TROUBLE WITCHES Final Episode1: Daughters of AMALGAM (Switch/PS4, 2023)

Game info: website (Japanese)
Listening: soundtrack album

Info

There’s a doujin group called Studio SiestA that started in the early 2000s making fangames of Key visual novels and random arrange albums. Around the end of the decade they pivoted to making original shmups, which they’ve been doing ever since, officially incorporating as the company Rocket-Engine in 2013 though still operating under the Studio SiestA brand. Their second original game was TROUBLE WITCHES Episode1: Daughters of AMALGAM, originally released for Windows in 2007, and they’ve remade/enhanced it with various ports for various systems over the years. The latest version is a console port, Final, that came out in 2023, though they only released a soundtrack for it a year later at Tokyo Game Show 2024.

The music was composed by Ina Kondo, which is the music-specific name used by Isamu Kondo, a graphic artist and musician who used to work for the dev Data West way back in the day and is now one of the executive officers of Rocket-Engine. The remakes all use the same music written for the original version back in 2007 (which has a few really good tracks!), but the later versions have added more music as necessary. The Final CD only seems to include the new tracks added to the newest version, along with voice and sound effects collections. Seven of the eight new tracks are for cutscenes for a new playable character, Remiel, and the last one’s a new menu track for practice mode.

Understandably, given their contexts, none of the new pieces are high-energy action tracks you’d use to get excited about shooting a bunch of enemies while you’re a witch on a broomstick. The first four cutscene tracks all seem to involve the same character, Sies, and are all arrangements of same cutesy melody in mostly fairly chipper styles. I liked the other three cutscene tracks a tiny bit more: there’s an ambient one that hits you with a big cloud of noises, a folky one that sounds like a forest village theme, and then a calm rock ending theme. Unfortunately, I didn’t really like any of the new additions here as much as my favorites from previous versions of the game, just less interesting to me compositionally than some of the stage themes and older cutscene themes get.

Recommended tracks:

  • Sies and the twins” was my favorite of the Sies tracks, because it’s the quirkiest

  • Distant memories” is that ambient one that hits you with a big cloud of noises

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