"Ninja Gaiden Arranged" is a very "old skool" soundtrack, that feels so much older due to it using the early 90's genre of music that was very popular at the time of making.
"Inspirited Friends Field" is the opening song, and is actually a vocal theme! The song is actually very catchy and shines through due to its good singing (in Japanese) and nice guitar work and surprised me with such a strong start!
"Herald" in complete contrast, starts of with a string arrangement and then breaks into a j-pop classical song. The combination might sound dreadful on paper but it sounds fantastic, like a song you'd expect Vanessa Mae to release! Each extreme compliments the other extremely well and finishes with a little in game music for fun! "Midnight Runner" keeps the early 90's theme going, which uses the chords from the game and adds a lot of guitar work into the song. It sounds like an instrumental number 1 hit from 1990! Depending on whether you can stomach that is whether you'll like this soundtrack or not.
"Jack O Lantern" starts of like a jesters song, and then gets a lot darker and demonic with some bizarre instrumentation that leads into a mystical song that still carries the 1990's drumbeats!
"Culture End" is a much slower song to start with, with a rolling drumbeat, that soon breaks out into a bass filled snyth pop song again. While the songs nothing special, it has a lovely piece of in game battling music at the end to listen to.
"Next Gate" has a nice melody to it, but someone has gone a bit over the top with a bendy tone! Apart from that it's another high standard track. "Squeezer" is like a military song, which gives a refreshing new aspect to the arranged album. The big gongs give the song style. The song builds up and up, with more percussion added to the strong tune to produce a great song.
"Fire Stone" reminds me of a danger theme from most RPG's. There's urgency all over this song, which goes on a little too long for my liking.
"Shootin' Star In Your Eyes" is a very Japanese influenced song that reminds me of the stadium rock love songs that came to surface in the mid 1980's! The song itself is very good though, and the guitar work is top-class. The closing track is "Friends Field", the snyth version of the vocal theme, which is carried off nicely to great effect and is very catchy indeed.
Ninja Gaiden Arranged took me by surprise. What I thought would be a sub standard rehash, was actually a top class production of some great musical talent. Whether this album is for you, is all down to whether you liked pop music in 1990, but if you did, this is your heaven.
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