"Megalomania" from LIVE A LIVE on the Nintendo Switch (2022)
Composer: Yoko Shimomura
Album: LIVE A LIVE HD-2D Remake Original Soundtrack*
Label: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix
For a hot second there, I could not decide which song I wanted to feature and while going through the soundtrack (more on that debacle at the end), once I got to "Megalomania," that search was confirmed. I initially thought about using this song, but then I thought I would use a different, less popular/well-known song, but yeah. Here we are, along with almost 4,500 other people.
"Megalomania" is essentially the boss battle music in LIVE A LIVE, but that did not dawn on me until my third chapter. When I first heard it in Masaru Takahara's chapter, "Present Day: The Strongest" I think I was more in my head about beating the final boss Odie O'Bright and all the while wondering where the story was going and if I would need to restart the entire chapter because I realized I did not learn a technique from one of the fighters. In my next chapter with Pogo, I heard this song again but again was taken aback by the fact that I was fighting a massive-ass dinosaur god Odo and trying to remember the last time I had saved. It was not until this song came up again in the Shifu of the Earthen Heart's chapter, "Imperial China: The Successor" that I was boppin' when this track started when the battle against Ou Di Wan Lee began. I cannot describe the swivel-sway upper body dance I was doing because there should not be a name for it, but whatever it was, every time this song came up while playing was audibly exciting.
So when I got to this song on the soundtrack, (track 44 of 50), I habitually and unintentionally went into the aforementioned dance. While at work.
Thinking about the song itself though, it is pretty over the top in its energy and may not actually be fitting for all of the chapters at first glance. With Oboromaru in "Twilight of Edo Japan" whose mission (I thought) was focused on stealth, having this come up is a little out of character, but when you take into account the actual boss battle (which I will not spoil here), it makes a little more sense. I actually think that "Megalomania" is perfectly suited for the three latest chapters taking place in "The Present Day," "The Near Future," and "The Distant Future" because those deal with street fighting, mech fighting, and arcade-VR-type fighting. But taking the entire story into account and the bosses you fight, having a single high-energy theme instead of one that changes does make the whole game feel more cohesive.
Those are my thoughts. I love this song.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
*P.S. Now the debacle, which is all about trying to buy the album and trying to do anything with it. I found several places to buy the MP3 version of the album such as the Square Enix store, the Apple Store, and Amazon. I ultimately decided to go with Amazon because reasons. But then being able to access the album from Amazon became a bit of a headache that I have threaded over on Twitter. I have had access to digital albums I've purchased disappear from Amazon before when the albums become delisted although they still show up in my digital purchase history, but access to them returns only a dead link; thankfully I had already downloaded the music, but it is still annoying as hell. So my advice is to not buy the MP3 album from Amazon and instead either from Apple or Square Enix, but do not pay over $17.99 for the MP3 album from other places (unless it is from Yoko Shimomura personally) because then you are just paying more for the sake of paying more.
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