Cash for Flash: Sengoku IXA Senjin Souran -Shutsujin- (Review)

Well, this one is really from out of nowhere. Sengoku IXA Senjin Souran –Shutsujin- is a web-based historical strategy title released by Square Enix and Yahoo. While we wouldn’t normally expect to see an official soundtrack release for such a product, here it is.

As it turns out, each in-house Square Enix sound team member contributes a track along with licensed music by Shuhei Kurosaka (PAX JAPANONICA GROOVE). But is this short collection of songs worth the 3,000 Yen asking price?

Find out after the jump!

The album features 13 tracks totally over 42 minutes of music, mostly in a traditional Japanese style. Expect lots of shamisen, shakahauchi, and epic strings and rolling orchestral percussion.

Hideonori Iwasaki starts us off with a brief splash of music titled “Introduction,” offering a small taste of the game’s main theme which actually comes as the next track. Shuhei Kurosaka’s “Colors –once upon a time-“ acts as the game’s main theme and is both beautiful and epic with a great melody voiced by shakahauchi, some great string work, and an infusion of electronic percussion to give the piece a modern edge. His other track, “longing,” is slow and dreamy, but is unfortunately not as memorable.

Digging into some of the other tracks, Naoshi Mizuta offers “Month of Rainy Night,” a rather mellow track with traditional Japanese instruments and a jazzy upright bass. I could go for an entire album of this kind of music from Mizuta. Yasuhiro Yamanaka’s “Uncharted Territory” is another one of my favorites, coming as expansive, nebulous, and dangerous with a moody yet repetitive soundscape. “First Campaign” is Tsuyoshi Sekito’s contribution, bringing nice rustic Japan-flavored battle music with lots of orchestral percussion, strings, and brass. Keiji Kawamori’s emotional “Resting” is not all that restful, but is rather heartwrenching, while “Battles of Kawanakajima” by Ryo Yamazaki starts off tense with orchestral hits and lots of brass but becomes majestic and triumphant by the end.

While these tracks all build a great sense of atmosphere, I don’t really feel there’s a lot of cohesion on this album. This became even more apparent with Takeharu Ishimoto and Mitsuto Suzuki’s tracks. “Shake Down” by Ishimoto is a dancey electronic track with repeated vocal elements that are quite grating and out of place among the other more organic sounds on the album. Similarly, Suzuki’s “Sengoku ACID / Post Production Mitsuto Suzuki Mix” is also a bit jarring for its heavy electronic influence, but at least it’s enjoyable on its own. It would have made a great bonus track at the end of the album.

On the topic of closing out the album, Masayoshi Soken gets that honor, and does it in style. “One Day Fighter” is a comical track with silly, over the top Japanese lyrics and dudes screaming and fighting in the background. As a joke track, I can appreciate it, although it doesn’t make for the best outside listening.

In all, there are a few great tracks here, but nothing really stands out and nothing really comes together as a cohesive experience. That’s a shame, because I really enjoyed the instrumentation throughout. The booklet contains some brief commentary and track credits, and the packaging contains some nice artwork and a cool honeycomb design on the disc itself. At the end of the day, I can’t even really recommend the album due to the exorbitant asking price of 3,000 Yen (maybe due to licensing fees). It’s still nice to see Square Enix release the album for hardcore fans of the web game, but most who are interested in this because of the various contributions can probably skip it.

What do you think of Square Enix branching out into these kind of titles? Are you surprised to see a soundtrack release at all, and do you think 3,000 Yen is too high?