It's an extremely touching theme that features a superb blend of instruments. Mainly instrumental, this theme features some fantastic ethnic percussion, some bell chimes, some ethereal vocal accompaniment, and some woodwinds usage. Speaking of instrumentals, "The Prestigious Mask" adds a beautiful Celtic theme to the soundtrack. It gives the entire piece a Spanish feel. The instrumental theme features amazing percussion work, however, the true star here, aside from the superb melody, is the acoustic guitar work. "The Lost Forest" is an extremely beautiful action-oriented theme that also employs the melody, but it is much more subtle in approach. It also helps that there is a nice ethereal and atmospheric accompaniment. Rather than focus on vocals, although they are present to give the whole piece and ephemeral feeling, "City of Commerce" features a much more ethnic atmosphere, complete with beautiful acoustic guitar and percussion work. The same melody heard from "Hills of Radiant Winds" is carried over in several other themes. It's clear that the radiance was supposed to be transferred to the listener because it's such an uplifting composition. Overall, this is one of those pieces that must bring a smile to my face.
This is an exquisitely crafted action-oriented theme that features a gorgeous vocal performance, in conjuction with ethnic percussion, beautiful piano accompaniment, and some fantastic strings harmony. The first of many Emi Evans-led themes, "Hills of Radiant Winds" showcases some of the faster tempo themes. The piece ends with some electronic elements lending its way into the melody as well, giving it a bit of an ethereal nature as well. It helps bring about an extra touch of atmosphere and harmony and really strengthens an already perfect melody. As the theme progresses, some militaristic percussion and some beautiful strings work is added. In "Snow in Summer," the melody, superbly crafted, is portrayed in an angelic manor by a boys choir consisting of Daishu Oikawa, Kazuya Miyashita, and Kento Yamazaki. As you'll soon learn, the majority of this soundtrack features prominent use of vocals. The opening to the soundtrack, "Snow in Summer," is an absolutely stunning encapsulation of what follows. The final version seems to add some light militaristic percussion to help give it a bit of a rhythmic backing and, although it fits the theme perfectly, even without it, this theme would be amazing. This feeling of sorrow is accentuated through the amazing harmony in the strings work. Haunting vocal work by Emi Evans combines with equally haunting piano work to craft a theme of extreme sadness. I can remember a cold day in January when I first heard "Grandma." Of course, at the time, I didn't know what it was called, but I can say that the moment I heard it, I fell in love with the entire soundtrack before even hearing the rest of it. The samples were beautiful and I was willing to give Okabe a shot. To my surprise, I found out it was being headed by Keiichi Okabe and his team at Monaca. Upon hearing the initial samples, Yoshiki Aoi was my initial guess as to the compositional team behind this soundtrack. Cavia's previous published works featured music by Takayuki Aihara and Nobuyoshi Sano ( Drakengard) and Yoshiki Aoi ( Drakengard 2), and although I wasn't the biggest fan of the former, I was a big fan of the latter.
Although the scenarios are different, the music between them is shared. Nier Gestalt and Nier Replicant are two action RPGs developed by Cavia and published by Square Enix. Nier Gestalt & Nier Replicant Original Soundtrack Nier Gestalt & Nier Replicant Original Soundtrack :: Review by Don