And a big thumbs up to Keiki Kobayashi. I love just about all of what he did.
Right on you with those comments, @SAOTOME2U
Masahiro Aoki did a really fantastic job as the lead composer of the soundtrack. He definitely brings back some of that 90s Capcom sounds. A lot more influenced by fusion melodies and heavy emphasis on the guitars and drums working well together. Even going so far as to add Djent music to the menu (which is very daring for “casual” music people, but great call nonetheless).
And may I add that the very short ‘Congratulations’ theme that plays after beating Survival is some of the best piece of guitar melody that Street Fighter has had in a long time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtBLjwX7zbU
Big thumbs up to Keiki Kobayashi as well. I really enjoy all his work on the OST. Especially his works on the character themes such as Karin, F.A.N.G., Nash. He brings some jazz / bossa nova sounding melodies into the mix which are very welcome. Karin’s theme reminds me a bit of the EX series OSTs, which as we all know, are god tier OSTs and imo by far the best soundtracks Street Fighter ever had. (close 2nd places would be 3rd strike, Alpha 2 / Gold, and MvC2).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Rvi2OQceo
Zac Zinger seems completely random as the only non-japanese guest composer, but I can appreciate his tracks, he definitely has a unique sound and uses different instruments to lead his melodies and song structures. Pretty original and solid stuff from him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiSBf7h3aNo&feature=youtu.be&t=72
I’m honestly mostly disappointed in Hideyuki Fukasawa. I didn’t like SFIV’s OST outside of a very few tracks that are good. And the same goes for his compositions in SFV. The only theme he did that I genuinely enjoy is the China Stage (Bustling Side Street) and Brazil stage themes, those are solid tracks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUSqmTuMQgE
But some of his compositions are just really mediocre and boring sounding because he ALWAYS does the same mistakes on those tracks; Complete overkill on the electronic sounds and melodies of both his original and especially the re-arranged tracks. He dissects the melodies often so far from what they are that they just because a jumbled mess of high-pitched electronic SFX that lose most of the original feel of the melody itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPFXHk_j3kE
How the hell he composed a few fantastic re-arranged versions of themes in IV such as: DJ, Cammy, Zangief, Vega, Dudley, and then with SFV proceeds to absolutely butcher his re-arranged rendition of Bison’s theme, and make Cammy’s theme more bare-bones and boring (compared to his IV rendition of it) is beyond me. The man always seems to try new boundaries of how far he can push these electronic sounds, and the songs often suffer greatly and lose almost everything they had to begin with.
Overall the SFV OST is definitely one of the most diverse and mixed sounding OST, which is a GOOD thing. And while it is certainly a superior OST over IV, some of the composers clearly outclass the others, and I feel Hideyuki Fukasawa just doesn’t really fit well with the SF genre. I disliked most of IV’s OST and his work on SFV has not made me change my mind on that. I feel he should be replaced in the future, instead much rather bring back in old Capcom composers of the 90s / early 2000s that did some truly fantastic tracks and melodies that defined many of the melodies we know and love to this day. This should be obvious to Capcom.
My overall feeling about the soundtrack is that the character themes, with the exception of Rashid’s (and Necalli/FANG’s to a point and the build up in the Zangief theme) are totally forgettable, while the stage tracks are fantastic. I like some more than others, but in general, I like all of them, my favourites being Shadaloo Base, Lair of Four Kings and Union Station.
In a way, it’s the opposite of my feelings with SF4’s soundtrack, where it had character themes that I loved (Balrog, Yang (keeping the Crowded Street essence), Decapre, Ken (guilty pleasure) and many others), while stage songs with songs I remember are a just a few (I really like the Cosmic Elevator one though). Overall the SFV soundtrack seems much better than IV’s.
The soundtrack is, for me, a very important aspect of a game, so I’m glad that overall the soundtrack for SFV is solid, although many of the character themes seem to lack in quality compared to stage ones, but that may be the consequence of having to reinvent the classic themes once again.
Surprising all of Fukasawa’s tracks range from ok to ass.
Oh, wait. No it’s not.
i really like Shadaloo Base song. i use that stage in training mode.
Fukasawa’s music is trash, as always. I knew he was responsible for all the bad tracks in the game.
I’m profoundly amazed by this soundtrack.
I’ve never really liked Bison’s theme, but the remix here is pretty genius.
For the first time ever I see some value in a collector’s edition of SFV in order to get the soundtrack on a CD.
#RiseUp? — the musicians certainly did in my book. I’ve listened to a lot of City in Chaos and Hillside Plaza on Youtube lately
Fukasawa’s work seems like a BIG hit or miss when it comes to the music
Like, he makes a couple of great tracks like Hillsize Plaza Round 2 or Underground Arena Round 1, and then creates utter garbage like Cammy’s theme. Very weird. And this was the case with Street Fighter IV as well. However, it’s good that he isn’t solely responsible for the soundtrack this time, and I do like that we have several composers with different music styles in the game
Zac Zinger’s stuff is… interesting, to say the least. The City in Chaos stage is VASTLY different from the rest of the tracks present in the game, and his take on Zangief’s theme is probably the most unique out of all the previous iterations of it (although I still prefer the SFIV’s jazzy version to orchestral/parade-ish vibe of SFV’s theme
Kobayashi and Wakabayashi, however, definitely impressed me. I’m kinda sad Waka did only one track for the OST which is Kanzuki Estate theme, but hopefully Capcom will let him compose for other, future, DLC characters, or stages. Maybe they fought his Soul Calibur-ish style doesn’t quite fit with SFV yet. So here’s hoping he’ll work on the game’s music some more
But Kobayashi is just KILLING it with the awesome Shadaloo Base theme and I LOVE his rendition of Karin’s theme. They are both fucking perfect - the Base theme is really an adrenaline-pumping track and Karin’s theme is a magnificent throwback to the glorious days of Alpha and somewhat even MvC2 OSTs
Aoki though is probably now one of my favourite composers in videogames in general. Phenomenal guitar work across all the tracks he did for SFV, and I think he mixed in the orchestral parts (like in Ryu’s theme or the SFV’s main menu theme) in such a way that they FIT really well
So yeah, I think if Fukasawa’s presence wasn’t as big in the OST as it is - overall the soundtrack would probably be much better, specifically I think they should’ve let Aoki remix the Brave or Grave theme from Alpha 3 and give it that heavy metal, gritty sound that it was clearly intended to be made with initially, but because of Alpha 3’s style it didn’t sound quite as badass as it can
Cammy’s theme is pretty amazing to me.
Sorry to hear that
Ah, that’s a good link, thank you.
Some composers did better music than others, I see, but all of them didn’t do a totally impeccable work. I don’t know what was going on there… but Fukasawa was clearly the worst. He basically did music for ‘Tekken’ in this game, not for Street Fighter.
All the rest did some good music as some terrible ones as well. This soundtrack is very average and inconsistent. I still prefer the SF4 original compositions since they respect the original musical style of SF2.
I wished Zac Zinger contributed more to the OST. I like his tracks the most. City in Chaos sounds like something I expect from an emotionally driven fight from an anime or RPG. It probably meant to match the setting of the stage.
So it turns out Keiki Kobayashi actually composed music for Tekken 4 to 6, Soul Calibur 3 to 5, and various other Namco titles, including Ace Combat and Ridge Racer
No wonder he composed stuff like Lair of the Four Kings and Necalli’s themes - orchestral music isn’t new to him!
Quite an addition to Capcom’s music department. Maybe Ono and Harada collaborated on adding him to SFV team?
Those two contributions are very good. I especially liked Necalli’s theme when watching a replay on Youtube with Japanese voices - it sounded very befitting.
This may be a stretch to say, but Keiki Kobayashi’s contributions to SFV remind of me my favorite former Capcom composers, Takayuki and Yuki Iwai. His music for SFV is probably my favorite music of all what we’ve heard: Forgotten Waterfall, Shadaloo Base, Lair of the Four Kings. I’d only say he may have missed the mark for me (maybe) with his remixes of Chun-Li’s theme, but it’s still well done.
Regardless, if they can’t get the Iwais back, or Okugawa-san, then I would vote for Kobayashi to do Capcom fighting music from here on, or for he and Masahiro Aoki to continue collaborating as the Iwais and Okugawa did during the X-Men:COTA, Marvel Superheroes, Darkstalkers, and SFA3 era.
SF2 Animated movie Shadaloo entrance for Lair of the Four Kings theme
any way you can change the music for PC?
like replace files or something?
Whenever I look at Necalli I think the only theme that would suit him is this.