Back in the mashup days, one of the series I never followed heavily in video games was BlazBlue. Following Death Battle’s Ragna the Bloodedge vs. Sol Badguy video, I decided to invest into the series. And it was worth it, especially for it’s soundtrack.
BlazBlue has a pretty complicated plot, but the main jist of the first game is that a man known as Ragna the Bloodedge is known as a SS-Class Criminal with the highest bounty on the planet in the distant future, who goes around destroying machines that are known as “Cauldrons”. In addition, he also is on a mission to find his sister, Saya, who was last seen being kidnapped by a man known as Yuuki Terumi, responsible for tearing apart his family in the past. The rest is way beyond me to explain properly without mentioning a lot of terms and character backgrounds. But I recommend checking it out if it piques your interest!
The music for BlazBlue mainly consists of rock/metal instrumental music, with a few vocal songs and miscellaneous tracks here and there. Perhaps a better analogy of the music in comparison to other games is somewhat similar to Xenoblade Chronicle’s battle themes like “Mechanical Rhythm” and “You Will Know Our Names”, and a ‘level up’ from the Sonic the Hedgehog rock music. Each character theme in BlazBlue has their own ‘flair’, so their tracks have some sort of fusion incorporated. Examples include “Queen of Rose”, Rachel Alucard’s theme, who’s theme resembles an elegant woman from a aristocratic family through uses of strings and a harpischord, and “Science Fiction”, an electronic theme suited for a scientist heavily associated with mechanics, Kokonoe. It makes the music less repetitive in the sense that each theme represents each character to a great extent, yet retaining the main genre of rock/metal for the series.
Before the Complete Box was released, save for BlazBlue: Central Fiction and some tracks from Continuum Shift, all the game soundtracks in the main “C” series were released close to when the games themselves came out. However, whilst the compositions themselves were amazing, the sound quality was terrible, the worst being Calamity Trigger and Continuum Shift’s digital releases of the soundtracks if bought on Steam. The exception to this was Chronophantasma, which was done beautifully on it’s initial soundtrack release.
The Complete Box now changes that; for the music from Calamity Trigger and Continuum Shift, it’s a HUGE improvement in the sound quality, with Central Fiction creeping up behind. Literally almost every track from BlazBlue is available, the only exceptions being songs made exclusive to the soundtracks unheard in the game (i.e Vocal Covers, and if they count, Drama CDs). For me, this box closed the gap of the bias in preferences between the original compositions and the rearranged versions for Chronophantasma, because the quality of the music I listen to generally will definitely impact if I like it or not. The only exception that I found quite unpleasant sadly, was “Pandora Tears” from Continuum Shift.
If you had pre-ordered the Complete Box with the Special Edition of BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle as a bundle, you also got a remastered version of the Cross Tag Battle Soundtrack which included the new theme for the game’s update: “Turning Fate”. I sadly didn’t get this in time, but it shouldn’t bother me too much since I got plenty in this box to keep my ears satisfied. However, even then, it doesn’t include tunes like the VS. Screen, Character Select or Lobby music. I can get though that there’s reasons why there can’t be a compilation album of the Cross Tag Battle that has songs coming from the game series of Persona, Under Night In-Birth and the others featured. And yes, RWBY included.
The additions of the box like the posters and the “play button” were pretty neat too. The booklet is fully in Japanese save for the song lyrics (sorry, Must Die doesn’t seem to pop up!), so it’s hard to give my thoughts on it. The “play button” is an interesting gimmick since I never had experience with them, but plug your headphones in and press play and boom, music. There’s no volume button though which raises some questions on whether what I’m listening too is way louder than recommended or not, and keep in mind it’s simply a compilation of the songs from the box picked out by the producer of the games.
The rundown overall for the box? It’s definitely worth the money I spent on it. It was PRETTY disappointing though that the year this was released was the same I had the chance to chase down the original soundtracks, even when I had a feeling a complete remaster of some kind would be released later down the track. But you know, I can’t deny I’m a massive fan of the game series’ soundtrack, as well as the game itself. If quality doesn’t matter to you, you’re probably not gonna get this box if you’re going to still stick after the original soundtracks unless you REALLY want to get Central Fiction’s music officially. As far as Cross Tag Battle’s “Remastering CD” as it’s called, that’s probably something I hope I can get in the future perhaps from the Collector’s Edition, if it gets updated to commemorate and promote the “Special Edition” of Cross Tag.
If you are interested in my favourites, what stands out for me are a fair number of villain themes (Plastic Night II, Gluttony Fang [The II Version has a new piano introduction never before heard elsewhere!], Must Die), “Rebellion”, “Lust Sin”, “Under Heaven Destruction II”, and much more. (Note: The linked videos don’t reflect on the sound quality of what’s from the box.)
If you want the box yourself, check out the main page here: https://www.blazblue.jp/scb/
There’s links that redirect you to Amazon Japan and two other Japanese sites to purchase from, and a preview of all the tracks that are featured in the box.
