Preliminary Match #1

Every track here was good, but when it came time to vote, I went with Metal Saga. The last thing we need is another track from BofV making it through...

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin - Gaze Up at the Darkness:
Cool song, is built pretty well both in structure and melody. If it weren't for the low quality sampling I'd vote for it. The percussion is a bit repetitive though.

Tales of Phantasia - Aviators
The melody is catchy and sounds a bit familiar (duck tales?). Actually a very cute song, I'm pleased.

Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter - Ending
Who can compete against such beauty. I really like the big jumps in the melody line. It's so unfair: just by hearing the different quality of sound will get me biased towards the best quality sound somehow.

Metal Saga - Driving to New Fork
The effect of reverb is nice. The part where the reverb is missing is a bit awkward, sounds unnatural. The main theme isn't quite spectacular.

I'll vote Breath of Fire 5 for sure.

Contrary to most, I'm not a huge fan of Driving to New Fork--to me it does little to distinguish itself from any other New Age piano piece. The Castlevania song I find similarly disinteresting.

Aviators, on the other hand, is a nifty little song, packed with a couple of interesting chord changes and a good melody. I had to give the nod to the Sakimoto, though, since the first half or so of his "Ending" is very well-conceived. Once it reaches the 2:00 line or so, the piece loses most of its purpose and directionality--which disheartened me to a good extent--but luckily, things are brought back together for a good finale.

I'm not a Yamane fan. I'm in the camp that agrees that she hasn't done a decent score since her first Castlevania soundtrack. She was easily trounced in the music department of PoR by Koshiro. That said, Gazing up at the Darkness is probably the one track of hers on the soundtrack that I actually enjoy, so this isn't a bad start.

My vote goes to Aviators. I'm extremely impressed, actually. Ending starts out merely decent but gets much better as it progresses, while New Fork simply stays at merely decent status.

Gaze Up at the Darkness - There are a few DS'vania tracks I prefer over this one, but finally, after slugging through some weak preliminary brackets, there's some energy here. Above passing grade; Yamane tends to invoke that perception for me.

Aviators - Decent, but I'm really not a fan of these airship-style themes.

Ending - Mixes emotions while remaining relatively calm throughout. The good part was that I didn't fall asleep. Not bad.

Driving to New Fork - Nice and bright piano gets my vote.