+4 track compilation on two CDs, featuring all… Read More »

“Silver” was a nice but not outstanding RPG by Infogrames, a mixture between character-driven Japanese RPGs and hack and slay stuff like the AD&D games by Bioware. Featuring synthesized orchestra and choir, this CD is probably for fans only. If you haven’t played the game, there’s little here that might interest you. Those who know… Read More »

Ar tonelico: Sekai no Owari de Utai Tsudzukeru Shoujo (translated as The Girl Who Sings at the End of the World) is the most recent title from Gust and Banpresto, makers of the Atelier series and Super Robot Wars series respectively. So recent is this title, actually, that I am writing this review before the… Read More »

Hiroshi Tamawari, one of Konami’s many composers in the late 1990s, put together over fifty songs for the under-the-radar simulation RPG (Other Life) “Azure Dreams.” The game, which is a primitive version of the much more successful PS2 title “Dark Cloud,” featured a unique cast of characters, beautiful environments, and a score that ought not… Read More »

Once upon a time, I asked one of my fellow VGM-loving friends, “what is the worst non-mainstream / obscure soundtrack you’ve ever heard?” His reply was, “Saiyuuki. Without a doubt, Saiyuuki. It sucks.” If the soundtrack were really all that bad, I thought to myself, then perhaps I should pick it up and review it… Read More »

Real quick – Disc 1 and 2 = Great. Disc 3 and 4 = WHOOOOAAA! Digital Devil Saga. Out of nowhere, we get this incredible tale from Atlus. A story of Serph and his friends, it’s unique, touching, haunting and epic on a hundred levels. Part of that can be attributed to a certain Shoji… Read More »

Let’s open this review with a confession: I know next to nothing about the Lunatic Dawn series. I’ve done some research, and I know that Odyssey was a PS1 RPG, and that there was a sequel on PS2 called Lunatic Dawn Tempest. That’s about it. Oh, and I also know a bit about the company… Read More »

Being a rabid Kouhei Tanaka fan, I hunted down this album after reading that it was composed by Kouhei Tanaka. Unfortunately, I had been misled. Tanaka had only composed the vocal theme song; the rest was done by a relatively unknown composer. So here I was, stuck with another obscure album that I may or… Read More »

Released 3 years after the OST (and 4 years after that accursed “mini” album), the Azel -Panzer Dragoon RPG- Memorial Album was basically a reprint of the two disc “Complete” album, but with a bonus track tacked on to the end of each disc. So let’s start this review by talking about those bonus tracks.… Read More »

Now this is a complete Persona soundtrack, unlike the other OST I reviewed. Every track from the game is in this collection, along with a bonus disc with a few preview themes from Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Though the sound quality isn’t quite as good as the first OST, it’s still quite good. The completeness… Read More »

Old school or not, I really enjoyed this soundtrack. I recently went on a Shining adventure and grabbed every soundtrack I could find, and I decided to start with this one. I couldn’t have been more pleased. If you’re accustomed to old school RPG soundtracks, then this will be familiar to you. From the self-titled… Read More »

I have been more than pleased with the work of the publishing company “Sumthing Else.” Not that I have enjoyed all of their releases, but I do appreciate what they’re doing. Many of the Xbox-developed titles are developed in the US, which means the only way they’re getting a soundtrack release is if Americans publish… Read More »

When I first came across this soundtrack, I was hesitant to purchase it, or even spend any time listening to it. Based upon what I had heard in the first Vandal Hearts soundtrack, I expected more subpar Sakimoto-style strategy-RPG themes. You know the type: harps, booming drums and strings, blaring horns, wispy flute parts, that… Read More »

When Falcom ran their very first run of the “Falcom Millennium Series,” one of the many albums they chose to reprint was Falcom Special Box ’89. But, to confuse its fanbase even further, they took the 6 8cm set and put it on two regular sized CDs. This is the first of those two CDs.… Read More »

When Falcom ran their very first run of the “Falcom Millennium Series,” one of the many albums they chose to reprint was Falcom Special Box ’89. But, to confuse its fanbase even further, they took the 6 8cm set and put it on two regular sized CDs. This is the second of those two CDs.… Read More »

In the last few years, we’ve seen Nihon Falcom (a Japanese company) publish a number of Chinese-developed RPGs and Action RPGs in the land of the rising sun. This particular title, Moonlight Destiny (“Tsukikage no Destiny”), was an Action RPG developed by “Season Software.” The soundtrack features a standard and simple vocal introduction piece entitled… Read More »

Released as part of the 4th run of “Falcom Millenium Series” albums, this two disc set was technically a reprint, but split up in a different way. It took the first disc from Perfect Collection Ys and paired it with the first disc from Perfect Collection Ys II: which, not so coincidentally, were arranged entirely… Read More »