The soundtrack for Rockman X Command Mission (known in the US as “Mega Man X Command Mission”) was a pure joy for me. I’ve always appreciated music from this series, but as an “RPG” music critic, I don’t often get to take time to analyze music from a series that is generally action-oriented.
Though the basic musical style found on the album is sugar-high techno and blazing-fast pop-rock tracks, there’s enough diversity across the album for me to declare that this soundtrack is all kinds of awesome. It contains at least a dozen flavors of awesome, and I’m not even going to try to list them all for you.
But hey, I’ll point out a few that really caught my attention, just for your sake.
Track 40, “A Glacier Moves in Secret,” sounded like a beefed up version of some of the best ambient themes from Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim. That rapid, repetitive synth that runs up scales over and over works so nicely as a contrast point to the droning chords and echoing percussion, that’s the sort of thing I don’t know how to duplicate, so I was immediately impressed.
The battle themes generally didn’t have much in the way of substance, but I enjoyed “Irregular Hunt I” and “Event Battle” a lot. Neither has a lot in the way of a melody, but the production and the amount of tracks that went into each was mind-boggling. The first of these two songs runs on a few different time signatures, which, if you try to follow them all, may make your head explode. Awesome!
One of my all-time favorite instrumental tracks, in the history of videogame music, is track 7: “Spider Magic.” This is the techno-pop-fusion sound at its absolute best. I wish I could have a whole album of songs like this one. None of the other songs on this album are quite like it, though I did think “Hope for Rescue” had a similar sound to it.
I’ll also give kudos to the vocal groups who participated in the game’s soundtrack. Capricious Comet’s “parts” (track 56) attempts to emulate the sounds of a certain Icelandic singer (this comparison should be obvious). I loved listening to this song, over and over, it never got old to me. The English lyrics, which don’t entirely make sense, can be annoying if you take time lingering on their meaning, but to just enjoy the song musically is what I recommend.
Asami Abe’s “Moment of Enthusiasm” is a pretty normal J-Pop song with a touch of rock to keep it in line with the rest of the album. It’s a shame we only got the “Game Edit” version, instead of the full song, but considering that this album nearly reaches the 80 minute limit that a single disc holds, I understand the choice to keep the shortened version.
Which, of course, leads me to my complaint: this soundtrack should have been two discs. All sane people, please nod your heads in agreement…thank you.
There are better albums in the Rockman series; at least, that’s what most fans will tell you. But personally, this is one of the best OSTs I’ve heard (within its musical style) in a while. You won’t go wrong owning this fantastic soundtrack.
