Oh god, if Balance and Ruin was only one cohesive concept album, I never would have made it! Who wants to listen to 5 hours of weird clarinet arrangements? They would have told me "You're DIFFERENT and that makes you BAD." and it would have been grade school all over again
I think I get what Mini-Me is saying, even though I disagree for an album of this length. But, that's precisely one of the reasons that I very rarely flip on Humans+Gears. I looooooovvveee Xenogears. It's seriously my favorite game ever. But I'm not real big into the style of music that was chosen for that album, so I almost never listen to it with the exception of Vampire Hunter Dan's track. The VGM community is a niche already; making a sub-niche of X style of music - especially with an album this large, appealing to so many people - would have been a mistake, in my humble opinion.