Overview

Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner, a popular PSP RPG in Japan, was due to have a full soundtrack released; however, only this three track promotion CD was released. While the original score was 45 pieces composed by ten heavyweight VGM artists, all we are given here is a selection of three tracks. It includes one solo composition each by Shinji Hosoe and Hitoshi Sakimoto, as well as a collaboration between the two for the main theme. How does it fare?

Body

The first track, "Theme of Jewel Summoner" is a marvelous piece composed by Hosoe and arranged by Sakimoto. The instrumentation used is diverse and offers a lot of flavor to this piece. The pace of this track also is noteworthy. It definitely sucks the listener in.

The second piece, "Prologue," was composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto. While a decent listen, it sounds too much like something from Final Fantasy XII. For this reason, I don't see the originality in this piece. The instrumentation is good, but once again, relies heavily on the flavor found in his recent scores.

The last piece on this promotion CD is "Endless Summon," which is credited to Shinji Hosoe. After looking at the expected release track titles, I couldn't find this one on it. However, this piece definitely has those classic Hosoe hints in it. The use of an electronic melodic driving force, with some heavy percussion as an accompaniment, makes for a very interesting listen.

Summary

While this album didn't get a full release, I'm not sure as to what the quality of the entire soundtrack would have been. Sure, there were a lot of heavy hitters entering this arena, but each one of those composers also has some very weak compositions. After listening to these tracks, I could say I was hopeful, but I'd be lying. This soundtrack seems to me like it would have been average. These three tracks each offer a different flavor as to what might have been, but these tracks in and of themselves weren't spectacular by any means.