Apparently, its coming on November 25. And unlike the Persona 1 remake OST, its a stand-alone release (probably because P3 is popular enough for it's soundtrack to sell a decent amount). This one is by (surprise!) Shoji Meguro as well.

Considering the P3 FES OST and the second SMT3 soundtrack, I guess this will be all-new music and not just a compilation of old stuff. I'm kind of reluctant to pick it up, but who am I kidding? I know I will in the end anyway.

I'm there. I completely and truly dug P3's music. Still need to pick that set up.

Now the question is if they'll include extra S-Link variations for the main character female gender choice in the actual game?. Will I be able to woo Kaz or Kenji (easily the two whiniest NPC's I've ever seen)? Maybe hit on Junpei or Akihiko . . . ?

It's a good year to be a Meguro listener.

Could be mixes from old tunes, but good stuff still. Can't wait for it, not so interested in the game, apparently doesn't have the Answer part what I've gathered from neogaf.

Edit, I also hope that dungeon themes will be getting own tracks. Hated that Interstice of Time didn't the split. I so want to just listen the part from 7:55 onwards.

Eh, what's this now? Dammit! I must be getting old or something, new soundtracks are just popping up faster and faster all the time.

Anyone know anything about this game? The page says its for the DS, but I've never heard about it before.

I haven't really been following Strange Journey, but from what I've read/understand, it's a 1st person dungeon crawler, set in Antarctica, in the Shin Megami Tensei universe. The music, supposedly, is supposed to be a drastic departure from Meguro's normal style, but it's why too early to tell. The trailer music does seem to feature an orchestral sound, including the small battle clips I've seen.

Isn't Strange Journey basically SMT 4 and a trip the roots of the series?

it's a SMT sidestory, not 4:

http://megamisj.atlusnet.jp/

looks pretty nice, with a new musical direction for meguro.

Thanks for the info, guys. Its cool that he's taking the series' music in a new direction, but unfortunately I didn't like what I heard in the trailer at all (which comes as no surprise, as I dislike most orchestral VGM).

The SMT series is definitely expanding fast, so fast that I'm missing a lot of stuff, like the Devil Survivor soundtrack that's been out since January (at this rate, I'm sticking to getting the Persona soundtracks and working my way outwards from there if funds/interest allows it). Has anyone heard Devil Survivor, and if so, what style is it in? And is it good? I see it features a composer who's new to the series, Takami Asano.

You should go to SEMO and read their reviews. That one in particular I actually reviewed.

Its something I would advise "renting" before buying. Its very much in the vein of Meguro power rock.

Strange Journey is going to be sex, bl--j--, cheesesteaks, whipped cream, bright sunny days, golden Fall foliage, steady employment, well-invested 401ks, truthful government, and the meaning of life all rolled into one. Pick 4 out of those and that's also what the OST will be.

Devil Survivor has some decent moments, but also some irritations where you'd wish you were hearing Meguro phoning something in instead. The music wasn't used to its full potential in-game in the least, so that definitely soured my overall impressions. The later boss battle themes are fairly impressive though.

Yeah, after hearing it, I agree. Some OK tunes, but overall not very impressive or remarkable. I like the intro vocal theme and some of the more aggressive tracks, but all in all, a pretty mediocre album (especially for being SMT).

I don't listen to the rip yet, but watched the gameplay for 5 hours or so. Based on that or the reception so far, I think this is not so good even by general orchestral VGM standard. Sakurabian bombastic male chorus all the way.

After having played for about 4 hours, I can honestly say the music is pretty terrific. It appropriately makes everything seem very oppressive and hostile in a way I would totally listen to outside of the game. Some tracks are pretty short though and the loop itself on one or two of them is not very smooth and somewhat jarring, but that's been totally minor and not indicative of the music as a whole. It sounds absolutely fantastic and so far it hasn't been a phoned-in Sakurabian experience at all. That could change, of course, but I'll have to jump back into the Schwarzverse to find out!

that's what I thought......until I heard the streamed audio from Strange Journey :\

it may fit the game, but that doesn't mean it's actually good music
there's also, what, 30 minutes of music for a game that the designers said would be at least 40 or 50 hours long.

while Yuzo Koshiro was working on the Etrian Odyssey games, he should've taught Meguro how to make excellent sounding sequenced music with limited resources.

I absolutely stand by my opinion. Besides, I tend to not be impressed by game music when I hear it out of context.

Well, at least we got the Persona 1 PSP soundtrack (more on that later!), which is excellent stuff. Hopefully there'll be some good stuff on the P3 Portable OST as well. I'll at least give Strange Journey a fair hearing, I know Meguro has a tendency to produce one mediocre/unmemorable score for every two good scores he puts out, but he's made enough good stuff during his career to merit my attention for forthcoming soundtracks.

That's probably the difference. Some VGM fans like the music only in context, while others like the "format" of game music and can appreciate scores solely by musical criteria without having the emotional attachment from the corresponding gameplay.

I hope there is at least some VGM you've heard and liked from games you haven't played, Eirikr. Music can have other merits than just being nostalgia.

Oh, absolutely! Persona 2, for one. A good melodic chiptune I've never heard before always warms my heart, too.

But I was really looking forward to hearing more of Strange Journey's music, and so far I haven't been disappointed. The caveat being I'm not very far in! So we'll see.

I'm a die-hard Meguro fan, and from what I've heard, Strange Journey looks like an awesome soundtrack. Maybe not his best, especially if you're into his trademark rock, but it's soo Shin Megami Tensei: hostile, ominous, epic. It's a bit difficult to digest out of context, that's for sure, so I understand the negative comments.

Yeah, I've enjoyed most everything I've heard so far, and I just crossed into the fourth area in-game. In terms of a CD, there have been only a couple tracks I would have skipped over. Of course, all the battle music is awesome, but that's to be expected.

um. See, that's the thing. It may fit the tone of the games - especially Strange Journey - but it's not in line with the previous soundtracks in the series. Any of them, really. I honestly wasn't expecting Meguro to deliver another soundtrack along the lines of SMT3, and I was okay with that, but this really doesn't sound like anything previously heard in the series, especially not in the "core" games (Megami Tensei I/II/SFC remake, SMT I, II, If..., III).

On a basic level, I don't have a problem with this dramatic change in direction (although I really do not enjoy the music - it sounds like there's only three or four distinct "ideas" in it). But it's been emphasized several times that Strange Journey is the next main SMT game, and that  Atlus was seriously considering calling it SMT IV.

I may feel that Tsukasa Masuko's work on SMT I/II/If.. was a step down from the original Megami Tensei games (although there's still some classic stuff in there), but I can definitely see the way the music evolved from one game to the next. Meguro's work on SMT III changed some things up a bit, but I felt it made a lot of sense in the context of the audio history of the series (the new compositions and remixes by the co-composers helped). But Strange Journey....it just feels wrong to me.

I'll probably change my opinion to a certain degree after I play the game some (my initial reaction to hearing the music was extremely negative, and I've softened since then), but there will still remain what I see as very troublesome flaws: a small amount of audio for an extremely long game and a very weak effort to make tracks stand out distinctly from each other.

Now this is interesting. Its rare to get a soundtrack about which people have strong negative and positive opinions, and it being split so evenly.

It makes me wanna hear the music and make up my own mind. I just hope there's more to it than the style we heard in the trailer, cause that shit sucked ballz.

well, let's see...

okay, looks like I have some bandwidth left on my fileden account. I was planning to upload these to megaupload/mediafire, but any browser I use in this OS chokes on them. Here:

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/1/1 … sjBGM1.zip
area and battle themes
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/1/1 … sjBGM2.zip
event and miscellaneous themes

the ADX files from the game written to mp3 format with the Lame mp3 writer Winamp plugin. Necessary files provided by hcs. Both archives are about 36mb in size.

If you want to properly experience the music in the game itself or via the (hopefully) high quality renditions on the soundtrack, I suggest you strongly consider whether to download these or not.

I doubt these will "go viral" or anything, but if you intend to post the archives anywhere else I'd appreciate you re-hosting them on an upload site like the ones I mentioned.

Wait a second, where is the assumption about nostalgia coming from?  Context association in terms of connecting a piece of music to its function isn't about nostalgia.  It's about intent.  If anything, knowing the context can only HELP a person to better appreciate the musical qualities of a piece, as some of those qualities may not make a lot of sense without knowing what composer was aiming for (For example, I've read many a review in which a musical argument demonstrating a lack of contextual awareness or consideration of it has been made against a particular piece - that's as much a bias as any kind of emotional attachment, and it's almost worse in that a person can fool him/herself into believing that the formality of the argument it makes it less so).

I hate it when VGM fans suggest that it's closed-minded to appreciate a soundtrack as a soundtrack.  The truth is, one has nothing to do with the other.  You can appreciate score music as music, but it is by no means more 'limiting' to appreciate score music as score music.  If you get yourself into the mindset that musical merit without any regard for the score aspect of the music is the 'proper' way to judge all soundtracks, then you're no better than the guy who only likes score music that he's heard in its proper context.  So just as you would 'hope' that someone can appreciate music from games he/she hasn't played, I would 'hope' that someone can appreciate music for its intent and not just its form.  Music can have merits other than just how accomplished it is.

You're fighting a straw-man figure, Megavolt. I never said that its "closed-minded to appreciate a soundtrack as a soundtrack". I said some people prefer it one way, others prefer it the other way, and I personally like them both and would urge people not to limit themselves to one or the other.

Thanks for putting up the files, Dais.

Wow, so much to reply to.

@Dais: True, while a lot of this doesn't sound like traditional Megaten music, the setting is so different than the other games that it warrants it, not to mention the more hard-up sci-fi tone the series hasn't seen before. I also don't think it's as strong as the old scores either, but I do enjoy what I hear and standalone I do think it's pretty good.

Yes, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of audio if you've looked at the files, but it's broken up in-game rather traditionally. You've got your battle themes here, cutscene music here, and each area has its own theme. It's not doing anything groundbreaking. A couple of the more common themes you hear are some of my favorites though, such as the "talk" theme and the post-battle music.

@Daniel K : Now, I absolutely loved the tone of the trailer music (and the context of the story it introduced, see below), so yeah, this is one hell of a divisive score. : )

@Megavolt: Yeah, Megavolt gets how I am with music. I re-read DK's comment and it did come off as kind of presumptuous, but obviously didn't mean it that way based on his reply.

The first soundtrack I ever bought before playing the game was FFX. I enjoyed a few tracks here and there, mostly the ones that started with a good hook, but generally far and few between. A few months later when I played the game, I heard all these great themes I skipped over the first time I heard them and made me wonder what I was thinking.

I'm still like that nearly a decade later, though. I forget what it was recently, but I listened to a soundtrack all the way through, no skips, without an impression left. Then I played the game and it clicked. I prefer to have the game's message and thematics to dwell on along with the music.

The new boss theme is pretty darned good.

Wow if this album was a girl I'd make love to her day one.

Sexy piece of work, indeed.

I hope the vocalist will return in future works of Meguro (Persona-only, of course).

Kita or Fujita? I'm fond of Fujita but Kita is meh, personally. Quantity issue aside, this is probably the soundtrack of this year.

Fujita, obviously. I do like Kita, but I wouldn't want the whole soundtrack featuring his vocals.

My verdict on this one: "A Way of Life", "Time", and "Wiping All Out" are incredible (the new female vocalist is simply amazing), but the rest is pretty standard, Meguro's Persona-pop-style by-the-numbers. Even if all the tracks were great, how about that 25 minute disc length, eh? What bullshit. 8 minutes of awesomeness does not equal the $30 I spent on this (CD + shipping), my recommendation would be to download it. Or just skip it and go for the P1 PSP soundtrack, because that's where its at, no question 'bout dat.