Gauntlet IV, Shadow Hearts 2 and Fantasy Earth Zero Music:

I've been carefully listening to my new video game soundtracks all day, and the results are now in.

Gauntlet IV has 9 new hall of fame songs, which is virtually the entire soundtrack.  Sakimoto and Iwata really knocked this one out of the park.  Because the Sega Genesis has a different sound card than any other device, the music is very unique and cool.  I think this game ended up being the biggest catch.

Fantasy Earth Zero was more hit and miss.  It also had 9 new hall of fame songs, but from a larger base total that had to be chiseled down.  The music is much more modern and orchestral sounding.  No weird synthesizer effects here.  But as a trade-off, it feels lifeless and dull.  A lot of the music takes too long and repeats itself way more than it needs to.  The melodies are just as good as ever, it just feels like the execution was a little off.

Shadow Hearts 2 is another thing entirely.  I only downloaded the music by Yasunori Mitsuda, which was just five songs to begin with.  Out of those five, three made the cut.

As things stand my music hall of fame stands at 4861 songs, 11 days of continuous playtime.

I'd like to give Mitsuda some more chances to catch up with Sakimoto, so next I'll listen through Kid Icarus: Uprising (which has Mitsuda, Motoi Sakuraba and Noriyuki Iwadare), Deep Labyrinth (pure Mitsuda) and Stella Glow (Mitsuda + some other dude but there's no telling who composed what so I'll just credit it all to Mitsuda).

So long as there are great composers like Sakimoto, Mitsuda and Sakuraba whose music I haven't fully tried, there's still a huge reason to keep expanding my music hall of fame.  Good music is priceless.  You can never have enough of it.