Overview

Shining Force EXA was the second Shining game developed by Neverland, following Shining Force Neo. Fans hoped that the developer would improve a number of ways on the previous game, including its underwhelming score. Once again, Tomoko Morita returned to create an organic soundtrack, which was commemorated with a two disc release by Wavemaster.

Body

Morita stays quite faithful to his approach on Shining Force Neo throughout Shining Force EXA. Once again, she portrays locations such as "Yi'el Village" and "Cantore Village" with traditional acoustic pieces. Meanwhile settings such as "Gonia Valley", "Paora Plains", and "Ranburr's Tomb" are portrayed with related field and battle themes, the former highly ambient, the latter more intense. These approaches were quite successful on the original game and so it made sense for Morita to stick with them. In fact, the conserved approach even extends to reusing themes from the original game — the event tracks "Happiness" and "Tension", and the setting themes "Northern Cave" and "Great Snowlands" all recur from the original game here.

Despite featuring the same core approach, the soundtrack Shining Force EXA is thankfully more ambitious than its predecessor. The aforementioned town themes deviate substantially from the generic approach of the original game — with "Yi'el Village" even incorporating Chinese strings to give a stronger sense of place. While the setting themes continue to be repetitive and subdued, the wider array of locations at least results in some diversity. In particular, the gothic palace themes are a refreshing deviation from the norm and "Ranburr's Tomb (Battle)" is highly impacting due to its electric guitar focus. And those aforementioned adaptations are sometimes more elaborate than their original — with "Snowfield" in particularly being transformed from a very repetitive track into a more rounded impressionistic soundscape — though the event tracks continue to be highly stereotyped.

A final asset of the soundtrack is that it features a number of setpieces. Most notably, "Final Battle" deviates from the previous game's short loops to offer five minutes of extravagant overdriven guitars and epic choral chants. It needs more hooks and refinement to compare to the series' best, but at least it reflects plenty of ambition. Flanking the release are two full-length theme songs by Japanese girl band Mi. "World's Love" sets precedent for a few scattered contemporary pieces on the soundtrack with its thrashing guitar chords. With a captivating performance and exciting structure, it's a fine anime-styled opening theme. "Same Sky" encourages gamers to recount their memories with a soft rock ballad, particularly at its emotional chorus. For those that enjoy modern J-Pop, both tracks are well worth a listen.

Summary

Shining Force EXA is a major improvement on its predecessor and it is admirable that Tomoko Morita both built on existing elements and experimented with new ones. All that said, that doesn't mean the score is a worthwhile purchase. Far too many tracks are stereotypical, superficial, and boring once again, and even the relative highlights could be better. Stick to more recent scores in the series instead.