Romance of the Three Kingdoms V - Opening

The second "first" I'm posting is the first track I ever put on my iPod.  Although that's not inherently so important, it should be a good indicator of its quality in my eyes.  Unlike my earlier post, this is a fully orchestral track, and an indicator of the kind of music I will be posting most often on this site.  This track will also serve as an introduction to two great creators of music: the composer Takayuki Hattori and the game publisher Koei.

"Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is a long running strategy game series in Japan (with occasional releases here in the States) based on the Chinese literary classic of the same name.  The novel and the game take place in the real-life historical period in China known as the Three Kingdoms.  The soundtrack to the fifth game is considered among the best in the series, and I'd have a hard time disagreeing (although the first game in the series featured music by the amazing Yoko Kanno; more on her in the future...)  The game's composer is Takayuki Hattori, who also works as a film and anime composer in Japan.  After finding this soundtrack, I was eager to hear more from him, and discovered a handful of other game soundtracks/arrangements he had done, as well as the soundtracks to the '90s movies "Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla" and "Godzilla 2000".  Hattori's style becomes recognizable after repeated listening.  His compositions tend to have simple and repetitive instrumentation (not unlike the "chiptunes" mentioned earlier).  However, he is also a master at eliciting an emotional response from the listener, despite the simplicity of his motifs.

The second creative force behind the game is the company Koei.  Koei, which specializes in strategy games, has a large catalogue of consistently outstanding soundtracks to their name, including the "Uncharted Waters" series, "Pacific Theater of Operations", "Kessen", "Bandit Kings of Ancient China" (based on another one of the four Chinese literary classics) and the constantly fantastic music of "Nobunaga's Ambition".  Koei is also behind the unique "Dynasty Warriors" series, whose heavy metal/Chinese fusion soundtracks are either loved or laughed at by gamers.  I'm in the former category. After working with such amazing composers as Yoko Kanno, Kousuke Yamashita, Reijiro Koroku and Hiroshi Miyagawa, Koei will be featured many more times on my blog.

This particular track is the opening theme to "Romance of the Three Kingdoms V".  Although it isn't my personal favorite from the game, the entire soundtrack is pretty much one home-run after another.  If you can find this soundtrack anywhere, I highly recommend listening to the whole thing.  I will almost certainly be posting a few more pieces of it as time goes on.  Enjoy!

Album info: http://vgmdb.net/album/3051

That's it for today!  Hopefully my future posts won't be quite so verbose, as I won't have to make quite as many introductions.  In any event, so long for now!