Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: box set (tracks 51.14~18), extracted audio
Info
Back again on the Takashi Yoshida grind at our new home on the internet with another expansion for a previously-released game. Bladestorm: The Hundred Years’ War, released in 2007, was another historical game, though this time a strategy game based on European history. The original 2007 soundtrack was written by U.S. composer Jamie Christopherson, who happened to do a bunch of work around that time for Japanese and South Korean developers for one reason or another. In 2015, KOEI TECMO released an enhanced remake of the game as Bladestorm: Nightmare. This remake included a new Nightmare Mode, a decidedly less historical mode featuring fantasy monsters; Yoshida wrote five new pieces of music for this mode, and that’s what we’re listening to here.
Christopherson’s original score was orchestra + choir vocals singing the Latin Mass, and Yoshida followed his lead with some serious-sounding orchestral + choir music of his own, with a couple of tracks also having a bit of church organ in there so you know this is a serious business video game. It’s mostly foreboding music aside from the ending theme, fine orchestration but not super complex, some interesting moments here and there. Generally not super remarkable…
… except for the two battle tracks that are the most Aria of Sorrow-core music I’ve found so far in a KOEI TECMO game: “SURGING MALICIOUS” and “BATTLE OF THE NIGHTMARE.” They’re not as unhinged time signature nonsense as that game’s boss themes got, but they’ve got that chaotic prog energy that I’ve been craving. We finally found it! We found out what happens when Yoshida does The Thing with a full orchestra, and it’s this. Mission accomplished. 🫡
Recommended tracks:
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“SURGING MALICIOUS” was the less hinged of the two and therefore clearly the one I enjoyed more, I really like the parts starting at 0:28 where the strings, brass, and mallet percussion are all screaming at each other
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“END OF THE NIGHTMARE” was my favorite of the unweird tracks, mostly a pretty standard ending-theme mix of relief and triumph with a couple of nice chord changes across the piece
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