[Album] DIRGE of CERBERUS -FINAL FANTASY VII- Original Soundtrack (CRCP-40137~38)

This soundtrack is better than Uematsu's original FF7 OST! Why? Because of the fresh orchestrations, the nice ambient tracks, and of course improved themes for Cait Sith and Yuffie! Hamauzu has always been one to impress his listeners, and this soundtrack further exerts that point. It is certainly one of the finer achievements of the year 2006! Most every track was unskippable for me, and right off that tells me that this score is great. His brilliant and creative takes on the themes for Cait Sith and Yuffie were flawless. For Cait Sith, he used a nice syncopated jazz feel to it, and for Yuffie he used a great light oriental melody with some great piano accompaniment. Plus his epic orchestral pieces really hit the spot. Marching Tune is epic and has a sweeping, yet upbeat feel to it. Its colorful orchestration makes it a brilliant listen. I don't see hardly any flaws with this score. If I were to rate it I would give it a 9 out of 10.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I wished that the music featured in the Beta Samples were in the OST. The battle music in that was well written, and reminded me of FFX a bit.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Here's what I can't figure out...

How is Final Fantasy X better than this? I thought Final Fantasy X was mostly crap, just because it lacked consistency and the fact that 75% of the score was ambience. Hamauzu provided some great music (i.e. Thunder Plains, People of the North, and Someday the Dream Will End). BUT in no way does it surpass the quality of the compositions found in Dirge of Cerberus. In Dirge not only do you find ambience, but you find sweeping melodic pieces with light woodwinds and booming brass phrases. I know that this soundtrack is different, and that is what Hamauzu was trying to prove. He doesn't want to be bound to one specific kind of writing. I think that he succeeded in the fact that he caught everyone off guard, and treated them to something new and creative. The battle themes are one clue. Mixing rock elements in with orchestral cues. There is nothing in this score that says horrible or un-creative. It is simply different and only true fans of Hamauzu will be able to appreciate its musical quality. And another thing is that everyone is having too high of expectations anyway. Just because it has FFVII on it doesn't mean that it has to give off the same impact as Uematsu's orignal score. One thing that I found amazing with DoC is that Hamauzu did not replicate any of Uematsu's music. Hamauzu has always given the impression (no pun intended) to me that he never restricted himself to boundaries in terms of musical composition. In other words, even though Uematsu made an amazing score for FF7, he didn't seem intimidated by it. And in the end he made a better score, imo. I think that most people who are nit-picking this score are being completely biased, and are only disappointed with this because they feel it doesn't surpass Uematsu's original. As you can tell, I enjoyed this score, and find it thoroughly entertaining.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I did find FFX to be mostly ambience, and quite boring. The only reason why I liked it was because of Hamauzu and Uematsu. Nakano just plain sucked in it. I didn't truly like Nakano until I listened to Musashiden II Blademaster. He was excellent in that score, just not in FFX.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Hamauzu is more akin to Claude Debussy, actually. A lot of Hamauzu's work is impressionistic. The parallels signature to Hamauzu were used quite frequently in Dirge of Cerberus. Marching Tune is a fine example of his ordinary writing style.

I was speaking idiomatically.