Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: first soundtrack, second soundtrack (disc 5, contains music info), extracted audio (includes 25 additional tracks)
Credits
Sound Director: Takahiro Ogata
Sound: Masaki Kurokawa, Kenichi Tsuchiya
Info
So big news in game music, well okay it’s not that big: Atlus finally gave us a breakdown for (some of) the Shin Megami Tensei NINE (“nine” referring to the number of possible combinations in a 3×3 alignment chart and not the game’s cardinal number) soundtrack after more than 20 years. I’ve never been a particularly big fan of MegaTen music generally, but I have had an interest in this game because it’s one of the two worked on by a composer I’ve posted about before here, Takahiro Ogata. So now I finally get to know which tracks from the game he did, at least among the ones that have been released on CD.
And, well, honestly, it turns out I didn’t really need a CD to tell me which ones he did, because most of the ones he did are pretty obvious, at least in comparison to the ones by Masaki Kurokawa. Does it have some combination of chill piano lines, nice chords, and glassy synths? Well, it’s by Ogata! I wouldn’t say his material is as good as his best stuff in T kara Hajimaru Monogatari or Fantastep, but there are some nice cuts for sure. His music here is a little darker for him than usual, which is appropriate because this is not exactly a bright and happy video game.
Of the credits we have, Masaki Kurokawa did the bulk of them, about twice as many tracks as Ogata. His tracks are a little bit more stylistically varied than Ogata’s and lean more toward rock and funk, with a lot more guitar use in particular. He was also responsible for all of the arrangements of tracks from previous MegaTen games composed by Tsukasa Masuko. I don’t care for his pieces as much as Ogata’s, but he did do a few good ones.
Both soundtrack releases are missing a good chunk of the soundtrack, which sadly is also true of the other MegaTen game Ogata worked on, Maken X. A lot of the game’s super ambient, environmental noise-y tracks are among these, which makes sense (even though some of these are neat), but there are more curious omissions, like some battle themes. We don’t have any composer info for those tracks, so there’s a possibility that MegaTen series mainstay Kenichi Tsuchiya was responsible for some of them.
Recommended tracks:
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“Panic” (Kurokawa) has a bunch of weird spooky string runs
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“Kichijoji 1” (Kurokawa) is a fusion jam
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“Roppongi” (Ogata) is some synth funkin’ that breaks out The Chords in the second half
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“Gaia Virtual Space” (Ogata) mixes mallet percussion with a super panning synth, a winning combo in my book; love the clustery chimes that come in at the end
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“Heaven” (Ogata?) is a big warm vibe
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“Makai” starts off with a clashing 3 beat figure on top of the 4/4, which only gets messier at 0:23 when it gets echoed
(first four track titles are unofficial translations from VGMdb, last two are completely unofficial as those tracks are unreleased)
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