Auricular Discovery

I’ll try not to repeat what hundreds of blogs have stated but the short of it is, this game was amazing, yet it sold terribly. You need to acquire it by any means necessary. A lot of the blame can be placed on UbiSoft for not marketing it worth a shit, and also for releasing it in November, the most competitive month for game releases. There have been a couple videos hinting at a sequel, but if you’ve followed the roller-coaster of announcements and denouncements, you’d believe that nothing is set in stone. Even if we do get a sequel, I’m not sure it will be what we want. I’m sure UbiSoft will be making some massive changes to the formula. From a business point of view, the product didn’t sell, therefor something must be wrong with it, and needs “fixing”. I’ve seen a lot of fans clamoring for more Jade, but I’m placing my coin on pessimism this time.

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I was quite hyped for this game when it released. The GameCube was a bit starved for original RPGs; so much so that I even finished both Lost Kingdoms games, when I bet anything that if they were on any other platform I would have paid them no mind. Unlike Lost Kingdoms however, BT seemed to have a lot going for it. It had stellar graphics, a unique visual style, original story and cardplay mechanics, and it was being scored by the legendary Motoi Sakuraba, who’s done the majority of such series as Tales Of …, Star Ocean, Valkyrie Profile, Shining Force, and Golden Sun. The man knows his way around an RPG soundtrack. The game itself unfortunately could not hold my interest past the 1st disc, but at least I had the OST to listen to six times over. This track is one of many that demonstrates how Sakuraba broke out of his safe zone with this game, leaving behind his more traditional reverb thick, flute and organ focused sound, in exchange for something far more…psychedelic.

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Unlike the awful sequels that followed, Sands was perfection. If it weren’t for Viewtiful Joe and Shadow of the Colossus, it would be my favorite title of that generation. This end credits track capped off the entire experience in the best way possible, and surely encapsulated it in my memory for ages. You see what I did there? No? Fair enough. Well, it was made by Stuart Chatwood, and sung by Cindy Gomez. I believe there is an extended version that doesn’t end with a typical fadeout, but this is the version that’s on the official soundtrack, and I make use of what I have.

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