The list of memorable soundtracks, in my opinion, is a short one. Many times they’re haphazardly thrown together with a few big name bands writing a few original compositions in order to cash-in on some lame movie. I suppose there might be some correlation between how commercial a piece of art is and how awful the soundtrack will be. The more artsy the film, the more likely you’ll find a decent soundtrack.
Think more Rushmore and less Twilight, and you’ll get my point.
A good soundtrack reminds you why you loved the source material in the first place, and it’s no different in the case of video games. Yasunori Mitsuda (the second greatest video game composer of all time behind Nobuo Uematsu) has put together his fair share of memorable tunes, and his work for Xenogears–the 1997 PlayStation RPG in which the final boss you kill is God–is arguably his greatest work. There isn’t a bad song among the 40+ tracks that comprise the original soundtrack.
Xenogears, as a game and a series of soundtracks, is an anomaly. The game itself dealt heavily with religious themes that largely made no sense at all, and it eventually inspired a series of prequels that led nowhere. The music from the game is undeniably brilliant–so brilliant in fact, that it spawned not one but two arranged albums. 1998’s Creid was yet another odd excursion into genre exploration (the first being 1995’s Chrono Trigger Arranged Version: The Brink of Time which was some weird collection of jazz, fusion and awful) that felt more like an exercise in world rhythms than a proper arranged album. The second arranged album, Myth, is more along the lines of a traditional arranged album and it delivers almost impossibly some 13 years after Creid was released.
The fact that Myth even exists is an anomaly; how often does an arranged album pop up some 15 years after a game’s release? Answer: never (if I’m wrong, please enlighten me in the comments section below). But here it is, with all the bells and whistles of a properly orchestrated arranged album. They’ve selected the best tracks from the original soundtrack in my opinion save for the brilliant “Blue Traveler”–but you can’t have everything in life. The arrangements themselves are sharp and poignant; “Cage of Remorse and Relief” is a brilliant vocal rendition of the original’s “In a Prison of Remorse and Contentment” (why they have different titles is beyond me), and just as nearly breathtaking is the opener “Dark Dawn” which devotees will remember is the song played during the opening FMV.
As soon as I gleefully trudged through every last second of its 53 minute and 11 second run-time, I immediately booted up my copy of Xenogears, but I soon learned that the game itself is better left as a memory. I’m older now, and I probably don’t have 60+ hours to devote to a video game that I’ve already played, but if I’m feeling nostalgic I can blast Myth from my car speakers and remember fondly what it was like to be 17 again.
Grade: A
because whatever. 