Overview

A half hour? What is this, a rock album? I tend to love piano collections, I really do. Noting the way they changed various things around to make it a piano arrangement is really interesting, not to mention relaxing. But, one of the worse things you could do is shorten such arrangements. A problem that is present on this whole album, sadly.

Body

"Overture" is the standard theme to the Dragon Quest world and hasn't changed much. It's as well as it was with the whole assembly of instruments. The length of this track isn't a real problem since this piece is usually this length anyway. "In The Town" is a somewhat painfully simple town theme; it's nothing really happy or mellow, just there. The plodding along of the song tires out somewhat which is why I wasn't too annoyed of the length of this song as well, which reaches around 1:43 as well.

"Happy Humming" is a very well done upbeat song, using the technique of playing one melody with one hand and another one with the other hand very well. The sound is very early 1940's/1950's in sound, in my opinion anyway.

"Dungeons" is probably one of the few pieces that bores me. The intro to the arrangement is not that inspiring as is the follow-up to the rest of the piece. All in all, it's not that well of a hit. I kind of wished this one was over a bit faster than it was. "Ocean Waves" drags itself along as well, which is a shame as this arrangement is one of the rare long ones coming in at 3:46. I almost fell asleep while listening to it. Nothing at all keeps you conscious until the midway part where you think it'll pick up, but drops back into obscurity.

Summary

I had much higher expectations from this album, especially since this was in the Dragon Quest name. Nothing new is offered in terms of style or originality and everything seems to be just tossed about. The length doesn't seem so bad anymore.