Search - Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoshitaka Hirota :: Shadow Hearts Ost Plus 1

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A. Griffiths | London | 08/23/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I enjoyed the game of Shadow Hearts a lot, but even playing it right through did not prepare me for the impact of the haunting music on this CD. Without the bright visuals and snappy dialogue of the game, what we have here is one dark album. Through the 60 or so tracks, the composer has successfully conjured up many moody soundscapes, ranging from the delicate oriental sounds of the first half of the game, to the other-worldly locations and supernatural encounters of the second. The battle music is a little lamer than you would hope for in a game of this type, but the tracks for the boss battles are excellent, from an effectively sinister oriental flavour in the first half (plenty of seemingly authentic instruments can be heard throughout here), to the titanic and doom-laden clanging of the final encounter. There are some occasional bright spots in the town and village settings (including a very jolly hoe-down style jig for London!), but these are easily outshone by the more elegant and melancholy compositions that accompany the games darker settings. Highlights include the sorrowful theme for the Asylum, and that of the lead character Alice, which are two of the most mournful and evocative compositions I have ever heard.

In some instances, the music verges on the nightmarish noise-tapestry of the Silent Hill soundtrack, in particular the "Berserk" music, but these tracks are few and far between. Actually it's often hard to identify the tracks within their correct place in the game, as the tracklisting is one of the most bizarre I have ever seen, but this has little impact on listening to the album itself. In fact, the CD sleeve has no images from the game on it at all, but it all makes for promoting this 2 disc set as a stand-alone musical work in it's own right, and with so many powerful and beautifully dream-like tracks, it does so with ease. Well worth the cost of buying, I would recommend buying this while you can, as I doubt if it will be around forever."