SaGa Frontier Original Soundtrack

Saga Frontier is one of those games that got bashed by many people. Many people called it "Square's worst" or "great as a coaster". However, the game also has a strong-voiced group of fans that love it. I am included in the latter group ?Eand the music to the game, courtesy of Kenji Ito, is certainly a big part of the reason why I love it.

The Saga series actually goes back to the Gameboy, where the first three games in the series were released in the US as Final Fantasy Legend 1-3. The second trilogy, Romancing Saga 1-3, was never released in the US. Frontier is the 7th in the series. Kenji Ito provided part of the music for 2, as well as for 4-7.

Saga Frontier's music is both old and new for the series and Ito in general. While I haven't heard much of Romancing Saga's music, I have heard his Gameboy stuff. Many of his trademark harmonies and his melodic style are packed into this soundtrack in full force. He also adds some new styles to the mix, and almost every resultant track is excellent, making this set of 3 jam-packed CDs a great buy.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of Saga Frontier is that there are 12 (!) different battle themes. All of them feature heavy bass and wonderful chords. While most of them are similar in style, "Last Battle -~T260G~" stands out - it's a great disco-like piece that mixes square waves and Hammond organ like nobody's business. Some of the other great battle tracks include "Battle #5", a non-stop in-your-face aural experience, and "Last Battle ~Asellus~", which weaves in one of the previous themes masterfully on the harpsichord.

Of course, if the soundtrack were simply about a few pieces of battle music, it wouldn't be worth anything, but luckily there's plenty more great music to be found across all three discs. I always love a great melody, and such tracks as "Standard Yorkland Song", "Junk", "Let's Swing!", and "Dear My Country" all have memorable hummable tunes. However, these actually pale compared to the best tracks on the set ?E"Fight! Alkaiser", a fast-paced samba with an incredibly great melody, and "Theme of Asellus", a wonderful clarinet solo with a lovely harpsichord solo in the second part. There are plenty other pieces of note across the board as well - "Zap! Cabellero Family", "Devin", "Alone", and "The Ultimate Weapon" are all wonderful.

The sound quality on the soundtrack is pretty good, higher than the level of FF7, but still lower than FFT which came before it. However, that's certainly not a reason to pass up this wonderful soundtrack. While there are a few somewhat boring tracks, the good to great ones far outnumber them and way more than make up for them.

Wow. Just wow. I have not been this impressed with an "unknown" soundtrack since Final Fantasy Tactics. Kenji Ito clearly demonstrates that he is fully capable of writing many different musical styles. Cheerful, moody, suspenseful, battle... the list goes on and on. The three CDs are packed too, with well over three hours (!) of great music. I wish I could say the names of certain tracks that I particularly love, but alas, I cannot, as the titles are mostly Japanese.

It may have been misleading to say "symphonic", as it is not a real symphony, but "masterpiece" is not flattering this wonderful soundtrack. The 32-bit sound capabilities of the Playstation are fully exploited to simulate many different intruments and sounds, so nothing sounds repetative.

Two songs that I will refer to by number for standing out very well. CD 1 track 2 is a wonderful, deep song with great base and a sort of foreboding background - it sounds astounding. CD 3 track 5 is one of the strangest sounding songs I have ever heard, a techno-ish piece that is very memorable. So far, I have found no (that's right, none) songs on this soundtrack that I truly dislike.

This set is really that good. I was hesitant to shell out fifty bucks for a soundtrack I had not heard of before, but I am very glad I did.