Black Mages Teaser Site

Opening ~ Bombing Mission sample was pretty meh. And the "Darkness and Starlight" part in the album name is plain and simple corny.

But to post something positive, I like Minaba's art on that site. And this album is coming out pretty soon, now if only Mitsuda would kick his own ass to start doing and finishing that Chrono Cross arrange album.

"Starlight" is a hopeful indication that there will be more non-battle FF arrangements, like the way they did Matoya for TBM2.  Am I daft for thinking that a rock ballad version of FFV's "Dear Friends" is possible? :)

Is the rumor that it's going to be a 2-disc set still holding water?  I can easily see them going for a "dark" disc side and a "light" disc side.

I don't think it is possible to dismiss the second disc idea. After all, Dog Ear Records might simply assign one catalog number to even their multi-disc releases as many record labels do. The background with Japanese mythology shows that the rock-operatic idea Uematsu had is still likely to take effect in some way. The samples were conventional but enjoyable. I'm greatly looking forward to this album.

Razakin wrote:

Opening ~ Bombing Mission sample was pretty meh.

Agreed. The percussion was WEAK. Every last successive remix of "Bombing Mission" has been weaker than the last; just listen to Crisis Core, and I think there were about 2-3 separate renditions of it on there, too.

The only exception was More Friends Live Concert, which had a simply BOOMING rendition of "Bombing Mission" (pun not intended, but now that I think about it, I guess it works); they should've just taken that, and added some metal to it. Symphonic metal FTW.

That Rockman Rock Arrange was disappointing enough, I don't think I'll be able to take another disappointment from yet another major series re-arrangement project disaster.

Seriously though, if I want decent metal, there are plenty of domestically-released artists that I can consult...and their albums don't cost $30 a pop, either.

Last edited by Bernhardt (Jan 20, 2008)

I want the FFIV Boss theme already!

Yeah, Opening Bombing Mission was really lame, especially in comparison with the More Friends and the OCremix version that was on the Voices of the Lifestream album.  However, the last two albums also featured some of the weakest tracks as preview fodder (imo, anyway), so there's definitely still hope for me in this album.

Amazingu wrote:

Hmmm. considering it's an arranged album coming at 2800 Yen, tax incl, it seems extremely unlikely to be a 2 Disc set.

Good point.

Bernhardt wrote:

That Rockman Rock Arrange was disappointing enough, I don't think I'll be able to take another disappointment from yet another major series re-arrangement project disaster.

I've been disappointed in the last few arrange albums I've purchased - Rockman included - so I can't help but be cautious as well.

Vainamoinen wrote:

...now I don't know if I should buy the album.

I think it's a little early to worry, I mean the first two albums aren't exaclty bulletproof in that there are a few underwhelming arrangements on them as well... items like Zemorus on Skies above was, IMHO a swing and a miss.