Dragon Quest III Symphonic Suite

After waiting almost a year to find this CD, I finally got my hands on it. I was not a bit disappointed. Dragon Quest III - Symphonic Suite is one of the most beautiful CDs I have ever listened to. The quality of the recording is excellent and the orchestra couldn't have performed better.

The theme of the CD is orchestral, featuring the London Philharmonic. About half the songs stay true to the originals, with minimum change, while the other half are medleys of two or three songs. Sugiyama's work - as with his other Dragon Quest CDs (except the first) - is exquisite.

The CD's tracks are mostly from the NES game, but a few, like the second one, are from the remade version for Super NES, which was unfortunately never released in the states. Although the SNES tracks are unfamiliar, they are still very good. As for the NES tracks, my favorite has to be "Rondo" (track 3). It is a wonderful arrangement of the castle theme, done in Baroque style. The weakest track is probably the fifth, "Dungeon - Tower - The Phantom Ship". It's not a bad arrangement (none of the songs are), in fact it's done very well. The problem is, it combines three monotonic melancholie songs - all similar to each other - into one 5 1/2 minute track. It does get obnoxious, but fortunately it is the only track that does.

Overall, Dragon Quest III - Symphonic Suite is a wonderful arrangement of the game. People who have never heard it before will thoroughly enjoy it, while fans of the game will fall in love.

This has got to be the best arranged collection of songs for a game that I've heard so far! This CD is much better that the preceding arrangements for this game. Although, like the other Dragon Quest CDs, this doesn't contain original music for the 8-bit game, it is far better. The entire CD is orchestrally done and there is nothing synthetic or missing from the CD. It does contain arrangements from the 16-bit version of the game that was only released in Japan, so there are a couple of pieces that might seem unfamiliar to most, like "Prologue" or "Distant Memories", but they are still very good. I would recommend that anyone who has played Dragon Quest III get this CD; it is worth every penny!