Sakura Taisen Soundtrack ~Steam Gramophone~

If you've never heard of the game Sakura Taisen (Sakura Wars), you aren't alone. While incredibly popular in Japan, the game remained there and unfortunately remains reletively unknown here. The game itself is incredibly good, and the music that goes along with it is excellent.

This soundtrack contains all of the music from the game, except for the opening song, the ending song, the mini-game music, and the character themes (which can be found on the Song Collection disc in vocal form). The music is split into two discs. Disc 1 is the live orchestral music, mostly heard in the various FMV sequences. It also contains as a bonus an instrumental version of Sakura's song. Disc 2 contains all of the chip-generated music.

Unfortunately, the way the soundtrack release is set up makes for an imbalance. Disc 1 contains almost all of the short little "filler" tracks, which makes it hard to listen to outright. However, I've found that it's excellent music to listen to while concentrating on something else. The long tracks on disc 1 are very good however, and sound much better than their respective versions on disc 2.

What's also good about disc 1 is that it contains a bonus program for you computer (PC or Mac), featuring many pictures and stats of the various mechs in the game, as well as a nice slide show.

Disc 2 features the majority of the music. Some of the tracks are simply okay, but others are incredibly good. Both of the standard battle music pieces, tracks 6 and 19, are almost worth the price of the soundtrack by themselves. Track 1 and 27 are also great, catchy themes. All in all, disc 2 is quite diverse, and a pleasure to listen to, with only one or two "skippable" tracks.

Overall, I'd mainly recommend this soundtrack to fans of the game, but it's still not a bad purchase anyway. However, I would say if you had to chose between this and the song collection, go with the latter.