Pretendo Game Project - Final Fantasy 7: Flowers In Her Church

Hear The Track Here

If you've plugged yourself into this review because of the Final Fantasy title, I should state right away that - even though I like anime - the whole Final Fantasy thing left me cold. Mind you, the endless variations of FF's Tifa Lockhart leave me anything BUT cold. That however is another story and a fairly filthy one at that. So least said, the better. Pretendo Grame Project (Pretendo=nintendo, geddit??) is - in fact - another disguise adopted by Patrick Lew who you may also know as Audio Roit or even Band Of Asians. My first encounter with Pretendo GP was with Sonic 1:Scrapyard Zone (June 2008) and was impressed with what Patrick had come up with. This despite my well-known hatred for Game Music Soundtracks in general. I'd rather be playing the game, know what I mean? Especially playing with this.

(Ed: behave, Gilmore, behave...)

I think most of my problems with 8-bit game music is that its something I did a long time ago. As I hope I made clear before, I think Patrick isn't doing too badly at it. I found I could recommend one track, lets try another. Again, if the FF thing passed me by, so did the music so I have no idea whether this is an accurate rendition. Patrick assures us that this is an 'extended version of the remixed Final Fantasy 7 game music from the Original Soundtrack' so there ya go. The real problem with this kind of music is the 8-bit rendering, which leaves much to be desired if you like you sounds well rounded. Think about all the console game music you've heard. The trick of it is to invest lots of time in constructing simple but memorable phrases and repeat until sick to death.

So the first that pokes up in my mind is what a bloody awful sound it is. Putting that aside as a limitation of the genre, other than the central plucked figure that holds up this almost five minute track, the sounds used are often sharp to the ears (the strings especially) but it IS true to the genre. As such I can certainly see this doing well as part of (say) a game soundtrack but even so it's going to be something of limited life simply because of what it is. Yeah, yer game nut will be in there like Flint but most people would pass this by after a couple of notes. Doesn't mean to say this isn't a good job though, again Patrick caught what he was supposed to. It's all a matter of personal taste, I guess.

Recommended Game Soundtrack remix.