http://www.originalsoundversion.com/pia … happening/

Discuss.

Nifty.  I've never really been a big Sakimoto fan, but I do quite like the OST (playing and loving the game with the music in context probably helped a lot).  Dalmasca Eastersand?  Absolutely getting it even if just for that - I adore that piece.

Excellent news! I haven't heard the Valkyria Chronicles piano album, but I'll definitely keep an eye out for this one. I'd love to hear Eruyt Village and Rabanastre Lowtown arranged on that album. I'd love it even more if Kiss Me Goodbye wasn't on the album and that disc space was used to arrange a song that actually deserves to be on the album, but we all know how people love crappy RPG vocal themes.

Three words..

Skycity of Bhujerba

Bhujerba is a great choice, and I too have my fingers crossed for Eruyt.

And yeah ... fingers crossed, maybe they won't do Kiss Me Goodbye. Though, to be fair, this CD will be putting "the dream in my reality." o_0

Kiss Me Goodbye is only great anyway when Angie performs it acoustic style.

FFXII has a very underrated OST and I'm glad that it's finally getting the attention it deserves.

this was the least memorable FF soundtrack for me, and i played the game for 130 hours back in the day. might give the piano a try, but i'm not expecting too much from this.

Nice!  I can definitely imagine Rabanastre Town Ward Upper Stratum and Skycity of Bhujerba as piano arrangements.  Dalmasca Eastersand is another favorite; it'll be interesting to hear how its more bombastic moments carry over.

Would love to hear me some piano arranged Eruyt Village as well, not to mention some of those other quiet, very pretty pieces like A Moment's Rest and To the Place of the Gods.

I sincerely hope they don't have the same guy who did the Piano Operas arranging though.

Underrated by the fans or just by Square?  A lot of the people here seem to like it.  I remember reading that the OST didn't sell very well but I wonder how much that had to do with just the circumstances surrounding it.  (I can't find how much FFXIII OST sold for comparison.)

Underrated in the sense that some of us just can't stand much of Sakimoto, as opposed to old-school Uematsu, who is almost universally loved.

The only track I found even slightly enjoyable from this soundtrack was Phon Coast. Other than that, I tend to pretend Final Fantasy music ended somewhere around X-1.

i loves it all, I for one can't wait.

Yep, I'm very happy about this too. I never played the game and it did take me a while to warm to the soundtrack but I ended up loving it and felt it was a real shame that it never got a Piano album. Like the 1-3 Piano Opera CD, this plugs a hole in the FF collection and so I'm looking forward to it.

Same here, but I think Nakayama's involvement with those albums were because of his connection to Uematsu's other work (he arranged some off FF3 DS, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, etc.). His arrangements weren't terrible, but aside from "Save Them" from FF6 I wasn't really impressed. Also, the performer for this album needs to have a wide emotional palette. The Piano Operas to me didn't have enough dynamics throughout - the playing was either soft or really forceful (the latter of which is a huge turnoff for me), and having something like that on this album would completely ruin it for me, no matter how the songs are arranged.

Here, sure. Over the rest of the internet, opinion is greatly divided. Oddly, people like FFXIII more and I figured that would be a more divisive score.

Well, Hamauzu is just as likely to divide opinions as Sakimoto is (and can probably throw Mizuta in there as well), so I tend to consider both of these more niche soundtracks than mainstream ones. For the record, I've seen less discussion on FFXIII's OST release than FFXII's.

fwiw I very much disliked the FFXII OST when it came out. A lot of that, however, was that I had these set expectations and got something other than what I wanted. I wanted, basically, FFT and Vagrant Story, and I got something different, an evolution of Sakimoto's style. I wasn't ready for it, and I thought it bad. I said as much on RPGFan at the time.

Then I actually played the game. In the context of the game, I was very much impressed by many of the town/area themes.

So, yes, I'm very happy about this forthcoming album.

Well, based on my decently unbiased observation for 7 years in English VG/VGM forums, it's safe to say Hamauzu tends to be more favored by the mass, if not to the same extent as Uematsu or Mitsuda. I've generally seen very little hatred toward Hamauzu, especially if it is not about Dirge of Cerberus, as opposed to Sakimoto who is surrounding by persisting haters who wait for every opportunity to pop up to dis him. I think FFXIII is a highly acclaimed score which I myself enjoyed it a lot. Some people didn't care about it, but that's it and no hate is there. Compared to XII or XIV, the reception is pretty darned good.

Plus, we shouldn't forget about what fanbase Hamauzu owns. I believe 95 percent of them is just innocent and civil. They simply love what Hamauzu offers, but the remaining 5% is pure elitists who can't stand any negativity toward Hamauzu, and always claim they major in music or have some musical knowledge and thus Hamauzu's intellectual and elegant music is superior to anything else heard in VGM industry. I know some would argue this kind of fanatic fanboys is kinda common in every composer, but I've never seen any Shimomura or Mitsuda fanboy act like assholes (a couple for Sakuraba or Sakimoto surely, but definitely hardly as much as Hamauzu). I sense a bit of exaggeration in my remark, yet I don't think anybody strongly disagreeing with me, especially somebody like you who once stayed within the same community ;p

Anyway, now we have a good sign that XII won't be neglected in the future concert events or arranged albums, I expect lots more from SQEX. I've long thought how wonderful it would be with more live performance on XII and if a symphonic concert is held in Japan, I'll definitely attend that.

Positive or negative, I haven't seen much of ANYTHING in terms of discussion on FFXIII's music. At least with FFXII's, there was a couple threads worth of debate that come to mind, but I think that was more from VGM forums being more active back when FFXII was released and also people getting over the shock of no Uematsu. The handful of stuff I've heard from XII came from the contests over at Gamingforce (just incase you were wondering why I had some form of exposure to it. ), but it was pretty much straight down the middle in terms of love/hate that I recall in those pairings.

As for Hamauzu vs Sakimoto...I'd rather listen to old-school Uematsu.

Agreed, I think that may have been the biggest reason I found Piano Opera I-II-III so tiresome.  Almost no variation in intensity through every single track and too much emphasis on those loud bass notes, which may sound dramatic in a quick sample but gets old fast.  Listening to it in comparison to the FF concerto for piano and orchestra in Symphonic Odysseys (some of which uses the same themes) and to FFXIII PC the difference is night and day.

(I should mention that I haven't given a good enough lesson to Piano Opera IV-V-VI to judge it completely but what I've heard so far sounds along the same lines.)

It seems to be only available as part of the limited release (5000 only) on the FFXII Reprint.  It's available through cdjapan if you search for SQEX-10348. 

I've ordered it but it kinda sucks as I already ownt he FFXII soundtracK

Cheers,

David

Wrong. Do a bit of research before claiming something like that:
Amazon.co.jp

Hey.  I don't read japanese and was going from the little info presented from cdjapan.  Sorry if I started a panic.

Cheers,

David

it's times like this you should visit vgmdb.net more often - it's your friend and has everything conveniently listed in English!