Dragon Quest Symphonic Suite Live Best

This CD is easily my favorite in my collection. Just think of your favorite songs from the Dragon Quest series (known as the Dargon Warrior series here) fully orchestral. It is absolutely brilliant and a dream come true! The music mostly consists of strings with some horns as well. The tracks vary in style. Most are restful, especially "Flying in the Sky" (the Ramia tune from DQ3) but others are very upbeat like "Into the Legend" (ending theme to DQ3), which really adds to the overall listening experience.

Several of the tracks consist of medleys of two or three original songs. "Comrades" has six of them! They are pieced together flawlessly and tend to be the better tracks on this CD. "Endless World" (a medley of the three DQ2 overworld tunes) is in my opinion the best track. I have listened to it hundreds of times and I am still not sick of it.

The drawback to this CD is that most of the tracks from DQ5 aren't that exciting. I'm not sure, but it may be the fact that I have never heard them before. So I can't really say if they've been improved or not. The eleven tracks from the first four Dragon Quests all have an obvious improvements. The only worthy one from DQ5 was "Violent Enemies ~ Almighty Boss Devil is Challenged", which would be the battle music. The others though seem bland and repetitive. Even with these bland six tracks, this CD as a whole is terrific. I would recommend any soundtrack fan to pick this one up!

Of the many soundtracks I have heard, this one clearly shows it is one of the best. Although there is no original music made for this CD, it is an excellent collection of music form Dragon Quest 1-5, performed by the Tokyo Symphony and composed and conducted by Koichi Sugiyama. This CD has a variety of music. A predominant amount of the songs are taken up by strings, though some of it usually has quite a few trumpets, and one song is taken up by nearly all trumpets.

Some of the best songs include "Endless World", which seems like a medley of several songs. This song is beyond words. It sends chills down your spine, and makes you really appreciate the CD. Another song I love is "My Road, My Journey". This is one that gets in your head *really* easily, and stays there. It basically has two parts, which I will leave you to find out about.

The only bad part about the CD is that toward the end of the CD the songs weaken. The ones in the beginning are much better than the ones toward the end. Fortunately, this applies to just about four or five songs, and when you have seventeen on the disc it isn't so bad.

In conclusion, this is an excellent CD. Anyone who likes Dragon Quest music, or doesn't know about it, should definitely buy this CD. I have had it for weeks and I still listen to it constantly.