KICA-1157~8: Music from Brandish 3: Spirit of Balcan

[Despatche]

As much as I hate fake titles, this looks OK. :3 Makes me hate fake titles even more though. : (

This game has amazing music... VT just seems so sad in comparison. Actually, no, VT isn't very interesting in general, and the YM2608 side is the worst path you could take for nearly all of the songs. I wouldn't be surprised if the arranges in 4 were a lot better; will definitely take a look at that when the translation comes out.

(I tossed "skeleton shell" in Google and got results for exoskeletons (and comparisons between turtle shells and skeletons), which makes too much sense. :V)

[Matron]

Originally Posted by Despatche

This game has amazing music...

Couldn't agree more with you. Falcom's finest soundtrack on the PC98 IMHO.

BTW, who arranged the character's themes? Falcom Sound Team jdk themselves?

[Carl]

Originally Posted by Despatche

This game has amazing music...

I seem to recall Brandish 2 being even better than 3, so you might want to check that out as well.

[Despatche]

Eh, Brandish 2 is alright, but it doesn't have nearly as much punch or variety (including phrase variety).

but yeah uh after thinking about it some more HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, BRANDISH 3 IS OBJECTIVELY ONE OF THE BEST THINGS EVER COMPOSED. i'm not sure this game has a flaw in any of its songs except BOILING METAL (likes to repeat itself too much), pretty sure that's the only one.

[Secret Squirrel]

The most recent edit removed Hirofumi Matsuoka and added Satoshi Arai to the composer list. Is there a source for either of these names?

[《J》]

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

The most recent edit removed Hirofumi Matsuoka and added Satoshi Arai to the composer list. Is there a source for either of these names?

ミュージック
Falcom Sound Team J.D.K.
石川 三恵子 (Mieko Ishikawa)
白川 篤史 (Atsushi Shirakawa)
金田 直樹 (Naoki Kaneda)
綱島 貴博 (Takahiro Tsunashima)
中島 勝 (Masaru Nakajima)
新井 智 (Satoshi Arai)

Source: I personally took that screenshot.

Also - Naoki Kaneda composed about half the music for Brandish 3. Confirmed tracks: Cemetery and Fivelria.

Originally Posted by Despatche

i'm not sure this game has a flaw in any of its songs except BOILING METAL (likes to repeat itself too much), pretty sure that's the only one.

Eh, Hanging Around is way more repetitive. Boiling Metal gets pretty interesting around 1:30 and forward.

[Secret Squirrel]

Thanks for the confirmation. I've updated the links.

[《J》]

Thanks a lot!

[Phonograph]

tr.126 has 腭(あご), I guess some jap sites can't get it right and it doesn't mean cry but jaw

[Spirit_Chaser]

I got a response today from Naoki Kaneda (Kim's Soundroom). He composed the majority of Brandish 3 by himself. His tracks are:

Disc 1:

1. Kingdom of Dawn
2. Legend of the Lone Wolves
3. Rain Lamentation
4. Elegy of the Cat Punch Fellow
5. Great Assassin
6. Synchrony (arranged)
7. Tantoll
9. Cave
11. Boiling Metal
12. Cemetary
13. Corridor of Nightmare
15. Hanging Around
16. Desert
17. Get into Danger
18. Locus of Destruction
20. Conversing
21. Burning Tom Tom
22. Filveria
23. Casino Be'
25. Loot at my Body!!
27. Dragon Formation
30. Revolution

Disc 2:

1. The Weary Soldier's Song
2. Fighting Dragon
3. Liberation
5. Blue Lake
8. Misty
9. Oracle
11. Scorched Earth
13. Burning Darkness
15. Paranoia
18. Apeiron-Exoskeleton
21. Stay Gold-Umber-
22. Breeze-Dela-
23. Born to Dark-Jinza-
24. Comrade-Ares-

Looking at what I have been able to find out, I can see this composer really poured all his heart and soul into Falcom. I would saw he was getting better and better if you see how he was evolving from Bradish 2 to The Legend of Heroes IV.

[DragoonEnRegalia]

Exoskeleton, Get into Danger, and Legend of the Lone Wolves definitely felt like Kaneda's work when I listened to them recently. Whoever did Killers, To Arms!, Follow the Evilshadow, and maybe Maison has a crazier style, so I'm thinking Nakajima or Arai. Glacier, Sanctuary, Hiland, and Magma are the standout area themes Kaneda didn't work on.

[Spirit_Chaser]

For those interested, Atsushi Shirakawa replied to my tweet and said he didn't do any music in this one. I figured because I could not link any tracks to his style. But as being one of the composers listed in the sound team for this game, maybe he did compose very little and forgot, or was just sound programming. Still, this makes it more interesting.

[Spirit_Chaser]

While researching and doing some digging on the older Falcom sound team, I managed to figure out who is in the pictures of the Brandish 3 booklet. In this picture: https://imgur.com/a/fyqNscY

According to KIM (Naoki Kaneda):

Left to right: Satoshi Arai, Naoki Kaneda, Atsushi Shirakawa, Kishimoto, Endo, and (maybe) Mixing Engineer.

[Spirit_Chaser]

Here again with more information. In a Twitter message, I gave Kaneda a list with songs I guessed had to be by Takahiro Tsunashima, and to my surprise, he confirmed them all to actually be Tsunashima's tracks. He may have composed more, but the songs I submitted to Kaneda are:

Sanctuary
Hiland
Magma
To Arms!
Maison
Last Revelation

This gives me a theory. In The Legend of Heroes III, there is an unused song called Tower that sounds a lot like Exodus and Follow the Evil Shadow. I think the person that composed those wild type tracks is Nakajima since Arai wasn't around during that time.

And the last thing Kaneda told me is that Tsunashima is still around but working completely unrelated to video game music nowadays.

[preta]

Originally Posted by Spirit_Chaser

Here again with more information. In a Twitter message, I gave Kaneda a list with songs I guessed had to be by Takahiro Tsunashima, and to my surprise, he confirmed them all to actually be Tsunashima's tracks. He may have composed more, but the songs I submitted to Kaneda are:

Sanctuary
Hiland
Magma
To Arms!
Maison
Last Revelation

This gives me a theory. In The Legend of Heroes III, there is an unused song called Tower that sounds a lot like Exodus and Follow the Evil Shadow. I think the person that composed those wild type tracks is Nakajima since Arai wasn't around during that time.

And the last thing Kaneda told me is that Tsunashima is still around but working completely unrelated to video game music nowadays.

...Well, that's certainly not entirely what I was expecting. Of those, the only one I had pegged as Tsunashima for sure was Last Revelation - I was torn between him and Nakajima for Sanctuary, Hiland and Magma, and thought Maison to be Nakajima's for sure and To Arms! Arai's.

I do think Nakajima likely did Follow the Evilshadow and Exodus. I had just thought To Arms! to be Arai since the instrumentation seemed different. It's certainly unprecedented in aggressiveness for Tsunashima, although I suppose the PSG usage should have tipped me off in retrospect.

Maybe I should ask Kaneda about some of my guesses for Tsunashima, if he seems to know what he did...? Great info you've managed to get here.

[Spirit_Chaser]

Originally Posted by preta

...Well, that's certainly not entirely what I was expecting. Of those, the only one I had pegged as Tsunashima for sure was Last Revelation - I was torn between him and Nakajima for Sanctuary, Hiland and Magma, and thought Maison to be Nakajima's for sure and To Arms! Arai's.

I do think Nakajima likely did Follow the Evilshadow and Exodus. I had just thought To Arms! to be Arai since the instrumentation seemed different. It's certainly unprecedented in aggressiveness for Tsunashima, although I suppose the PSG usage should have tipped me off in retrospect.

Maybe I should ask Kaneda about some of my guesses for Tsunashima, if he seems to know what he did...? Great info you've managed to get here.

You can give it a try. I just asked and fortunately he was willing to respond. He also told me Memories of Battle is Mr. Arai.

[preta]

Originally Posted by Spirit_Chaser

You can give it a try. I just asked and fortunately he was willing to respond. He also told me Memories of Battle is Mr. Arai.

Excellent. Should I ask him in Japanese or English? What did you use?

[Spirit_Chaser]

I've been using English and he uses Japanese, translates it to English, and sends it to me. Somehow it's worked out despite the odd translations. I was thinking of asking him my guesses for Nakajima, but you can go ahead and takeover so we don't both ask for the same songs. I've been collaborating with him for a while now, and he says he's happy that people are still showing interest in his Falcom music.

[preta]

Originally Posted by Spirit_Chaser

I've been using English and he uses Japanese, translates it to English, and sends it to me. Somehow it's worked out despite the odd translations. I was thinking of asking him my guesses for Nakajima, but you can go ahead and takeover so we don't both ask for the same songs. I've been collaborating with him for a while now, and he says he's happy that people are still showing interest in his Falcom music.

What tracks were you going to ask about for Nakajima?

[preta]

Also, regarding Tower, I noticed something that confuses me - the instrument that comes in at 0:28 is one that I can only recall otherwise hearing in Killers, Exodus, Fortless, and Memories of Battle. This makes me wonder if Kaneda may have been wrong about Memories of Battle being Arai rather than Nakajima - alternatively, Arai could have been borrowing from Nakajima's library of synth instruments seeing as he was new at the time.

I decided to simply ask flat-out if he knows who did the remaining unconfirmed tracks.

[preta]

Kaneda confirmed that Under Castle is his, Shop is Nakajima's, and all remaining FM tracks are Tsunashima's. Certainly not what I expected, but he said the reason Nakajima only did the one is because he was responsible for LoH 3.

[preta]

Shirakawa did Mystic Dela αVer (no word on whether only composition or also arrangement) and "probably" Jinza. Arai did Umber, Ares and The Big Four.

[Despatche]

Totally forgot I made these posts. I think I went way too overboard. In particular, 𝒱𝒾𝒸𝓉𝒾𝓂'𝓈 𝒯𝑜𝓌𝑒𝓇 deserves way better than I gave it credit for. I think I was just wowed by how dense Brandish 3 is as a whole, and annoyed by how it tends to get overlooked outside of Japan, to say nothing of how much anyone in Japan still cares about PC-98 games. 3 never got an SFC port like the first two games, and it never got a Windows port like VT either, so not much recognition. I mean, the PC-98 version of Brandish 2 got a translation before Brandish 3 did! It's great we have that and it totally deserves it, but it's just wild to me that Brandish 2 has that kind of respect simply because of the SFC port. Or maybe you could just blame Undertale fans or something I dunno.

I still think Brandish 3 is one of the greatest games of the '90s, and is definitely one of the greatest video game soundtracks ever. That will never change! I look at all these cool Square remakes coming out and I think "Falcom really should have kept going with those Brandish remakes". I also kinda wish they'd do another Ys game like this, but literally everyone wants that, Origin rightfully set the standard for a lot of people...