I got a nice surprise today when I found out that the second Distant Worlds cd was released.
For those of you who don't know, Distant Worlds is the name of the show where an orchestra along with Nobuo Uematsu's group plays versions of favorite Final Fantasy songs. The first CD was released a couple years ago, and was pretty good. Mainly because of the new re-imagining of songs from the older FF games (The opera from FFVI comes to mind.
The second CD is music from the second tour, with a ton of brand new songs. The official CD is going to be released next month, but the digital version was released last month at ffdistantworlds.com for only 10 dollars.
Whether or not you will like a song or not has a lot to do with how much you like Final Fantasy music, obviously. And even then, if you love the music, you may feel like these new versions lack the same feeling of the original, or might be fantastic. With that said, I'm going to try to give a quick opinion on each song.
- Prelude (Final Fantasy Series) - The main theme. Very nicely done, the vocals add a nice touch to it.
- The Man With the Machine Gun (FF8) - Laguna's theme. When I saw this I thought, there was no way that this could be good. But I was pleasantly surprised, still kinda weird, but not completely horrible
- Ronfaure (FF11)- I can't really say too much about this, never played XI
- A Place to Call Home~Melodies of Life (FF9)- A Place To Call Home is the title music of FF9, and leads into Melodies of Life pretty well (The main vocal theme of FF9).
- Zanarkand (FF10)- If you played X, then you know this song. Not as mindblowingly different, but still a pretty good song
- Dancing Mad (FF6)- The final battle theme of FFVI. Amazing with a capital A. They really nailed this song. The final section was just stunning, the added vocals combined with the guitars at the end (if you've heard the Black Mages version, it's pretty familiar) make it end with a bang. Easily the showpiece of the CD
- Victory Theme- Yeah, it is what it is
- Suteki Da Ne (FF10)- The romantic song of FFX, I guess in the main game it was in Japanese, but its in English here. I kinda scoffed at that scene. Probably because the characters in the cutscenes looked WAY more Asian then the ingame models, and the cheesy romance. Oh right the song...it's okay. Again, didn't really remember this song too much.
- Terra's Theme (FF6)- Wasn't really a fan of this theme during the game, so this really didn't do much for me.
- Main Theme (FF7) - aka the World Map music, I'm a fan of FF7, but come on...out of the songs to pick...THIS ONE?
- Prima Vista Orchestra (FF9)- The song the orchestra is playing on the ship at the beginning of the game, eh...indifference
- Dear Friends (FF5)- This is the farthest back they go as far as specific game music. A very nice rendition of the song.
- J-E-N-O-V-A (FF7)- Another one of those "wow, really?" songs. I liked it a lot. The vocals seem way out of place on this one though.
I must say though, the selection is way better this time than the last. The last time it seemed like they were picking which songs could translate to this theme easier. This time they are just going. Which songs do people want.
And there you have it. If you're wondering things like "WHERE'S ONE WINGED ANGEL" well, they decided that it was too overrated. So it missed the cut. Kidding, in all seriousness, that song and many of the others were on the first CD. If you love FF Music, then you should love this. Well worth the purchase in my opinion.
Log in to comment