Mixed Music Genres Archives - Page 2 of 2

The Lost Angelic Chronicles of Frane: Dragons’ Odyssey Soundtrack – Review

The Lost Angelic Chronicles of Frane: Dragons’ Odyssey Soundtrack, Jordan Steven, 2011

With the rise of mobile gaming, one of the most popular genres of the 16-bit era made its triumphant return: 2d JRPGs. Given that these games often came with amazingly varied and ambitious soundtracks, the resurgence of these sorts of games heralded good news for game music fans. One of the best retro-styled JRPG scores of the new millennium turned out to be The Lost Angelic Chronicles of Frane: Dragons’ Odyssey.

Intriguingly enough, there’s not a huge amount of information on the game out there. Dragons’ Odyssey is the localised version of a Japanese mobile RPG called Lost Memory of Angel Story Frane 3. A PC version was released on Gamersgate (which is not available anymore at the time of writing in 2018) and a planned Steam release never materialised. The available screenshots suggest a fairly generic product but give no indication of whether Dragons’ Odyssey featured strong gameplay or not.

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Torchlight II Soundtrack – Review

Torchlight II Soundtrack, Matt Uelmen, 2012

To call one particular creation the culmination of an artist’s oeuvre can be a risky maneuvre. It suggests linear development across works and prescribes an easily identifiable trajectory. But it’s hard not to fete a work like the Torchlight II soundtrack as the realisation of a specific musical approach. On this album, Matt Uelmen combines all elements that have characterised his previous scores and perfects them.

As always, his music deals in textures rather than melodies, suggestions rather than definitive manifestations. At its best, this approach leads to wonders like Diablo’s “Tristram”. This game music classic was an instantly striking demonstration of how to score fantasy environments in new, idiosyncratic ways. However, taking the same approach, Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction ended up veering between scintillating and meandering.

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TowerFall Ascension Soundtrack – Review

TowerFall Ascension Soundtrack, Alec Holowka, 2014

Created by Alec Holowka’s friend Matt Thorson, multi-player brawler TowerFall proved to be a hit with gamers and critics. In 2014, Thorson ported TowerFall as TowerFall Ascension over to the PlayStation 4 and other systems. Essentially, Ascension is an upgraded version of TowerFall, and this time the music received a dedicated soundtrack release on Bandcamp.

What luck, because TowerFall Ascension delivers some of the most creative Western game music ever written. The game’s visual retro stylings and simple yet addictive gameplay would have suggested a chiptune soundtrack. On the other hand, Ascension’s fantasy trappings could have easily resulted in yet another late-romantic orchestral score. Holowka eschews both these options. What he comes up with instead is a head-spinning concoction that combines rock, orchestral and electronic elements with such virtuosity that the TowerFall Ascension soundtrack rivals the best works of Falcom, Gust and CAVE – or a classic fantasy-themed genre merger like Matt Uelmen’s Torchlight II.

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