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OCRA-0015 - Xenogears: Humans + Gears


avaris
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I thought it was too long the first listen-through, but it's felt shorter since then. I think the first time I was just impatient to just run through every song in an effect to hear everything.

On the other hand, I wish Pocketman's Take Flight lasted a bit longer.

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Just wanted to say great job on the new work guys. I have been playing it all day at the radio and sent out notice to our fan clubs. Limit99 and Avaris your "Quickening" is my new favorite track, its always great to hear you mix it up with the guitar.

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I thought it was too long the first listen-through, but it's felt shorter since then. I think the first time I was just impatient to just run through every song in an effect to hear everything.

On the other hand, I wish Pocketman's Take Flight lasted a bit longer.

that makes sense, i was skipping all over to hear a little of everything too ^_^

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I thought it was too long the first listen-through, but it's felt shorter since then. I think the first time I was just impatient to just run through every song in an effect to hear everything.

On the other hand, I wish Pocketman's Take Flight lasted a bit longer.

That's EXACTLY what I felt too. I was really excited to get a feel for the whole album so putting such a long track right at the beginning threw me off a bit, but on repeat listens it hasn't bothered me as much and in fact I'm pretty appreciative of the length now :-)

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I can't help but notice that one of the most recognizable themes from Xenogears, June Mermaid, is missing from this album. Is that by design, or was it accidentally overlooked? It seems no one else has asked this question, so I'm curious as to why it was excluded, along with many of other themes.

Still, even without those tracks, it is a wonderful album.

EDIT - Never mind, I see October Mermaid, the alternate title of the song. There are some other themes that are missing, though that are pretty important to the story of the game. Solaris: Eden of Heaven is missing, as is "The Beginning and the End", two tracks which I think conveyed a lot of emotion into the game. The former because of the over the top pomp and pageantry of the song, as arrogant as the nation of Solaris itself, and the latter because the voices are haunting and stick in your head for a long time. Not to mention that Small Two of Pieces, the dramatic ending theme of the game, is also absent. So, I'm still curious. :)

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Obviously another great remix, had no idea this was in the works and I'm amazed that something as rare as Xenogears got done, fantastic.

Don't think I'm the guy complaining, this is great and I love it but... no remix of Small Two Of Pieces, which is like the emotional climax of the game and a great song to boot? Seems like a missed opportunity....

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Quickening was actually specifically made bc there was no Small Two of Pieces mix. Even though it's only an instrumental of the melody/motif that is prominent in Faraway Promise it was the best we could do.

One of the things in running a project that covers *all the tracks* is that it extends the life of the project considerably. Given the already 3 years this was out; I did not think waiting another 1-2 years woulda been a smart thing. Given the HUGE soundtrack and the lack of wide spread support in the beginning it would have been impossible to deliver a quality project in a reasonable time frame. it's kinda all about checks and balances and working with what ya got! :) Luckily everyone worked their asses off on their mixes. I am truly thankful for all of the awesome people who made songs for this project. Thanks guys! :)

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Avaris and Foxhull: you had many doubters at the outset of this project (myself among them), but I gotta say you guys have pulled together something absolutely spectacular. Nice work!

Thanks dude! No biggie; if I was in your position back then I would have taken a similar approach, especially if the game was one of my all time favs.

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Been a viewer at this website for quite awhile now, yet never really signed up. Well, the first album I downloaded was Voices of the Lifestream, the FF7 album. I kinda liked, and thought that I'll see which other albums are on here. Needless to say, they are pretty good in my opinion. I quite like them.

I have just downloaded this today, and I am still listening to it. So far I have enjoyed this album, and seems like a good piece of work, especially with the more classical/orchestrated tracks.

Can't wait until the next album.

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Okay, first and foremost, I would just like to thank you guys for another great project. Amazing job and I look forward to all other projects you have in the future. I've been keeping tabs with OC Remix since it first opened up in '99 (and yes, I mean back when the download slots were between midnight and 6 in the morning - I can not BEGIN to tell you how many nights I stayed up with my crappy, dial up connection, trying to get these songs back then and it was still a decent size then) and I'm really impressed with how far everyone has come along.

Okay, so now with the review right? Xenogears is still, by far, one of my favorite RPG's of all time (definitely in my top 10). So when I came onto the website and saw that this was the new album project up for download, I immediately torrented it, went to class, came home and opened up both albums, listening straight through each one.

Humans: Oh...my...goodness. So, the instrumental pieces in this work were absolutely amazing. No disrespect to Mitsuda-san, but when I was listening through all of these tracks, part of me wished that these were the originals and not the actual ones themselves. I mean...damn. I was completely taken away with how everyone was able to keep the original score of the songs, not bothering to taint or change the main melody...but instead, transformed it into an original creation of their own. The vocals in this section were amazing as well. DragonAvenger has come a long way and I will admit, for the past few years, I have been an avid pixietricks fan and tend to be more bias towards her as a female vocalist. But after hearing DA's performance in both Thieves of Fate and the Humans portion of this Xenogears collaboration, I must say that those feelings must be thrown out the window. Vampire Hunter Dan's mix Ship of Emotion and Song was my favorite off of this section of the album and I enjoy how no part of the song was chopped up and obvious in its flow between one song and the next. I also agree that Pocketman's Take Flight could have been longer. But overall, great section of the album and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Gears: So, as stated before, I came straight home from school and listened to this. Which meant that I combined both albums, slapped them into my winamp playlist, and let it rip. I also didn't get a chance to watch the youtube trailer you guys made for the album, so I didn't quite understand the meaning behind splitting the album in half. Or at least I didn't understand the style difference you were insinuating when doing this. I figured it was just a random split like in Chrono Symphonic and didn't pay it much heed. However, when The Vagrance's Smooth Criminal popped up, that's when my eyebrows started to raise and the differences between Humans and Gears became quite evident. Invasion is probably one of my favorite "sewer/dungeon crawl" type songs ever written in that time frame of games, even to this day. So when I heard the glitch at the beginning of the song with the main melody, I immediately took a liking to it. The following track, Sleeper Dreamer by Siamey completely blew my mind. I mean, come on. Take a :30 second something track and transform it into a house technogasming experience? I commend you. However, R3FORGED's Omen (R3 Mix) is still my absolute favorite track on this entire album and it's well deserved considering he's been revamping this mix for years. The electronic, programming style that this was hoping to show definitely came through.

Overall, this album truly impressed me. It took a little getting used to and I probably should have watched the trailer video first. But then again, if I had, I don't think I would have really been able to appreciate the obvious differences you all, the remixers, attempted to make when creating Humans + Gears. A lot of hard work was put into this and I'm so happy you all did wonderful work for a game I felt has been long overdue for its just reward. I have yet to have been disappointed with any of the remix projects you all have created in the past, so I wasn't about to start doubting you guys now.

I look forward to the next remixing project. Your dedication and monstrous changes and improvements over the years have been well worth the drive to continue supporting and following you after all this time. You've never ceased to amaze me, even after 10 years.

And for that, I thank you.

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Listened to the album, and loved it! It haas been a sincere pleasure and a audio dream!

I have been waiting for this one for a while and my wait was not one of dissapointment!

The website is also great, love the design and the box art, very, very cool!

I would agree with the above that the lack of a "Small of Two Pieces" remix is a little bit of a letdown, but it dosnt detract from the epic greatness of the album as a while

All of you should be proud of what you achieved!

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Quickening was actually specifically made bc there was no Small Two of Pieces mix. Even though it's only an instrumental of the melody/motif that is prominent in Faraway Promise it was the best we could do.

One of the things in running a project that covers *all the tracks* is that it extends the life of the project considerably. Given the already 3 years this was out; I did not think waiting another 1-2 years woulda been a smart thing. Given the HUGE soundtrack and the lack of wide spread support in the beginning it would have been impossible to deliver a quality project in a reasonable time frame. it's kinda all about checks and balances and working with what ya got! :) Luckily everyone worked their asses off on their mixes. I am truly thankful for all of the awesome people who made songs for this project. Thanks guys! :)

That's fair enough. It still would have been cool to hear something from those tracks, but it's understandable why you guys did not do them. What's there is amazing, so I'm certainly not complaining. :)

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However, R3FORGED's Omen (R3 Mix) is still my absolute favorite track on this entire album and it's well deserved considering he's been revamping this mix for years. The electronic, programming style that this was hoping to show definitely came through.

^_^

Thank you! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it, as well as everyone else that has been voicing their opinion.

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Been a long time lurker/fan of OCReMix and it's crew. This album was amazing but there was one track that kinda had me do a double take really quick. "Wait... Is that.. moaning??? haha" I thought the track was pretty awesome and creative. Definitely wouldn't want to get caught on the train blasting that in my headphones though. XD

Congrats on another successful album.

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I practically never post here (and I've been listening for nearly a decade), but I decided it would be borderline unconscionable not to write a "thank you" post after listening to Humans + Gears almost exclusively for nearly two weeks straight. ;-) I took a look at the original project thread, and MAN am I glad the noobs in charge marched on despite the initial pessimism. :nicework:

From the concept to the artwork to the music itself, this album is simply fantastic. In fact, it's so good that it completely renewed my interest in the Xenogears universe. There are even a few source tracks that I'm just now fully appreciating for the first time after hearing such good remixes on this album. Sure, a couple tracks weren't my favorite, a few others took some getting used to before appreciating their awesomeness, and there's no Small Two of Pieces (so nothing to bump Alexander Prievert's Broken Mirror out of playlist circulation ;)), but all in all, this just might be my favorite album project so far. To pick just two standouts for me from each disc which didn't hit the main page on OC ReMix, I'd go with Ship of Emotion and Song, Take Flight, October Rain, and Defective. Still, listing all of my favorites from this album would involve copying down almost the entire tracklist, so I'll refrain. This is enough of a gushing fanboy post as it is.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank everyone involved with this project for making it happen, and THANK YOU especially to Foxhull and Avaris for being the driving forces behind it!

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Not much to say other than that this is now my favorite OC Remix album by far. And I LOVE many of the others, so that's saying a lot. I've always enjoyed the Xenogears soundtrack, and the "Creid" album. I'm quite pleased to see that this album does justice to just about every track.

Almost every time I listen to the whole album, I find a new favorite that I overlooked the first listen. My recent discoveries: "Crash / Restore" is absolutely fantastic, and I all but dismissed it at first. The same goes with "Dreamscape". I'm sure others will suddenly occur to me that are also fantastic.

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