Dog Ear Records launched a teaser site today with some info and clips from The Black Mages 3: Darkness and Starlight:

http://www.music4games.net/News_Display.aspx?id=816

What do you guys think of the clip?  The clips for the first TBM got me more excited than this one.

Opening ~ Bombing Mission sample was pretty meh. And the "Darkness and Starlight" part in the album name is plain and simple corny.

But to post something positive, I like Minaba's art on that site. And this album is coming out pretty soon, now if only Mitsuda would kick his own ass to start doing and finishing that Chrono Cross arrange album.

I'm not too excited by the clip since it's basically a cut-and-paste of the track from FFVII without much modification (so far, at least), but I'm still happy the album is FINALLY coming out. I haven't been losing any sleep over it not having a street date yet, but it's good to know that I'll be able to hear it in a couple of months. I'm dying to see the rest of the tracklist.

"Starlight" is a hopeful indication that there will be more non-battle FF arrangements, like the way they did Matoya for TBM2.  Am I daft for thinking that a rock ballad version of FFV's "Dear Friends" is possible? :)

Is the rumor that it's going to be a 2-disc set still holding water?  I can easily see them going for a "dark" disc side and a "light" disc side.

The site lists the album with only DERP-10002 for its catalog number, so I'd guess it's only going to be one disc.  I like your idea for a two disc set, though.

I don't think it is possible to dismiss the second disc idea. After all, Dog Ear Records might simply assign one catalog number to even their multi-disc releases as many record labels do. The background with Japanese mythology shows that the rock-operatic idea Uematsu had is still likely to take effect in some way. The samples were conventional but enjoyable. I'm greatly looking forward to this album.

Hmmm. considering it's an arranged album coming at 2800 Yen, tax incl, it seems extremely unlikely to be a 2 Disc set.

Agreed. The percussion was WEAK. Every last successive remix of "Bombing Mission" has been weaker than the last; just listen to Crisis Core, and I think there were about 2-3 separate renditions of it on there, too.

The only exception was More Friends Live Concert, which had a simply BOOMING rendition of "Bombing Mission" (pun not intended, but now that I think about it, I guess it works); they should've just taken that, and added some metal to it. Symphonic metal FTW.

That Rockman Rock Arrange was disappointing enough, I don't think I'll be able to take another disappointment from yet another major series re-arrangement project disaster.

Seriously though, if I want decent metal, there are plenty of domestically-released artists that I can consult...and their albums don't cost $30 a pop, either.

Great that the exact date is finally set. Opening ~ Bombing Mission is a good choice indeed, but I agree that it would have been interesting with a rock symphonic arrangement. Now my hopes are for Fighting (FFVII) and The Extreme (FFVIII).

I want the FFIV Boss theme already!

Seriously.

Yeah, Opening Bombing Mission was really lame, especially in comparison with the More Friends and the OCremix version that was on the Voices of the Lifestream album.  However, the last two albums also featured some of the weakest tracks as preview fodder (imo, anyway), so there's definitely still hope for me in this album.

Duh!! The Bombing Mission sample is abysmal. How can that BE???

...now I don't know if I should buy the album.