You have to hear this!

Whoa! This song I came across on Gamer Melodico totally made my day!
 


Chaos Rings is a recently released iPhone (and iPad, I presume) JRPG developed by Square Enix. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing of it since I haven't been paying much attention to iPhone games lately, or, uh, ever, which tells more about me than it does about the iPhone gaming scene, really. I don't even know which Square Enix staff member participated in the making of this game. What I do know is that the above piece was composed by one Noriyasu Agematsu, a person who has composed a lot of stuff that's probably pretty well-known around the nerdscape but which I've managed to completely avoid.

Anyway, it's nice to see Square Enix shake some cobwebs off its shoulders. Squeenix is a company that strives on sequels and recycled intellectual property which is exactly why I'm so happy to see, or hear rather, something like this. The song starts with what I think is the main theme of the game but goes really, uh, weird pretty quick. It has elements that are sort of normal for the final stages of a final boss battle in Square Enix games, but to use them in a track for a title sequence is interesting.

In any case, the song's a little irritating yet absolutely great! It actually reminds me of The World Ends With You and its funky beats. Not because there's any shared style or anything but because both this song and the whole soundtrack of The World Ends With You have this wonderful air of Doing Things Differently. I hope the rest of Chaos Rings (and its music) is as good as this track, but even if it wasn't I'm content with this single exhibit proving that somewhere within the gargantuan corporation there's still a functioning kernel of creativity. It's reassuring to know that there are people who are ready to put crazy weird stuff like that into one of the most conservative institutions in modern day Japanese game design. Nobody messes with a JRPG intro and lives to tell the tale.