Dragon Quest IV Symphonic Suite

I'll tell ya right now, I'm definitely biased. Not only was the NES Dragon Warrior IV the second RPG I'd ever played (and still my favorite RPG of all time), but this CD was also my first video game music soundtrack - snapped up for an obscene price at Asahiya Bookstore. Having said that, I can still honestly say that if you (a) like the Dragon Quest games, and/or (b) like your video game music done in the full-orchestra, Western-classical style, then DQIV is a must-have. It's the strongest work in the series (aside from the useless second disk - a messy production that tries to link all the themes of the game together into a "story" complete with distracting sound effects.)

To give you an idea of how good it is, rent "Godzilla vs. Biollante", the only Godzilla movie scored by Koichi Sugiyama. The music that accompanies Godzilla on his rampages is partly recycled from Sugiyama's own work for DQIV, namely Necrosaro's final stage theme. (The GvB score itself is nowhere near as good as DQIV's, though - guess Toho should have stuck with Akira Ifukube.) Also, if you're lucky enough to get a choice between owning this one or Dragon Quest IV in Brass, you should know that In Brass uses almost exactly the same arrangements as this one does. Which makes it a ripoff, because one would expect new arrangements better suited to an all-wind instrument ensemble. The devices and harmonies that were written for a full orchestra, including heavy use of percussion and strings, come off sounding stunted and strained in DQIV in Brass.

Unlike Nobuo Uematsu's more experimental and eclectic work for the Final Fantasy series, DQ soundtracks are very easy to compare against each other because they all follow the same formula. First up is the trademark DQ trumpet "Overture". About the same for all six games in the series. It's nice the first hundred times, but if you collect DQ CD's like I do, then chances are you have a habit of skipping this track by now. The DQ 1 and 2 fanfares have a catchier introduction than the this one, but that's about the only major difference.

The castle music is typically a somber Baroque piece for strings. DQIV's "Menuet" is my favorite of the lot - heavy, rich, and complex. It's got more of the power one would expect from a Durante composition, as opposed to the lighter Vivaldi-esque sound of DQ2. Village music is also a staple in the series. In addition to the typical walking-and-talking music, "In a Town" has a rousing Tournament theme and a charming Casino piece that is pure Americana, evoking an old frontier saloon.

One of the things that makes DQIV stand apart from the others in the series is its multitude of characters and preliminary subplots. Thus the DQIV score has seven overworld exploring themes and two overworld battle themes, as opposed to the standard two and one of the others. In "Comrades" a vivid contrast in tempo, instrumentation and style (from English pastoral to Spanish flamenco) brings five of these themes together in a delightful arrangement. The other overworld theme is from the main chapter of the story. This piece carries both the lonely, plaintive young hero's theme of "Homeland" and the militaristic "Wagon Wheel's March", which is a scary little masterpiece in itself. I say "scary" because it'll get you so worked up you'll want to run off and enlist in the army!

"Frightening Dungeons - Cursed Towers" brings off the sinister, almost modernist tones of the original game's dungeon music. "Elegy" is is by far the best death music of the DQ series - long, complex and filled with pathos. "Shrine" is a rich and cathartic piece from the House of Healing typical to the series. Dragon Quest IV's sailing/flying theme, "Balloon's Flight", is a radical departure from the perfect simplicity of Ramia's theme from DQIII. It's the one truly modernistic, sometimes even atonal piece on the CD. When you play the game, it's hard to even know at which point the line loops back to the beginning, because of the sometimes disturbing jumps and clangs and pauses along the way. This curious piece then segues nicely into the evocative harmonies of "Sea Breeze", which is given an arrangement here that is, while lush, a little too slow for my taste.

"The Unknown Castle" doesn't have an equivalent in the other DQ scores, and that's probably a good thing. It's a stately, royal-sounding piece that really needs fuller orchestration to avoid sounding flimsy and vain, as it does here. The CD then returns to following the conventions of the series with it battle theme. "Battle for the Glory" begins with the frenetic, involving complexity of the overworld battle music and then comes face-to-face with the looming, pounding themes of Esturk and Necrosaro. Esturk's music especially recaptures the frightful, monumental power of Malroth's theme in DQII. Finally comes "The End", a romantic finale like something out of John Williams. Weaker than its equivalent in DQVI, which emulates and almost tries to rival Stravinsky, but grander than the ending pieces of DQI, II, or III.

In short, while some of these arrangements lose sight of what made the original game music so effective, the others more than compensate with their imaginative use of the full orchestra. Overall, this is the best of the Dragon Quest soundtrack CDs because of its variety and its sweeping, epic scope.