I think the community can do a better job and use more technical terms to describe game music. I myself often have a hard time identifying what genre of music certain games can be classified as like Axelay. I'm starting this thread to ask what reviews you all have been impressed by and what we can do to achieve better in-depth reviews.

I will be editing this starting post later.

Added: I have gathered from this thread that the only way to move forward now (although I disagree that we have exhausted the argument) is for someone, such as I, write an "advanced review" to show a higher quality standard we should aim for on vgm. I will be undertaking this event, but I cannot say how soon I can turn out my 4 planned soundtrack reviews. Also, I have not written a full review for a site. So not only am I asking others to challenge themselves, I myself am doing so as well.

I personally don't favor album reviews anymore, simply because the music is so easy to find and listen to. Back when most VGM was undiscovered, it was a good way to break people open to stuff that was relatively undiscovered. Now anyone can grab any of the super-rarities or just something they like the name of for their hard drive and listen for themself and form their own opinions (and *gasp* buy the album if they like it!). I tend to find a forum discussion on the music to be much more useful overall (see the recent discussion on Rockman 10 Image Album here, which was pretty mixed overall...after the RM9 Image Album, it wasn't even up for consideration from me, but it turned out to spawn quite a few gems in spite of much mediocrity).

My favorite ones were the ones Crash did here on STC for Ys III Perfect Collection and Dragon Slayer Legend of Heroes Perfect Collection. I think the Ys III one is one of my favorite negative reviews ever and it increased my awareness of the Ys III Duo Redbook, to the point I was on ebay, trying to pick up a copy of the game shortly after reading it. Similarly, I had not been aware of the Legend of Heroes franchise prior to reading about Perfect Collection. The irony is both albums were part of my starting point with Falcom albums and while I enjoy them a lot, I can't help thinking both could be much better (and that I'd be much more disappointed if my expectations were higher).

Also, Adam Page's hype-driven STC reviews for the Ys IV Perfect Collections had them cemented as ones I made a point to hunt down. Frankly, they're some of the only ones that actually lived up to the hype in the actual text.

Partly agreed, but I don't download whatever is in front of me and the reason why I try something I've not particularly interested in until that point is more than often not "because somebody says it's good", so I at least appreciate I catch what opinions other VGM shape. Granted, a small forum post is enough, but once I get into one soundtrack, it's definitely nice to read something longer.

I love reviews. I love multiple opinions from other people written in their personal style. Honestly, when done right reviews are too valuable. Already while trying to figure out which Ys soundtracks are truly worthwhile I have cut the junk that maybe I should wait on and got essential stuff.

My favorite reviews are from SEMO and my favorite reviews have been the Symphonic Suites DQ by Juan2Darien.

I dunno to me these reviews are indispensable especially since I actively talk to some people once in a blue moon on forums like this one.

I never even read Game Music Reviews, because I never agree with them anyway.
I have yet to meet a single person who has the exact same taste in music (I'm sure this goes for everyone), so someone else's opinion is never going to reflect mine accurately.

I'm in the same boat as the OP in that I'm not good at naming (sub)genres, but rather than asking people to write more technical reviews, I'd much rather see a concise reference guide to musical styles and genres.

That about sums it up for me. Although I do not agree with it, in the present state of VGM there is no reason to bother typing up anything when in the same click someone can just form their own opinion themselves.

Same. I have to use blanket terms like electronic and symphonic, etc. I don't  know what makes trance or *core what they are and I had never even heard the word 'chill' used to describe music until this year XD

Personally I've flirted with the idea of setting up a doujin|game-arrange site (news + reviews + interviews) or even just a blog to review my collection as an extension of my collecting lately, but I don't really see the interest there. Also I can't see writing for any of the existing review sites as I only see them as interested in gaining new content.

I think I'd be biased so I won't say where I find my "favorite" reviews. If you're looking for technical expertise with descriptions of music though, I have found that Don Kotowski does a very admirable job depending on what he's reviewing. He's written for a number of sites, most prominently SEMO and OSV.

Honestly, I couldn't disagree with you more. The use - and overuse - of technical terms is usually more than enough to turn me off of a review. For example, I don't know what a crescendo is (this is a rhetorical question by the way) and, to be quite frank, I don't really care. Do I really need to study musical theory and know how to differentiate genres to enjoy a piece of music/soundtrack? I like what I like and appreciate it, that's enough for me. Besides, a good author would know how to present their thoughts without bogging it down with jargon thus making it accessible to everyone?

As for writing reviews, I don't really know where my future with them lies. Still, as egotistical as it may seem, when I write anything I write for myself first because in essence sometimes putting my thoughts in writing helps forge my opinion on a something. If someone reads it and likes it cool, if not than I haven't wasted my time. However, while it's not essential to enjoy a piece of music, I'll freely admit I am probably interested in the context of pieces beyond what is necessary.

I had meant to update the original post to further specify on that subject. When I say I want technical terms used I think there are some basic ones that can be used like "dynamic", "pitch", "chord", "impact", or "timbre" that can be easily understood, and enhance the review, that are often left out of game music reviews. We could even put up a musical terminology page for reviews if requested. I am planning to learn about technical stuff to write my own advanced reviews. A lot of reviews I see are plagued with the simple "this sounds good" description. I do agree with you that we have to understand our audience and that's why I made the thread. Another undesirable effect to avoid would be reviews that sound pretentious or machinelike. So, reviews written by people who have full mastery of musical terminology (expert communicators) have more use to us, but ones that go way over our heads are of use only if we have a desire to understand them (a fun challenge to the reader).

As much as I welcome more musical terms (I don't like elitist reviews, but I guess musical terminology sometime enables you to properly point out what goes on or what you think is great about a specific part of a track in question), I want to read more about how the track in question is used in the game, or anecdotes on how the track was crafted, because the primal purpose of a piece of video game music is to accompany the game. There is NOTHING wrong, even if you listen to a soundtrack without playing the game and review it purely based on whether it can stand alone outside of the game or not, but preference is to each own, after all.

With the said approach, though, I believe we can still write reviews that can interest those who doesn't share the same taste in music as ours. For instance, the quality of reviews in this site, despite being only in Japanese, is the best of its kind. By Far. He's easily the most valuable reviewer I've ever come across.

I have to admit that I only submitted a couple of reviews to SEMO but whenever I looked at the other reviewers I kind of felt sheepish about my skill. A bunch of the people obviously have a great deal of knowledge about music and are much more adept at conveying their particular feeling through the terminology or comparisons with certain music. Being that I've played alto sax from 6th grade on and I'm currently learning the guitar my knowledge is limited by the classes I have taken and whatever personal research I have done. Ultimately this kind of made me feel like I was kind of an underwhelming reviewer.

I do agree that including such jargon can really make a review more complicated than it has to be. I personally believe that reviews have enough terminology as it is. I also agree that the community can do the best job at reviewing. By disagreeing you would be saying that you think a site like IGN could do a great job at this. Ultimately when it comes to this kind of stuff the community is the only place with the passion of the subject and its expanding all the time.

Not everyone can really understand some of the more complicated terms. To expect a person to go to an online glossary or footnotes is ludicrous in my opinion. The desire to review is made by the people. If you want to review it you can just so you can kind of share your opinion in a more formatted manner.

By reading some of these I have gotten some wonderful opinions. When Juan2Darien decided to review the Symphonic Suites he went above and beyond with each album as he not only reviewed each song but each orchestra as well. As a result I have recordings of all London Phiharmonic versions with an extra disc for DQ 6 because the Tokyo Met did such a great job.

Thats one thing I believe when you read a review by someone you build a silent rapport with them. I've read gaming mags for years now and I always remember who wrote the review because I know I can trust that person. That also means that I kind of follow that person around when they defect or something.

If you like the technicalities and things of that nature then follow someone who already writes as much. You can also make requests to that person to review something. I'm sure that even if they don't review it they may find it flattering.

In this particular case vert I say please cast the first stone. Review something using more technical knowledge. I want to see its effective use and seeing how passionate on the subject you are I'm sure your a great candidate to do such a thing. I am at least knowledgeable enough to understand timbre and such.

I had to dash to my dictionary for this one. Never seen 'repoire' before. But you spelled it similar to how 'rapport' is pronounced.

Oh wow. I feel sheepish. At least I learned something new.

When I am done writing my reviews and satisfied with them I will submit them to this website for people to read. For right now I can tell you that I've chosen my first 4 soundtracks to review: Ibara, Bare Knuckle 3, Chaos Legion, and ???.

This is an interesting subject you bring up, and I can stand on both sides of it. I write for a game magazine myself, so if I can toot my own horn a little, I think I'm a pretty good writer. I've long lamented the lack of quality in the music portions of reviews for games as a whole. While there are a lot of both amateur and pro reviewers that could improve their reviewing of all aspects of games, I think music gets fudged up to the greatest degree. It really does break down to just "this is good" way too often, and it's pretty sad when I'm impressed to see what should be basic stuff like describing the genre, the instruments, the atmosphere the music conveys, and such. I know I can pull off all that at least, and I feel within the area of game reviews, I can do music sections quite well.

However, I remember a few years ago Chudah's Corner had a big push for reviews and I think there was a contest or something, and I decided to take the challenge of writing my first review solely on a game's music, which to this day is still my only. It's certainly not bad, but I feel it's a little weak compared to other stuff I've written. When I saw the winners, I knew I wasn't even in the same league, even if in general writing ability I'm sure I'm on par. I have no musical ability myself, and the complexity of the analysis by others is way beyond my knowledge. But then at the same time, I'm totally hearing the "pretentious" remark. Game reviewers sometimes fall victim of this, but I think I've seen it more among game music reviewers (although my knowledge of games vs. music may be skewing my perspective). I guess with games as a whole, what do you really have to flaunt? You can brag about how many games you've played or owned, but that doesn't really come off as pretentious. Usually pretentious game reviewers are just English majors that want to making their writing as pinky-up as possible using unnecessarily convoluted phrases and needlessly obscure words to show off how smart they are, which is totally removed from anything having to do with games. But a similarly arrogant music major does have something they can show off that's in relation to the actual subject at hand, so maybe the nature of game music reviews lends itself more to pretentious writing. But either way, you have to identify your audience. You can very well make the argument that your writing is only intended for the elite that can actually comprehend it all, but I'd say that's more likely to do a disservice in these fandoms. I think readers will be better served with a piece that is down to earth but still very smart, which is neither aimed to show off nor appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Sorry to say, even the most technically advanced musical language used in a favorable review is simply a fancy way of getting around saying, "this sounds good...to me". I read reviews over at Encyclopedia Metallum a lot and I rarely see the terms you listed here in any capacity (well aside from chord, obviously...even the most schlocky metalhead should know the term "power chord", even if they don't know what one is. lol) and at least 40% of the ones I read I find pretty effective in their album/band/song descriptions.

By the way, Tri-Ace...lol, I was one of the judges for that contest and I really don't know what you mean by not being in the same league. I think onstaff, we were assigning point values and it was a pain because I just remember the good ones being really close (I remember I personally was not big on the Ingmar one that won...I remember it being solid, but too straightforward and did not really motivate me to give the album a listen) and the bad ones (the ones that were completely unpostable because of basic grammar/spelling) being um...frankly, pretty damn entertaining. So literally, my scores was either like 85 or more or 10 or below...very little inbetween.

I am trying to move away from the superficial and banal language, which is why I am not sure how you've managed to equate "advanced" terms and specificity into superficial (fancy) terms. I do agree that the words can be used without much effect by poor communicators who simply substitute and trick users into attributing that something new/profound is being said. There are ways to describe sound problems by pinpointing areas of the track to others and to understand what musicians call certain sound structures is helpful. I haven't even gotten into the argument on how to "properly listen to music" aka getting the most enjoyment out of music listening. Anyhow, even the simplest technical terms can affect whether a game soundtrack is bought or not bought. Here's an example of a reviewer using what I would say is a non-fancy term for describing what is wrong in a game soundtrack through comparison to prior music.

Now this reviewer could have simply said they altered the tunes and he doesn't like them. We'd implore as to why he doesn't like them. If he said they just don't sound good to him, we would then insist on asking what doesn't sound good (how it could be better). If he leaves us with another "it just doesn't sound good" we then ourselves have to investigate what the "problem" could be since he won't be specific. Thankfully, he doesn't do this (he cuts out the work for the reader; a review is supposed to do this) and speaks up by pinpointing a problem that a Capcom sound engineer could have fixed; He tells them to check the "reverb" (a term I want to see more of) and "bass". Now because of the inherent subjectivity of music the Capcom sound engineer could say that he has "enhanced" the sound. The reviewer disagrees with this notion by making clear to the reader that his expectations of soundtracks are those of containing original game sound and added clarity (i.e. like switching F-Zero X game music from mono to stereo for the soundtrack).

The reason I am going to post my reviews here is because I like the star rating system. I am not a fan of rating systems that would confuse readers. At vmgdb, a discussion has taken place on what 5 star ratings are to users. This is why clarity is so important for reviewers to establish.

To love clarity and insight...

A big comfy chair, lossless Wavgained files and high quality headphones/earphones. I think I just won that argument, so no need to get into it. ;p

Basically what I said was that about 90% of people that read your review do not know or care about "dynamic", "pitch", "chord", "impact", or "timbre". If you are not already comfortable using them in everyday vocabulary, I think you are doing a lot of extra work for very minimal payoff by trying to incorporate them. On the other hand, people that can use them and have studied them can easily bend them to their liking or disliking of the album, so generally speaking, they serve no purpose to me even if used capably.

Edit: You may want to stop linking to Insomnia articles...They are hurting your credibility.

Did you see that I said we were using numbers for the actual ratings of the reviews themselves (not the album ratings...Chudahs Corner always used the letter grading system)? I think the purpose was to get a total at the end, which made sense because we had to pick a winner somehow with 3-4 people judging and highest end tally made the most sense. Also, it was broken down into criteria, so...yeah.

No. They are hurting your credibility because every one sentence response to those well-written articles shows your lack of care to putting forth clear and insightful arguments.

This is off-topic.

Future note: I appreciate short responses when they are humorous or logical. So you achieved both to me in your response on how to listen to music. yay.

Hmm, please don't take cues from Insomnia if you plan on writing VGM reviews that you want taken seriously...Friendly advice is all I'm giving you on that end, nothing more, nothing less.

I'd personally like to read in-depth reviews, I'd like to get to know the subject's historical context, how it compares to other works by the same artist, to other works at that time, to other works in the same genre, discussion about its approach, design and execution etc. But I honestly don't expect such writings to regularly appear for game music (or games themselves for that matter) so I'm not holding my breath. Where they exist I rather see such kind of reviews disappearing (or being diluted) in other areas outside of the academic circles since nobody really cares about them.

Your post has brought me to this conclusion: I will do exactly what you said here for comparison against the video game music industry. Now on my discogs account, I will do a review comparing the soundtrack's genre to the genre in the music industry; I believe vgm is just as good as other music and deserves that ultimate comparison.

Also, what you ask for will be easy for 2 of the reviews I listed. Hideyuki Fukasawa's Chaos Legion ost and Shinji Hosoe's Ibara ost are their first; they have produced no prior solo albums to draw comparison. I won't mention works after them because they "built" that album after knowledge gained and refinements of making their first album. All the albums I am reviewing I believe are standout albums of their time and will (and continue to) withstand the test of time.

I'll just be forward and say I was anxiously awaiting someone saying "RPGFan has some great reviews!"

I guess maybe we need to focus more on quality than quantity.

Or maybe people are just enjoying arguing about technical terms.

I like the word "lietmotif." Everyone else hates that word.

You know, there's this one site...uh...RPGFan? Yeah, yeah, that's it! Boy, they have some great reviews over there.

Honestly, RPGFan is about the only site I read VGM reviews on these days, even though I'm not actively buying albums anymore. My library is bloated and I don't listen to half of what I've got, so if something interests me now I'll usually just check out a few tracks on YouTube. Anyway, RPGFan (if I mention it a few more times I might win a CD or something) has decent reviews, long samples, and a good smattering of humor once in a while. I love inventive descriptions of truly horrible music tracks.

Forgive me for saying so, but I'm struck by your highfalutin concept of the discussion of VGM as a joyless and burdensome exercise.

I fully support the proposition that we should be able to articulate why we like or dislike a piece of music, but is it possible that you're taking this way too seriously?  I submit that the possibility exists.

I'm serious about video game music. But trust me, I'm not at the point where I'm deadly serious. That's besides the point anyway, man. This thread was never about attacking people--It was about helping them. I've learned through the years of being on forums (one could argue battling online addiction in the process) exactly what generates post counts and passionate responses. It is my aim to get passionate responses, and detailed ones at that, into vgm reviews.

Here's a review where I disagree with the assessment on the first track, but that I generally praise for talking about keys, chords, and half-steps. Right now I couldn't do a vgm piano soundtrack review for shoot, so it's much appreciated when someone who seems to have a good understanding of piano music writes a review. Had the person felt very strongly about the album I'd expect to see more talk about why he found the chords boring or more breakdowns for each track.

http://www.rpgfan.com/soundtracks/brand … index.html

I do not understand how expanding one's vocabulary beyond what a majority of the readers care about within the context of a review is a form of showing passion.

I will say this: THE worst reviews I've written were on albums I had a totally neutral opinion on. There just...isn't much to say about them and I end up wondering why I wrote anything at all. Anything I actually had a strong opinion on (and coincidentally, probably knew inside and out) was easily cranked out and I was generally pleased with the results after the first draft. Likewise, some reviews are painful to read because the general tone is that the writer is forcing themselves to write something about an album they are otherwise indifferent to. These probably do the album more of a disservice overall than any kind of good.

And sorry...no amount of fancy words has ever made VGM piano albums interesting to me. And that is bad, considering I'm generally a fan of the tracks chosen for arrangement on the Falcom ones and most of the FF ones.

Hahahaha... nice.

I think in those scenarios the writer just needs to more carefully plan out his or her angle. It's very easy to come up with the angle of "This rocks and he's why" or "This sucks and here's why", but if your angle is "I don't feel any passion for this and I'm going to display my lack of passion", you're doomed to fail. However, even if you feel something is squarely mediocre, you can still come up with an interesting approach to a review. For example, if the subject at hand is widely loved/hated, then you can make the argument as to why it isn't so great/awful, even if you're not proposing the completely opposite end of the spectrum. I think I've written some interesting pieces with that approach, maybe even more interesting than my typical gush/bash review. Granted, if everyone appears to be indifferent to the subject, then you have to be even more creative. :)

Sorry for bringing up such a ancient thread, but I remembered posting this here and its become that relevant lately.

I was trying to write something up for the soundtracks for Star Gladiator and Plasma Sword but it just wasn't working. So, I switched gears and wrote about Plasma Sword as a (game) whole and it just started to flow like it should.

So, yeah, I think I'm done with reviewing soundtracks... there are other reasons behind my decision but mainly if you don't feel it anymore you just don't, you know?

I think by default it'd be a lot easier to review games than music unless you've been properly educated in the latter as there are so many more clearly defined separate elements for games (graphics, controls, AI, longevity, story, and of course music).

Never really tried my hand at game reviews but it seems like that would be the case.

I think you've got a point, Adam.

Personally, I love writing the occassional Game Review, but I've always withheld from writing soundtrack reviews, simply because I feel I lack the necessary knowledge on music to bring any worthwile discussion to the table.

I AM very much into reviewing games lately though.

Xenoblade even tickled me enough to submit my review on other game sites, which is something I've never done before.
I'm working on a review for Capcom's excellent Ghost Trick now, by the way

Completely. I can't write a goddamn thing anymore. No use fighting it; if something ain't there, it ain't there. Might as well spend that time with something that is there instead.

People need to investigate the etymology of the term "review". It indicates a re-evaluation of some piece of work after the fact and not before—the fact here being that someone, somewhere, somehow listened to an album/soundtrack and is now ready to analyze and form an opinion. For the most part, however, the vast majority of game music album reviews read like impressions formed during an album listen, and less like focused analyses of the intrinsic and contextual qualities of the album's music itself. I think this phenomenon and misunderstanding of what a review actually is came about due to the interminable influence of popular video game magazines from back around the turn of the millennium. Along with many early game news-coverage websites that mimicked these mags, the writing formats commonly seen in these publications were and still are, to be blunt, full of shit. A review is not a preview, insomuch that a preview gives both a writer's impressions on the matter, and how to play the game itself (or, in the case of game music: an amateurish description of the music itself, and not an evaluation). Reviews shouldn't be used to recommend albums based on impressions—they should thoroughly evaluate and compare the music inside to the whole back catalog of music from the same artist, and how the music works in its prepared context.

That's the way I'm approaching my reviews at SEMO, and it's also responsible for my unwillingness to phone reviews in and create faux-reviews that merely describe what can already be easily heard on media-sharing websites. Most of the reviews being submitted these days forgo detailed analysis and art appreciation for description of technical details and basic opinions that are never fully-developed with extensive arguments and research. I don't think enough reviewers put requisite effort into researching the game itself, or perhaps they don't know enough about the artist(s) themselves, making any analysis flawed on principle due to a lack of knowledge. For my upcoming Pokemon album reviews, I'm going to avoid the trap-doors and common pits that past reviewers have fallen into by not knowing the Game Freak sound team through-and-through, and by not recognizing the importance of so-called "jingles" and "short tracks", musical selections that act as minor details used to add diversity and contrast to the Pokemon game world. To me: reviews need to be the definitive versions of personal opinions, richly-crafted and specific in depiction. Impressions need to be separate, and big editorials-cum-features should focus on broader topics than individual album releases and specific soundtracks.

I think a lot of the so-called "cerebral" game music critics out there aren't actually that well-informed both on a musicological level, and at the level of writing insightful, compelling, and polished articles. Lazy editing factors into that as well, though guys like Chris usually do a good job of presenting the original reviews in an online context.

In other words "I'm a pompous know-it-all ass who's better than you".