2015 Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Dragon Quest VI Soundtrack (Mobile)

Dragon Quest VI Soundtrack (Mobile), Koichi Sugiyama, 2015

Dragon Quest V was the first game in the franchise to hit a 16-bit platform. But while it sported one of the era’s more original and moving narratives, its presentation felt like a relatively minor upgrade over its NES predecessor. Thankfully, Dragon Quest VI fixed this particular issue. Released in 1995, Dragon Quest VI wholeheartedly embraced the SNES’ technical capacities, featuring far more detailed and colourful graphics. Players also enjoyed a much larger game world, thanks to Dragon Quest VI’s ‘real world/dream world’ set up. Development duties passed from Chunsoft on to Heart Beat, founded in 1992 by Manabu Yamana, director of Dragon Quest III-V. Needless to say, Dragon Quest VI became the best-selling game of 1995 in Japan. On top of those 3.2 million SNES cartridges, it later sold an additional one million copies on the Nintendo DS.

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Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture Soundtrack

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture Soundtrack, Jessica Curry, 2015

Coming off Dear Esther‘s critical and commercial success, British indie developer The Chinese Room began work on two projects: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Out of the two games, the latter was no doubt the bigger undertaking, co-produced by industry giant Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. By and large, Rapture took the same gameplay approach as Dear Esther. Gamers are tasked with walking through a deserted village, trying to piece together what happened to those who once inhabited this piece of idyllic English countryside – no battles, perils or game over screens in sight. Not surprisingly, the limited interactivity within Rapture’s world wasn’t to the liking of everybody. All in all though, reviews were positive, with critics particularly pointing out the game’s strong narrative, placing Rapture on several year-end lists.

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Final Fantasy Brave Exvius Soundtrack

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius Soundtrack, Noriyasu Agematsu / Hitoshi Fujima / Junpei Fujita / Seima Kondo / Ryota Tomaru, 2015

Square Enix’s post-merger strategy was based mainly on the idea of “polymorphic content” – although some might say that this was simply the age-old strategy of milking popular brands for all that they’re worth. As a result, the number of games bearing the “Final Fantasy” moniker exploded from the mid-2000s onwards – and of course, the franchise would eventually jump on the freemium mobile gaming bandwagon once this business model started to take off in the 2010s. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius was developed by Alim, who had displayed their assured handling of this particular genre with Brave Frontier. However, critical reception of Brave Exvius remained mixed, despite the copious amounts of fan service Alim had added to the mix. Then again, 45 million downloads within five years of the game’s release were nothing to sneeze at, so Brave Exvius certainly didn’t rate as a commercial failure.

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