Repel the Heroes!! Protect the Demon Lord!! Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida 1&2 Giant Recital (Review)

[Editor’s Note: Many of you out there know Carl Larson as one of the oldest VGM community members who’s active in numerous forums and has a massive CD collection that is flat out silly. With so much music under his belt, I trust his opinion, and am pleased to have him as an occasional contributor on OSV. Check out his review of this Japanese-only release below.]

This PSP game series by Acquire has already built up a reputation for being a cult classic, although it hasn’t debuted outside of Japan yet. Instead of being the heroes, your job is to beef up the monsters’ defenses and protect the demon lord’s cave from the heroes who venture inside to explore it.

I was busy scoping out the new releases on Amazon.co.jpwhen I came across this long-titled album and figured I’d take a chance on it. Any OST with pixelated cover art already has promising chances of being awesome, and I’m happy to report that the blind purchase paid off BIG TIME!

Find out why after the jump.

This album is a total gem! The music has all the compositional charm that early Namco, Enix, and Square songs had, making the atmosphere instantly comfortable to classic gamers. It’s filled with imaginative and fun sounds which add plenty of cheer into the job of making and feeding monsters in a dungeon.

The album has a playful and unique sound using all live instruments, but it doesn’t aim for a polished or professional orchestra sound. It’s rather like a elementary grade school band, by using instruments like recorders, xylophones, and tambourines. The result has an imaginative and fun sound to remind you of the youthful excitement of gaming days of the past.

Composer Takeshi Hama of Noisycroak Inc. did a fantastic job, making new songs that still managed to have a comfortable and nostalgic feel to them. The rest of the Noisycroak sound team all got together and helped Takeshi by performing all the live instruments themselves! Now that’s a supportive sound team!

Even the booklet is great, packing in all the information I like to see: Individual track by track composer comments, photos of the recording session and the instrument performers, interview questions with the producer, and the full staff and credits list in English! Now that’s how you make a booklet. Nice job Aniplex!

Based on the soundtrack’s first listen and the packaging I’m already very impressed with this title, and hope that a publisher like XSEED might pick up the Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida series for an English release someday.