Album: Final Fantasy – The Black Mages Original Composer: Nobuo Uematsu Artist: T. Sekito, K. Fukui System: Numerous Discs: 1 Tracks: 10 I’ve been waiting for a rocking FF soundtrack for a long time. And now I finally get it, while not as hard or heavy as I wanted, it suffices and I’m content for now. A 10 track CD compilation of battle songs from various Final Fantasy games, a song from each game has been chosen to be rocked out. They are played as they were in the original, and are taken a step further with some extra rock flair. The only track I don’t care for much is the first, while it starts off pretty good, I lost interest pretty quickly. My personal highlights for this album are tracks 3, 8, and 9. 3 is “Force your Way” from Final Fantasy 8, and to tell you the truth, when I saw it listed as a track, I thought it was going to be bad as I didn’t like the original too much to begin with. Well, I was wrong. The guitar does everything right in this song. Track 8 is “Those who Fight Further” originally called “Still more Fighting” from Final Fantasy 7. And who hasn’t been looking forward to this song being played on guitars? The original was great, and already rocked to begin with! And finally, an Uematsu masterpiece at track 9, Dancing Mad. I did not know in what direction they could take the song with mean heavy guitars. As it turns out, it's great. It starts off with heavy guitar riffs, slows down, back to the heavy riffs, and switches one more time to something totally different, a sad mellow rock balled type solo. Fantastic. Although not entirely what I was hoping for, this is still a great album worth your time. Not many songs can be taken in a rock & roll direction from the Final Fantasy games, and what they managed to do with the songs they covered was an overall well done attempt that most people looking for something different in a Final Fantasy album will like. Reviewed by: OW Angel Favorite Tracks: Force Your Way, The Decisive Battle, Those Who Fight Further, Dancing Mad.