Last year Square Enix released their hopefully successful new IP The Last Remnant to mixed reviews. One of the aspects of the game that everyone agreed on as high quality though was its soundtrack. Not only is this one of the best soundtracks from last year, but it also rivals their bigger named franchises. Even if the game didn’t interest you much, checking out the soundtrack would be a good idea for fans of videogame soundtracks.
The very first song on the soundtrack, “The First Awakening,” sets the tone of the soundtrack very well and happens to be one of the better songs. It’s a great opening theme that matches the massive battles and fantasy warfare of the game. “Cherished Memories” is a good slow moving song that accompanies the more emotional parts of the game. “Opening Suite: The Assault” is a fantastically rousing piece and was one of my favorite songs from the soundtrack as well. If “Sword Sparks” (one of the main battle themes) doesn’t get you pumped up for battle, I don’t know what will. It’s probably one of my new favorite battle themes. Actually all of the battle themes in this game are very good, and there’s a pretty big variety of them. The final song you can sample for yourself is “Truths Revealed,” a very ominous and of evil sounding song that went well with the mood of the game.
The soundtrack’s quality shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who have followed Tsuyoshi Sekito’s career. His first, and only original work (until now) was the OST for Brave Fencer Musashi. Since then, Square (Enix) has put him on job after job of doing updated versions of Final Fantasy tunes for a variety of games. Now, however, Sekito gets to shine. Granted, this soundtrack sounds quite different from Musashi, thanks to all the skills Sekito has been able to hone in the last decade while working on various FF soundtracks. To make things even more interesting, Natsumi Kameoka (who did much of the arrangement/orchestration for Blizzard’s “Echoes of War”) is the sole arranger for this album. There are a number of tracks that feature full orchestral ensembles. This is definitely what brings much of the soundtrack’s emotional moments to life. The rest is just Sekito’s crazy-awesome guitar work and catchy rhythms.
You can be assured that the rest of the soundtrack holds up well. This is one soundtrack that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone into videogame music. It’s got a boatload of wonderful songs on it and there’s enough content here to justify the purchase. Hopefully the wonderful people that worked on this game are allowed to work on something bigger with Square Enix here in the future. I feel they have earned it.
