Battle For Survival opens with this absolutely unhinged guitar riff that tells you immediately DDS2 is not messing around. Shoji Meguro composed a PS2 soundtrack that somehow sounds bigger than the hardware should allow.
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Epic Battle layers these prog-rock time signatures over chanting vocals and it just keeps escalating. Heat's Theme carries all this weight and frustration that perfectly mirrors the character. The quieter moments hit differently too.
Om Mani Padme Hm sits in this meditative space with its vocal loop, and then the Rearrangement version at the end recontextualizes the whole album. If you've been sleeping on the Digital Devil Saga duology, this score alone proves Atlus was doing something nobody else was touching on PS2.