Game info: GameFAQs
Listening: collection release (disc 3, missing Revo’s track)
Credits
Sound Director: Sadamitsu Oi
Composition, Arrangement: Sadamitsu Oi, Yasuo Kamanaka (Hideyoshi’s theme only)
Sound Engineers: Michihiko Shichi, Hajime Takai
Info
Moving on, the third game in the series was the first one composed by KOEI in-house staff and not contracted external composers. Sadamitsu Oi headed this one up and followed Taku Iwasaki’s musical style from the second game, though with a little less traditional Japanese music and a little more fake jazz/blues. Even though this one’s more varied stylistically than the previous game, I thought it was even blander unfortunately; just not particularly compelling to me in terms of composition, orchestration, or atmosphere for the most part.
The game is historically notable because of a music contest KOEI ran during its development: Internet Music Contest ’98. Winners had their tracks featured in two games: this one and a dating sim called Yakusoku no Kizuna. The winning Taiko Risshiden III submission was “On the Other Side of That Door…,” written by a 20-year-old student named Yasuo Kamanaka, who would later go on to be much better known as Revo, the mastermind of fantasy rock opera project Sound Horizon. Yes, that guy! His track was conspicuously not included on the soundtrack release, and in fact this is the only game on the soundtrack that doesn’t list a composer at all (Oi is the only other listed composer in the game itself), which suggests to me that there’s some Legal Business going on here.
Recommended tracks:
-
“Sakai / Hakata” (track 5) is a pretty chill jam
-
“Siege” (track 18) was by far Oi’s best-orchestrated track, and more importantly has a synth at the very start that sounds like the one from Chrono Trigger’s final boss theme
(track titles are unofficial translations by me)
Leave a Reply