Vanillaware Month: Top 5 Soundtracks

I was originally going to make a post on the "Top 5 Music Tracks" from Vanillaware games, but that was just turning out to be too difficult, so I decided to rank the OSTs instead.

With the exception of Princess Crown, all of Vanillaware's games' soundtracks have been composed and produced by the talented people at Basiscape, Hitoshi Sakamoto's music company. The reason for this is due to George Kamitani and Hitoshi Sakamoto being friends, thus their companies have developed a close relationship.

And with the background information done, let's begin with #5 ......

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5) Princess Crown

Despite being composed by the talented Toshikazu Tanaka of Metal Slug fame, PC's soundtrack isn't all that impressive. It does a great job of setting a tone in the more tense story scenes, but the ambient and battle music leaves a lot to be desired.

4) Grimgrimoire

Grimgrimoire has a small soundtrack, but is one where each track is one to remember. Since Grimgrimoire plays out like a play, it makes sense that the music evokes specific emotions such as shock, intrigue, happiness, and fear. It all comes together very well in a beautiful soundtrack held back only by its small size.

3) Grand Knights History

Here's a soundtrack that has everything. There are calm, emotional pieces alongside many superb battle themes. It all comes together to form a very strong soundtrack that paints the picture of an epic war very well. With each country having their own specific theme, story scenes having various themes to match the tone, and many battle themes to complement the major battles throughout the game the soundtrack is huge and varied. The only problem with GKH's soundtrack is how its executed in the game, for the player doesn't hear many of the varied battle themes throughout the game, rather, the player mainly hears the main battle theme most of the time, which is a shame considering it's the weakest of the battle themes.

2) Oboro Muramasa

Muramasa's soundtrack is perhaps the game's greatest strength. The soundtrack is huge and is composed mainly of atmospheric and battle themes; the end result being a soundtrack of nothing but beautiful and thrilling music. This is all made better by the fact that the atmospheric and battle themes are basically one-in-the-same, as they go between each other in-game when going in and out of battle. The end result is a soundtrack that works both in-game and out-of-game. The music itself is an interesting and eclectic mix of traditional Japanese instruments and modern drums and electric guitars, and it all comes together very well without the modern instruments ever sounding "too much". A truly superb soundtrack.

1) Odin Sphere

Beautiful, intense, dynamic, and emotional; the Odin Sphere soundtrack is simply incredible. What gives Odin Sphere this #1 spot can only truly be understood by listening to it. The music for cutscenes are emotional and intense, the stage and hub music is ambient and atmospheric, and the battle music is intense. Not just the best soundtrack to come from Basiscape, but one of the greatest videogame soundtracks of all time.