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Onimusha
OST
Usually
when a videogame soundtrack comes along the longer, more varied tunes
get the preferential treatment, with maybe a few short ones thrown in to
keep the diehards happy, or at least distracted enough to not
immediately start to bitch and moan, “This incredibly obscure piece
that played in the super secret optional side quest twelve hours into
the game isn’t on the CD, WORST SOUNDTRACK EVER!!!!”
Not so with this soundtrack, as TOKYOPOP has made the point to
throw in everything but the kitchen sink, though I’m sure that if I
looked hard enough I might just find that on the disc somewhere as well. Having
so many songs on the CD brings its ups and downs.
If you don’t bother to program the order that the songs appear
in, the listening experience can feel disjointed as you get lulled into
a nice little track that turns out to be only one and a half minutes.
Also there are several incidental pieces that really don’t lend
themselves to purely sitting down and tapping your toes to the tunes.
The full-length tracks are quite nice though, albeit moody and
sinister, often with strong Far Eastern overtones (which is to be
expected with the game taking place in Feudal Japan and all).
It’s not exactly something I would want to put on after getting
home from work, trying to unwind, but the atmospheric nature of the
tunes makes the soundtrack suitable for listening to while working on
the computer or surfing the Net. Some
of the pieces come off more as abstract, impressionist-styled pieces,
definitely a sub-genre of classical music that isn’t for everyone, so
consider yourself warned. With
the soundtrack being performed by an orchestra it may be tempting to
think that the songs will be sweeping epics like something out of Final
Fantasy or a large scale film score, but this isn’t necessarily the
case with Onimusha, it’s a little more all over the place, somewhat
reminiscent of some of the works that Mahler and Strauss put out in
terms of the pieces abstract nature.
Then again, it isn’t always like this throughout the CD, there
are plenty of grandiose, sweeping pieces too.
All the more reason to make sure you program the order, as the
way they are setup on the disc the tracks bounce back and forth too much
between these to styles. Splitting
them up makes listening to the pieces a lot easier. At
the end of the day though, if you’re looking for a new soundtrack to
pick up, this one is definitely worth considering.
It’s actually performed by an orchestra, there are a good mix
of classical styles present, and just the general musicianship is very
good. - Mr. Nash |
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