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Saturday, December 14, 2013

Song of the Week! 14 December 2013


The lore of the iOS/Android game Puzzle & Dragons has really grown onto me in the past few months! With that said, today we're closing the circle of Taiko+ exclusive game music tracks with these other two songs from PAD.

 A New Journey Puzzle & Dragons
Version
Allx3 (116)x5 (174) x5 (216)x7 (403)
 Taiko +
 137
 none
 puzdr2


We already talked about the GungHo videogame Puzzle & Dragons in a previous SotW feature earlier this year, and today we're closing the circle with another couple of recurring BGM themes from the game, both of which are composed once again by Kenji Ito (伊藤賢治) and Yukio Nakashima (中嶋教雄).

A New Journey is the overture theme for the Technical Dungeons, a particular kind of dungeon in the game where the enemy monsters can either attack normally or use one of their special abilities to perform even more powerful attacks or applying several kind of buffs and debuffs, both on themselves and/or on the player. The BGM's title was thought up by Kenji Ito to match the title chosen for one of the first non-limited Technical Dungeon's trials ("New Journey", from the Fertile Land dungeon). Unlike Walking Through The Towers, this song (and the one below it) are currently exclusive to Taiko Plus.

Despite being slower than the older P&D song, A New Journey still proves to be suitable to the modern 7* Oni rating, thanks to the many combinations of small 1/16 clusters being used. The cut used on Taiko is slightly shorter than the one in the original game.

 The Orb Festival Puzzle & Dragons
Version
Allx4 (158)x6 (228) x6 (389)x8 (646)
 Taiko +
 163
 none
 puzdr3


While Walking Through The Towers is the boss theme for the Normal Dungeons, The Orb Festival is the theme used for the boss battles in Technical Dungeons. Both of today's featured tracks are also used in an additional kind of dungeons in the game (the Conditional Dungeons), where only certain monsters can be used or different conditions have to be respected in order to try them, such as having all monsters of a certain attribute, running a dungeon without using high-cost monsters or certain skills and so on. Enemy monsters can also use their special abilities, just like in the Technical Dungeons.

With stamina-unfriendly cluster segments and long combination of notes, The Orb Festival definitely proves to the hardest PAD song. Like the other two songs, this one features some of the most known monster families in the game, like the evolution Spirits (on top), the Starter Dragons (as the main five dancers), and the Slimes and the Metal Dragons, both appearing then the Spirit Gauge is filled to the max.

Now if you excuse me, I have a certain Draggie Knight to slain...