I'm slowly opening up to the Dragon Quest soundtracks.
It wasn't until I first heard the orchestral recordings that I really liked the music, but originally I'd write it off as the typical orchestral treatment which really tends to make
any video game track sound great. But there's more to it than that.
On the surface, it comes across similar to the neo-classical style of the Final Fantasy soundtracks, but Dragon Quest music isn't really video game music. It's not immediately catchy, nor highly distinctive according to various regions and moods. The music is generally built on a complexity that is difficult to really appreciate in music played in the background of a scene, and most importantly, it's designed specifically for real instruments, and rarely works well with synthetic instruments, which is almost alarming considering the background of the series, and the fact that it took nearly 20 years before a game was finally released using actual orchestral recordings. Some of the original NES soundtracks are
borderline painful to listen to, meanwhile the orchestral renditions are
beautiful. Hell, I just recently saw someone point out that the original NES/FC version of DQ4 actually uses crescendos in the battle theme, which is otherwise completely unheard of in video game music, as it is in pop music.
Not surprisingly, Dragon Quest 1 was also the first game to ever receive an official orchestral soundtrack release, in the very same year.
Now, you'd imagine this to be less of an issue nowadays, and knowing what you can do with synthetic sound on modern hardware, and I didn't really understand why people were complaining that even the PS4 version of the new 11th game in the series would have synthetic music, as well as the western release of the 3DS port of DQ8. But the difference is really striking.
Currently working on the the European PS2 version of DQ8, I am for the first time ever really getting lost in the amazing sounds of a Dragon Quest soundtrack, something none of the DS remakes managed to do. This overworld theme is beautiful, and despite playing almost constantly throughout the entire game, I have yet to get tired of it. I even tend to listen to it at work, looking forward to being able to return to the game when I get home:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3sG1ehxPO8
For comparison, here's the original version in the Japanese release, which didn't get the luxury of a fully orchestrated soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsO1ClyQq7Y
While not terrible, it's clearly subpar. The big question here is, why did they even bother to release it like this? And why did they do it again for XI? Hell, I'd imagine even the DS games should be able to fit slightly compressed versions of the "real deal" on a 128MB card. The PS2 remake of DQ5 got that after all, and once again the difference is striking:
PS2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7KSTl54aCk
NDS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jym17LTegOw
Nice doujin album. WOODSOFT made some good quality stuff.
Thunder Zone itself is a goddamn riot too - even the crummier, credit-eating Desert War (edit: Desert Assault, rather) keeps most of the trademark crazy DECO speech samples, for manful co-op fun. ROOM SERVICE! I'M BURNING! WHAT TOOK YA SO LONG
that's not hell that's ROCK N ROLL, and that funny feeling is YOUR FIRST REAL ERECTION
