The Touch Detective series is an oddball one. I personally rather liked the games, but most critics and many players did not. It did not bother me that some of the puzzles were obtuse and that the world was completely wacky. I embraced the wackiness of the world and characters. Another aspect of the game I embraced was the music. Although it has been a while since I played the Touch Detective games, I do remember enjoying the music and in listening to this OST, the music is quite enjoyable to listen to.
The first three songs to kick off the soundtrack are lengthy arranged versions of three of the tracks. The first one even has full vocals giving it a whimsical pop song feel. Although the vocals sound very girly and have an insane amount of reverb on them, somehow it works. The other two arranged tracks have some vocals that function more for ambience. The final track is a nonsensical, badly sung vocal track whose only background noise is boiling water.
The compositions for the game fit Touch Detective’s whimsical and cartoony detective motif. The sound quality is crisper and clearer than the original DS MIDI sound, which is a big plus. Some even have vocal samples here and there that could not be in the game. There is a wide variety of instruments, styles, and moods given the various wacky environments the game takes place in. There are even a couple of character themes for the heroine’s two best friends which fit their individual levels of ditziness.
To be honest, this soundtrack was very difficult for me to review. I did enjoy it and the wide variety whimsical music certainly fit the hodgepodge of visual styles in Touch Detective’s characters and environments. That being said, because the soundtrack is all over the place stylistically I find it very hard to describe the music in a cohesive manner. It’s one of those “you just have to listen to it and you’ll ‘get’ it” soundtracks, at least for me. And as with the game, some listeners just may not ‘get’ it and find it too weird for its own good.
