"All compositions by Taro Hakase & Yuji Toriyama
(Inspired by Hitoshi Sakimoto's theme)

All tracks & Orchestra arranged by Yuji Toriyama"

What the hell, I wanted Sakimoto not some Yuji Toriyama inspired crap.

Ill wait till I hear it till I pass judgement on it, I dont get this mass of FF12 singles all of a sudden, 2 from Aki and 1 from this guy - just which one is the theme song to FF12?

.

I don't hate Toriyama I just was expecting Sakimoto.  Nowhere was it advertised as being composed arranged and orchestrated by him, nor advertised as a "tribute single".

It's not bad, but I would not have paid 30$ for 9 minutes of a composer I could honestly care less about.

Lesson for the kiddies: research your purchases before you make them.

I learned my lesson when the first Nintendo DS dictionary program didn't have kanji writing recognition.

As long as this is good...

Was this even advertised to have tracks composed by Sakimoto?

I never saw it as a Sakimoto thing, always saw it as a FF12 arrangement or theme song done by someone else

The problem with that is Japanese websites horrible lack of updates and information.  And when there is information there, it's in Japanese.  I preorder things at Amazon.co.jp now as soon as I hear about them so they ship them out to me promptly.  I don''t have time / sometimes don't remember to look up additional information about them 3 months down the road.  CDJapan is notorious for never updating their English site info blurbs on cds (I just checked the cd and there's info there now, but there wasn't when I ordered from amazon and I'm pretty sure there wasn't 2 weeks ago).  I don't have the time to look at vague Japanese sites through google or various composers / companies / record labels' weblogs trying to decipher a language I don't understand anymore.

Needless to say, researching a niche market in a foreign language takes a lot more time than I have.

Feel free to translate Japanese websites for the rest of us "kiddies".

Do you subscribe to CD Japan's mailings? Here's how they described the CD in their mailing sent on Jan. 13:

"Main theme to the PlayStation 2 game "Final Fantasy XII" composed
by classical musician Taro Hakase."

No mention of Sakimoto at all.

No, just 1 single from Aki has "Kiss Me Goodbye" on it as an actual playable song, unless you're aiming to own a DVD with promo footage of FF12, in which case you'd have to go for her single "Kokoro no senshi," too. "Kiss Me Goodbye" is described as an insert song, which usually means it'll play during some scene, although, like "Eyes On Me," it could end up as the "theme" song. Although I"m leaning more toward "Hope" as the theme song.

1. As Schala said, the information that it was composed by Taro Hakase was available in English.

2. I sure wish I had enough expendable income that I could afford to be so impatient for new products that I HAVE TO PREORDER THEM RIGHT NOW even though I don't know what the hell they actually are.

Except you have to subscribe to CDJapan's mailing list, which I don't since I never order from CDJapan.  I only use it to look at their new game music release calendar and to (maybe) get some information after the cd is released.  Besides the fact that Japanese sites are notorious for just posting "composers", which in the world of VGM really means absolutely nothing.  How many thousands of albums have we seen where the composer and the arranger are two completely different artists?  Why would I have thought that this one would be any different, it's labeled "Symphonic Poem" afterall.  All the information that was available so far was "composed by Taro Hakase".  Nothing about being an inspirational album, nothing about being arranged and produced by him and nothing about being performed by (I forget the name of the Orchestra).

And by the way, expendable income has nothing to do with preordering from Amazon.  Amazon doesn't charge your credit card until they ship your item and they don't do that verification of funds bullshit that CDJapan does as soon as you place the order.  I learned that the hard way when ordering the DQ Symphonic Box when I was destitute and in college, and I overdrafted my bank account because I didn't know CDJapan would charge the 150$ preorder to my bank account when I preordered it.  I've found that Amazon shipping really doesn't matter when you order it, but for Limited Editions, Special Packages, Limited Releases and such, the earlier you order the better chance you have of getting it.  If you're saying I'm impatient and shouldn't have preordered it right away, that's also silly because I frequently check CDJapan for new releases / updated information on upcoming releases in their Game Music release calendar.  Had it been updated with more information than just "composed by" I might have thought twice about my preorder.

It's still your own fault for not knowing what you were buying. Deal with it. Everyone does it from time to time.

-Joshua

And I thought Yuji Toriyama just played guitar and fusion...

Has anyone ever heard any of his solo albums?

I just heard this thing, and it's awesome. especially the third movement. (Road Of Hope)
Also, you can easily hear that it is based off of Sakimoto's main theme melody of FF12 that has been heard since the very first trailers for the game.
They just hired an awesome world renowned violinist to do a live version of it, that's all.
Here is the old version of the main theme that I was talking about:

http://smsamples.free.fr/ff12/Main%20Th … rated).mp3

Most of Hope is based around that melody. (pay attention especially to the end of "Road Of Hope", it sounds like a carbon copy of it)

Mine is ordered and hopefully will be on its way soon enough, look forward to hearing it - I ordered it from CD japan along with Kiss Me Goodbye so itll probably be a few weeks till I get it...

I got this awesome pieces.

At initial, I saw that..1500 yen plus a DVD...worthy to buy or not. A big question mark comes out whe I saw it first in playasia.com.

OK, I cracked my credit card since 1500 yen is not really a big deal.

Afterwards, a diapoointment! Why? Just because the pieces are so short for me. The disc just contained 8 minutes music, a normal EP does not grabbing money like that but it does! Then the DVD, a short MV around 3 minutes as the instruction mentioned.

No matter it is an OST, a piano colection or anything else...put it into my Onkyo universal DVD player....good or bad depends on the performance, not the time

Overture, the first track, a minor tone I suppose. It would be so deep and hard to describe a trageddic scene after invasion. A reasonable music compose concept would be here.

Come to the March of a Wise Man. It would be a powerful major tone. My Yamaha AV amplifier told me that it is the time of reverage. Are your ready to join the force to fight against the invasion?

Road of Hope...the real hope and dream comes true. It sounds so fimiliar to those grand theme in movie. Due to such familiar, feel the true opwer from your hand, from the encouraging words and you move on the way to get the victory. Even though it would be a tough way, but you still go ahead without turning back!

Romance...become moody again. But really, such sound would not be so boring since the touching sound come from the speaker to tell you to have a rest if you feeling confuse or tired. Welcome back to your home!

Refrain...push all the power on the hand after your rest. Leading from the last track, and step forward to another horizons. I saw the beautiful home country coming back to our hand. Finally, we got the victory. We look forward to a bright future because we are full of hope.

Overall, do you still be disappointed to such a short track. Or should I say, my only disappointment is the track is too short. But the stroy of such poem is very fruitful. Recording standard is outstanding among the past series excluding the more friends (published 0n 15 Feb 2006). I suppose to purchase this one, you have to buy this 1500 yen package with DVD as it is worth to enjoy all of this!

Say, wasn't Uematsu set to compose the main theme? If not, did he contribute in any way to FF12??

Uematsu wrote the theme song (not main theme, that's a bit complicated), "Kiss Me Good-Bye". In fact, "Hope" is inspired by a melody Sakimoto wrote as the real main theme of the game.

JBL already linked to this sample:

http://smsamples.free.fr/ff12/Main%20Th … rated).mp3

It is Sakimoto's melody. You can hear it two times in "Road of Hope".