Listened to this a few times through recently. My first time through the CD, I ended up thinking it was okay at best, not really feeling like there were too many standout tracks. But wow, my subsequent listens were quite a bit different. Listening to this, I honestly can't understand what happened with SaGa Frontier II. This came a year and a half before it, and yet the music sounds infinitely more polished, like the Hamauzu I think of when I think of any good soundtrack he's done. I don't mean to say I think this soundtrack is just amazingly ridiculously good; I don't like every track, but I really enjoy and go back to a good third of them. To me, that's really saying something when it comes to VGM, which has always been a realm of music in which I've listened to soundtracks for the favorites, for the new great finds, not because I think everything on one collective CD will be good. And the rest of the songs are *good* songs too, stuff that I wouldn't be unhappy to hear if it came on random or something. There are only one or two that I can say I actually dislike. Pretty solid CD.
Also, whenever Hamauzu names a track "Challenge" (挑戦), it seems it's destined to be good. FFX's Challenge and now this soundtrack's Challenge are some of my favorite tracks by Hamauzu, haha. Any others named Challenge by him...?
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