Three reviews
As previously mentioned, got a lot of game soundtracks lately. Out of those, I have not yet listened to the five (five!) disk set for Ōkami nor the two-disk one for Super Mario Galaxy (yeah, it's the limited-edition version; just had to spring for it, especially since the price wasn't bad). The three-disk No More Heroes set has been listened to, but I won't review it today as I've only gone through the soundtrack once in its entirety. Thus, today's reviews are of the two single-disk albums I picked up; one a soundtrack, and one an arrange disk. I'll start with the latter first, as it was easily the more anticipated of the two.
The Black Mages III: Darkness and Starlight - The Black Mages is Nobuo Uematsu's rock band, which plays hard-rockin' versions of Final Fantasy pieces that he's written. Their self-titled first album focused entirely on battle themes, while their second, The Skies Above branched out a bit, with renditions of non-battle-related tracks such as "Hunter's Chance" (FF9). Although The Skies Above certainly had its moments-especially with the battle themes that did make the album, most notably "Zeromus" (FF4) and "Maybe I'm a Lion" (FF8)-I thought it was a weaker effort than the debut album. The band's latest effort falls roughly in the middle of the first two albums, with some odd moments, but also several standouts.
The album opens with "Opening ~ Bombing Mission" (FF7), one of those odd tracks in Final Fantasy history that serves as both a field theme and a battle theme. The "Opening" part is fantastic-pure arena rock awesomeness-but "Bombing Mission" falls a little short. Fortunately, things pick up with the next two tracks, both final battle themes from two of Nobuo's best scores: "Neo-Exdeath" (FF5) and "The Extreme" (FF8). Both are heavily melodic, playing on a particular strength of both composer and band, and both sound great.
From there we roll into "Assault of the Silver Dragons", continuing the precedent set on The Skies Above for including a seemingly odd choice from FF9's OST, and "KURAYAMINOKUMO" (FF3), which suffers from some repetition (surely a result of the source track being from the NES era) but is decent otherwise. "Distant Worlds" (FF11) is next and while it may seem to be this album's "Matoya's Cave", it's so much more than that, and is easily one of the best Black Mages tracks ever. Seriously, if you don't get chills down your spine while listening to this, there must be something wrong with you.
Two more battle themes follow: "Premonition" (FF8) and "Grand Cross", the final battle music from FF9; listening to the latter for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised, since I originally knew the track by an entirely different title ("The Final Battle"). Both are solid. After those two, we come to the longest track on the album, "Darkness and Starlight", which Final Fantasy fans may know better as the "Draco and Maria" suite from FF6.
Yep, the opera.
"Darkness and Starlight" incorporates the first three movements (apparently cutting out the offbeat "Grand Finale?"), with some spoken word bits (in Japanese) talking over the music in quieter moments. There is singing in the appropriate sections, and perhaps the biggest surprise for me was that said singing was in Japanese, instead of the Italian used for Grand Finale's poorly recorded version of "Aria di Mezzo Caraterre". Overall it's good, but unusual, and worth listening to at least once.
The final track is "LIFE ~ in memory of KEITEN", an original piano piece. It's excellent, and closes out the album well.
So in short, Darkness and Starlight is another fine effort from The Black Mages, with more hits than misses. If you liked the first two albums, I don't think you'll be disappointed with this new one.
Gyakuten Saiban 4 Original Soundtrack - This is the soundtrack for the first game in the Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) series made especially for the DS, and as such, it really sounds it. The new courtroom, character, and location themes all have a richer quality of sound than the music featured in the earlier games.
As for the quality of the compositions themselves, they're about what you expect from an Ace Attorney OST. The new lobby and courtroom themes aren't as strong as previous entries, but this entry's "logic" theme, "Trance Logic", is catchy, and the "cornered" variation this time around ("Pressing Pursuit ~ Cornered") is as good and exciting as its predecessors.
Outside of the standard courtroom themes, there are several solid tracks, including Trucy's theme ("Minuki's Theme ~ Child of Sorcery"), which serves as this game's "Gyakuten Sisters", and "Kitakisune Family", a theme (tied to a certain case) with a traditional Japanese bent. Two tracks in particular are standouts: the rock anthem "Kyouya Garyuu ~ Love Love Guilty" (also known as "Guilty Love") and the haunting "Loving Guitar's Serenade" (aka "The Guitar's Serenade"). This doesn't come as much of a surprise; without giving too much away, all I'll say is that they're both prominently featured in the game.
Again, I recommend this album if you liked the previous ones in the series, and if you liked the music in Apollo Justice.
And finally, a brief game review:
Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories - First off, my gripes, which are few.
My main beef is with the opening movie, which plays before starting a new game, kind of gives a little too much away, hinting that the game's main characters will hook up at some point. I won't say if they do, and there are certainly more interesting (though sometimes predictable) things that happen in the story, but part of me wishes I'd skipped this movie and not watched it until after the credits had rolled.
My second beef is with the voice acting, which starts out sub-par but for its part gradually gets more listenable.
Anyway, now that that's out of the way: this is the sequel to Disgaea, the incredible strategy RPG from Nippon Ichi. While the story isn't as hilarious as in the first game, it does have its moments, and several of the characters (Taro and Hanako in particular) are quite likeable. The battle system is pretty much the same as in the original game, with Geo-Panels, picking up and throwing characters, exploding Prinnies and all having been included. There are some new additions, however, some of which are designed to make the game a bit more manageable. I'm thinking primarily of the additions to the Dark Assembly, most notably special Assembly-specific items (special bribes, bombs to wake sleeping senators, etc.) and cell phones, which can be used beforehand to call the political parties who have representation in the Assembly. Other types of cell phones are available as well, but those are a bit less useful.
Another handy addition to the game are the inclusion of Innocent Towns and Mystery Rooms in the Item Worlds. For those in the dark, Items Worlds are randomly-generated optional dungeons; every single item in the game has them. By entering an item and clearing the rooms within, the item can be leveled up. There are other benefits to Item Worlds as well. In general, they make great places to level up your characters, especially after reincarnation. Anyway, Innocent Towns can be reached after clearing ten levels and contains captured residents, a hospital, and the Item Assembly (!), while Mystery Rooms can contain anything from specialty stores (many items, such as those for use in the Dark Assembly, can't be purchased from the Holt branch of Rosenqueen; they're only available in the Item Worlds) to treasure chests to hospitals to hidden residents or battles.
One new addition which I never used (save for one spot where it was required) was the Felony system. Subpoenas can be collected from a special character in the hub town of Holt; then entered by visiting the Item Worlder. From these subpoenas, characters can be accused of felonies, which are badges of pride and are supposed to have benefits to them. Of course, I never figured out what these benefits were.
Overall, Disgaea 2 is more of the same, with a few of the same characters (including some unexpected cameos), and several new features and tweaks, not all of which have to be taken advantage of in order to beat the game. And thankfully, unlike its Netherworld cousins Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom, it uses grid-based maps like the original Disgaea.
A final note on the game, sort of: the English-language version of The World of Disgaea 2 is seeing publication in May. The first book (now out-of-print?) was a must-have for Disgaea fans, and I expect this one to be just as good.
P.S. - For those of you who like this sort of thing, I posted a new Portal fanart today, featuring GLaDOS-tan (or at least the GLaDOS-tan that I came up with) and Chell.
The Black Mages III: Darkness and Starlight - The Black Mages is Nobuo Uematsu's rock band, which plays hard-rockin' versions of Final Fantasy pieces that he's written. Their self-titled first album focused entirely on battle themes, while their second, The Skies Above branched out a bit, with renditions of non-battle-related tracks such as "Hunter's Chance" (FF9). Although The Skies Above certainly had its moments-especially with the battle themes that did make the album, most notably "Zeromus" (FF4) and "Maybe I'm a Lion" (FF8)-I thought it was a weaker effort than the debut album. The band's latest effort falls roughly in the middle of the first two albums, with some odd moments, but also several standouts.
The album opens with "Opening ~ Bombing Mission" (FF7), one of those odd tracks in Final Fantasy history that serves as both a field theme and a battle theme. The "Opening" part is fantastic-pure arena rock awesomeness-but "Bombing Mission" falls a little short. Fortunately, things pick up with the next two tracks, both final battle themes from two of Nobuo's best scores: "Neo-Exdeath" (FF5) and "The Extreme" (FF8). Both are heavily melodic, playing on a particular strength of both composer and band, and both sound great.
From there we roll into "Assault of the Silver Dragons", continuing the precedent set on The Skies Above for including a seemingly odd choice from FF9's OST, and "KURAYAMINOKUMO" (FF3), which suffers from some repetition (surely a result of the source track being from the NES era) but is decent otherwise. "Distant Worlds" (FF11) is next and while it may seem to be this album's "Matoya's Cave", it's so much more than that, and is easily one of the best Black Mages tracks ever. Seriously, if you don't get chills down your spine while listening to this, there must be something wrong with you.
Two more battle themes follow: "Premonition" (FF8) and "Grand Cross", the final battle music from FF9; listening to the latter for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised, since I originally knew the track by an entirely different title ("The Final Battle"). Both are solid. After those two, we come to the longest track on the album, "Darkness and Starlight", which Final Fantasy fans may know better as the "Draco and Maria" suite from FF6.
Yep, the opera.
"Darkness and Starlight" incorporates the first three movements (apparently cutting out the offbeat "Grand Finale?"), with some spoken word bits (in Japanese) talking over the music in quieter moments. There is singing in the appropriate sections, and perhaps the biggest surprise for me was that said singing was in Japanese, instead of the Italian used for Grand Finale's poorly recorded version of "Aria di Mezzo Caraterre". Overall it's good, but unusual, and worth listening to at least once.
The final track is "LIFE ~ in memory of KEITEN", an original piano piece. It's excellent, and closes out the album well.
So in short, Darkness and Starlight is another fine effort from The Black Mages, with more hits than misses. If you liked the first two albums, I don't think you'll be disappointed with this new one.
Gyakuten Saiban 4 Original Soundtrack - This is the soundtrack for the first game in the Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) series made especially for the DS, and as such, it really sounds it. The new courtroom, character, and location themes all have a richer quality of sound than the music featured in the earlier games.
As for the quality of the compositions themselves, they're about what you expect from an Ace Attorney OST. The new lobby and courtroom themes aren't as strong as previous entries, but this entry's "logic" theme, "Trance Logic", is catchy, and the "cornered" variation this time around ("Pressing Pursuit ~ Cornered") is as good and exciting as its predecessors.
Outside of the standard courtroom themes, there are several solid tracks, including Trucy's theme ("Minuki's Theme ~ Child of Sorcery"), which serves as this game's "Gyakuten Sisters", and "Kitakisune Family", a theme (tied to a certain case) with a traditional Japanese bent. Two tracks in particular are standouts: the rock anthem "Kyouya Garyuu ~ Love Love Guilty" (also known as "Guilty Love") and the haunting "Loving Guitar's Serenade" (aka "The Guitar's Serenade"). This doesn't come as much of a surprise; without giving too much away, all I'll say is that they're both prominently featured in the game.
Again, I recommend this album if you liked the previous ones in the series, and if you liked the music in Apollo Justice.
And finally, a brief game review:
Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories - First off, my gripes, which are few.
My main beef is with the opening movie, which plays before starting a new game, kind of gives a little too much away, hinting that the game's main characters will hook up at some point. I won't say if they do, and there are certainly more interesting (though sometimes predictable) things that happen in the story, but part of me wishes I'd skipped this movie and not watched it until after the credits had rolled.
My second beef is with the voice acting, which starts out sub-par but for its part gradually gets more listenable.
Anyway, now that that's out of the way: this is the sequel to Disgaea, the incredible strategy RPG from Nippon Ichi. While the story isn't as hilarious as in the first game, it does have its moments, and several of the characters (Taro and Hanako in particular) are quite likeable. The battle system is pretty much the same as in the original game, with Geo-Panels, picking up and throwing characters, exploding Prinnies and all having been included. There are some new additions, however, some of which are designed to make the game a bit more manageable. I'm thinking primarily of the additions to the Dark Assembly, most notably special Assembly-specific items (special bribes, bombs to wake sleeping senators, etc.) and cell phones, which can be used beforehand to call the political parties who have representation in the Assembly. Other types of cell phones are available as well, but those are a bit less useful.
Another handy addition to the game are the inclusion of Innocent Towns and Mystery Rooms in the Item Worlds. For those in the dark, Items Worlds are randomly-generated optional dungeons; every single item in the game has them. By entering an item and clearing the rooms within, the item can be leveled up. There are other benefits to Item Worlds as well. In general, they make great places to level up your characters, especially after reincarnation. Anyway, Innocent Towns can be reached after clearing ten levels and contains captured residents, a hospital, and the Item Assembly (!), while Mystery Rooms can contain anything from specialty stores (many items, such as those for use in the Dark Assembly, can't be purchased from the Holt branch of Rosenqueen; they're only available in the Item Worlds) to treasure chests to hospitals to hidden residents or battles.
One new addition which I never used (save for one spot where it was required) was the Felony system. Subpoenas can be collected from a special character in the hub town of Holt; then entered by visiting the Item Worlder. From these subpoenas, characters can be accused of felonies, which are badges of pride and are supposed to have benefits to them. Of course, I never figured out what these benefits were.
Overall, Disgaea 2 is more of the same, with a few of the same characters (including some unexpected cameos), and several new features and tweaks, not all of which have to be taken advantage of in order to beat the game. And thankfully, unlike its Netherworld cousins Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom, it uses grid-based maps like the original Disgaea.
A final note on the game, sort of: the English-language version of The World of Disgaea 2 is seeing publication in May. The first book (now out-of-print?) was a must-have for Disgaea fans, and I expect this one to be just as good.
P.S. - For those of you who like this sort of thing, I posted a new Portal fanart today, featuring GLaDOS-tan (or at least the GLaDOS-tan that I came up with) and Chell.