Download the album here.

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Rip Info
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Title: Sword of the Berserk
Composition: Susumu Hirasawa & Masaya Imoto
Platform: Sega Dreamcast
Date: June 4th, 2004 (Original) - December 20th, 2006 (Revised)
Length: 1 hours, 32 minutes, 04 seconds
Size: 164 MB

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Notes
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I had to come up with most of the titles for the tracks.

The tracks are close to the order in which they are heard in the game. Sometimes, a track is only sampled for a few seconds, and then later it is played in its full length, in which case I place the track further down into the set, in the spot where the player most likely remembers it. For example, Indra plays in a limited, instrumental fashion right before Zoddo arrives at the church, but then it is played for a longer period of time during the end credits, where it stands out more.

Tracks 91-96 were intentionally placed at the end of the set, because they do not have a chronological order with the game.

Tracks 01 and 91 had to be recorded rather then ripped. 01 was from an FMV intro, and 91 was most likely synthesized rather than streamed audio.

Tracks 94-96 are unused songs, to the best of my knowledge, yet they remained on the game disc. It boggles the mind why they would NOT use 94 and 95, as they are some of the finest battle music in the entire game! Maybe they are used in the Japanese version?

This rip was originally twice as long, but that is only because the second "disc" was entirely cutscene rips, with full voice acting. It was basically a story disc, and it did not contain any tracks that weren't already present here on the first "disc", in pure form. So I decided to remove it.

This rip has been updated with the OST. I have inserted most of the tracks from the OST, replacing their respective versions in my game rip. I only refrained from replacing them if the track on the OST was identicle to the game rip version. An easy way to tell which tracks are from the OST is to sort by bitrate, and look at the tracks which have 256 CBR. I do not know who originally ripped the OST to 256 CBR, so I have no way to give credit. If anyone out there owns the real soundtrack CD, and can perform a perfect quality MP3 VBR rip for me using an accurate ripper like EAC, please contact me.

There are still about 8 very small, mostly ambient pieces which remain in some cutscenes. Most of them can hardly be considered music. This is about as complete as this rip can possibly get.

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Tracks
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01 - The Dragon Slayer (0:32)
02 - Title Screen (1:21)
03 - Bandits (4:03)
04 - Puck's Debut (0:06)
05 - Forces II (3:51)
06 - Town Performance (1:25)
07 - Metamorphosis (0:27)
08 - Job Battle (3:01)
09 - Balzac Arrives (2:48)
10 - Entering the Castle (1:20)
11 - Annette's Curse (1:10)
12 - Bleeding Brand (0:44)
13 - Tales of the Mandragora (2:57)
14 - Assault on the Castle (0:42)
15 - Underground Lab (2:30)
16 - Nighttime Pursuit (3:15)
17 - Rita's Grief (1:08)
18 - Graveyard Surprise (1:10)
19 - Past and Ancestry (2:51)
20 - Forest Stroll (1:36)
21 - Mountain Romp (2:24)
22 - More Bandits (0:45)
23 - Sister Eriza (0:45)
24 - Niko's Story (3:24)
25 - Puck to the Rescue! (0:05)
26 - Spectral Visit (0:40)
27 - Zoddo Arrives (1:02)
28 - Mandragora Stampede (0:37)
29 - Church Lair (1:30)
30 - Niko Battle (3:40)
31 - Zoddo Battle (3:10)
32 - Mandragora Alley (1:29)
33 - Hallway Corruption (1:46)
34 - Castle Infestation (2:22)
35 - Dungeon Infection (2:36)
36 - Balzac's Sorrow (3:18)
37 - Baron Balzac Battle (3:24)
38 - Balzac Defeated (0:46)
39 - Great Tree Battle (3:36)
40 - Disciple Balzac Battle (2:04)
41 - Vicious and Cruel (2:02)
42 - Indra (4:39)
x1 - Puck's Game ~ Title Screen (0:12)
x2 - Puck's Game ~ Stage (2:02)
x3 - Sister Eriza (Alternate) (0:48)
x4 - Unused Battle Song #1 (2:30)
x5 - Unused Battle Song #2 (2:46)
x6 - Unused Song (0:45)

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Contact Info
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Site: www.stevemv.com

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Additional Credits
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susumu_Hirasawa - A wiki entry on Susumu.



Last edited by Mozgus on Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:39 pm; edited 6 times in total

Wonderful! Exactly what I was looking for!

I brought back to life my faithful DC to finally give a go to Berserk and I was surprised by its awe-inspiring soundtrack.

The PS2 Berserk game has a really nice score, too, unfortunately I don't have a PS2

Thanks
MCP

MCP wrote:

Wonderful! Exactly what I was looking for!

I brought back to life my faithful DC to finally give a go to Berserk and I was surprised by its awe-inspiring soundtrack.

The PS2 Berserk game has a really nice score, too, unfortunately I don't have a PS2

Thanks
MCP

I didn't really like the PS2 game's music, aside from the title song, but it's visuals and controls were way better.

I used the term score but in fact I suppose the main title song by Hirasawa is the only one I listened to, in a trailer video. So the rest of the score is not on par, is it?

MCP

MCP wrote:

I used the term score but in fact I suppose the main title song by Hirasawa is the only one I listened to, in a trailer video. So the rest of the score is not on par, is it?

MCP

Yeah, most of it is too ambient to actually enjoy away from the game itself. The Dreamcast game's music almost always goes beyond ambience. There's a lot of really memorable tracks.

I forgot: is the ending credits song in the ripped list?

I listened to it just once and I remember it was like the opening but much longer (around 5'): at a certain point (around 3'30") it had a slower vocal part that lasted 'till the end.

Anonymous wrote:

I forgot: is the ending credits song in the ripped list?

I listened to it just once and I remember it was like the opening but much longer (around 5'): at a certain point (around 3'30") it had a slower vocal part that lasted 'till the end.

Hmm, really? I will try to beat the last chapter of the game and see the credits for myself. I am sure that I examined the raw song files on the disc and only deleted duplicates.


Edit: Crap! You're right! I know why this is missing too.

This rip of mine used to be a 2 disc set. The entire second disc was almost entirely, track for track, the same, except those 2nd disc tracks had the dialog in them. On the game disc, this is how the music is stored. Nearly every track had a duplicate which contained the dialog. So the 2nd disc I did seemed pointless to keep at the time. I thought I double checked all the tracks to make sure I wasn't deleting any unique content, but I may have deleted them all simply because the dialog was "in the way" of the music, even if it meant giving up unique content.

Anyways, I could look for the pirated version again and rip this track, but I think it's going to have the ending dialog in it. Do you think it's worth it? My best bet would be to look for the official OST and download it. I think it has the full length version of the theme song on it, with no dialog obviously.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_the_Berserk_%28soundtrack%29

Edit 2: Ok I downloaded the official OST in 256kbps. There are actually 3-4 songs that were either missing in my rip, or extended past my versions, including the song you mentioned. I will have to figure out how I am going to incorporate this into the rip, or if I even should...I didn't rip this OST, after all.

You can download it here for now:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/nd0b6w

Wow! Thanks, I cannot better express my gratitude

The extended opening/ending is a good addition to an already good song. If the dialogue was not too long, I guess you could leave it in the mp3...

Again, thanks for your effort.

MCP

Another little bit of trivia: I just listened to the OST CD and I found the rolling credits ending song in the game is in fact a medley of two different songs from the OST - first part is a slightly shorter (around 3') Forces II (track 1) ; the second, slower part is a shorter (around 2') version of the song called Indra (track 13). Together they form the 5' rolling credits song.

The ever-changing world of videogame scores :lol:

MCP

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. In a few days I'll probably dive into the OST and find the best way to insert it into the rip. I don't know who originally ripped the OST itself, so I don't have a way to give credit. It has no name in the tags.

But oh well. It'll be nice to finally complete this album. If you notice any other content I'm missing definitely tell me. There's probably some small bits during cutscenes that I won't be able to extract without the dialog, though.

I'm searching a little more for a better rip of the OST. I think I heard a few skips in this 256kbps version. I'd like to get this final set as perfect as possible, so hopefully someone did an EAC rip of the CD in high VBR. Plus, I can give credit to the ripper for his tracks, unlike the current 256kbps set which is a mystery.