Of Balance and Ruin by OCReMix ~ A Multi Part Review Part 4

We have finally reached the climax of the story. The mad clown has achieved total world domination and sits high upon his throne overlooking his world of ruin. He has separated the heroes and for the first time in the series franchise, the villain achieved his goal of obtaining absolute power.

Disk 4 represents the last part of the game. Namely finding Setzer and locating the second airship and taking to the skies to search for your allies whilst the gambler reminiscences about his former love, rescuing Strago before climbing the Fanatics Tower, saving Relm from a cursed painting and finally the recruitment of Umaro and Gogo (with their themes done by relative newcomer XPRTNovice) before taking on the self made God of Magic.

Easily the best song on the desk would have to be Argle's cover of the Tower of Fanatics. The cover; the aptly named The Endless Stair does a great job invoking the feeling of horror. I always enjoyed the original version as it does build up this feeling. Something is going to happen, but you don't know what. With Argle's cover of the track, it takes on a more frightful tune. You want to get to the top, but you are unsure if you even want to face the towers master.

I did truly enjoy this disk, but sadly to say I felt a little let down with zircon and Sixto Sounds cover of Dancing Mad; Demon, Fiend & Goddess. The two of them did a good job on the song, but I felt that their collaboration with the track didn't really do the song justice. Dancing Mad is a final boss theme and I was expecting the same sort of treatment that the team had given the Opera theme. I was kind of hoping to hear Jillian Aversa or DragonAvenger on vocals again.

Again, Demon, Fiend & Goddess is not a bad song. Sixto Sounds and Zircon did a good job in covering what is arguably one of the hardest tracks from the game. However, there is still work they could have done on the song.

On the whole, the album was a great listen to. There are hours of great music on the album and as I said you will find music you like. However that being said there were a couple of minor missteps along the way. There were some genre's of music that I feel did not truly belong on certain songs. However, that being said this is still a solid album and if you are a fan of the series and/or OCReMix, then you will enjoy Of Balance and Ruin.

As always you can find the album on the FF6 OCReMix site.

I am Daimo Mac and I am lost in the music.

But wait there's more...

Packed with this album is a bonus disk 5 containing 14 tracks featuring different takes on the songs covered on the album. The music here is quite good and it is nice to hear another person's interpretation of a song. There is not much to say about it.