Review by rez_azel

I've never played any of the Fate / games, so I don't connect any scenes with the music. Most of disc 1 is very nice, sometimes ambient, sometimes dreamy, and sometimes more dramatic (rock/electro) with e-guitars (Just listen to the sound-examples cdjapan kindly provided). With three songs, too. As far as I know disc 2 contains a lot of tracks from the original Fate / stay night, but not the vocal songs. (disc 1 and 2 have a playing time of over 60 minutes each). The third disc is shorter and contains alternate versions of some of the tracks on disc 1 and 2. The packaging is nice, and I'd recommend the limited edition over the regular, because for only 800yen more you get almost 130% more music!

Beautiful melodies and arpeggios are Mitsuda's strengths, and this album proves it once again. It reminds me of his best works - like the Chrono Cross OST - and the title-song is just awesome! I haven't played the game, but one can enjoy the music even without knowing the accompanying scenes.

If you don't like original arcade sound versions from the late 80s, you might not enjoy this album... It features a lot of those trademark Yamaha-Chip-tunes that were en vogue in the disco-era :-) On the other hand, there are almost no bad tunes on this album; the songs are mostly short but very memorable - especially the "John, Rick and She-Na" OST, which features odd remixes of "Born in the USA", "Rock me Amadeus" and others.... There are two arranged tracks, one taken from "Space Romancer" and the other is a "Castlevania" Medley. The booklet contains a lot of japanese text, as well as the sheet music from 5 tracks from "Salamander" (similar to Gradius) just in case you want to play them on your piano.

If it weren't for the low price, I'd award this CD only 3 points... With three 8 minute tracks, it's rather long for a single CD! Track one is a medley of lots of Konami-melodies, with a four-bar drumloop running along - the whole time; track two is a "sketch" and features original sound mixed with (modern-synth) sound effects - definitely strange. The best track is track three, mainly because it mixes fewer melodies than the others and sounds better (it's performed on modern synths). Not great, but slightly better than the Sega Medley.