Fragile Online - Crystallized Silver - HoHoHo-i Mix (Perfect Cherry Blossom) vs SF2 Piano Pieces - Rhapsody of SaGa Frontier II (SaGa Frontier 2) - Crystallized Silver is a hilarious joke song, but it had the unfortunate fate of facing a good song. How did this piano piece manage to keep pacing and cohesion in spite of ELEVEN MINUTES LONG is beyond me.
SuperGreenX, MC - Panzer Dragoon Orta More Than A Weapon OC ReMix (Panzer Dragoon Orta) vs Azupiano - Nocturne (Final Fantasy 5) - Honestly, neither are bad, but both have issues. More Than A Weapon has this issue of the baseline percussion disagreeing with the melody's pacing something fierce, while the BitBB remix turned it into a nearly entirely different song. Nocturne feels more cohesive in its own structure to me, which is important, so there it goes.
Genso Suikoden Music Collection by Kentaro Haneda - Gothic Neclord (Suikoden 2) vs FF7 Advent Children - Advent: One Winged Angel (Final Fantasy 7) - Holy fuck, this is a fight between giants. This is probably the best One-Winged Angel rendition I've ever heard so far. However, I'm very fond of the arrange of Gothic Neclord as well. In a case like this, I'm mostly defaulting for the song that I consider better at base, really. Both arranges are very good, if moving in different directions.
Time and Space: A Tribute to Yasunori Mitsuda - The Girl Forgotten by Time (Chrono Trigger) vs Hedgehog Heaven - Chemical Reaction (Sonic 2) - The Schala remix is actually fairly solid - reminisces well to the original theme, but puts its own spin on to things. Chemical Reaction is yet more generic techno that I'll forget ever listening to even before it reaches its halfway point. Doesn't help that it stems from one of Sonic 2's least memorable themes.
REDALiCE feat. Keio Michiru - Tori no Uta (Extended mix) (AIR) vs 20020220 - Liberi Fatali (Final Fantasy 8) - The Tori no Uta remix slaughters the original song rather badly. Liberi Fatali is actually listenable to, which makes it a winner by default in spite of being something I'd be hesitant to call a remix at all and having an uninteresting base anyway.
Touhou Violin 2 - Symphony "Remilia" Op. 22 (Embodiment of Scarlet Devil) vs Orchestral Game Concert 5 - The Gourmet Race ~ Collision Theme ~ Theme of Kirby's Triumphant Return (Kirby Super Star) - Once again, both are fairly impressive, but the Septet remix has more elegance to its advantage. Gourmet Race is very well done and worthwhile, but it has a slight generic adventure vibe at moments.
Rockman ZX Soundtrack "ZX Tunes" - Green Grass Gradation (Rockman ZX) vs Falcom jdk Band 2008 Spring - THE DAWN OF Ys (Ys IV) - Dear god, Falcom arranges are horrifyingly sexy. The rock/strings interloping always gets me. Opponent? What opponent? (Okay, the ZX remix is inoffensive, but generic. That sorta crumbles under the might of FALCOM PAWNCH)
Mana Label - Allegro Appassionato (Swivel) (Seiken Densetsu 3) vs Drammatica - The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura - The 13th Anthology (Kingdom Hearts 2) - Man, Allegro Appassionato has rhythm, flow, catch, energy. This is a niiiiiiiiiice remix. Just... goddamn, I forgot how much did 13th Anthology improve over the base song, which I'm not that fond of. This is a fantastic song, and should go very far in this tourney.
