NieR Gestalt and Replicant - OST

I don't know why all these games and animated films with great graphics and soundtracks all have the most boring cover art they could possibly come up with. This is the official cover art for the game's OST, but I have decided to remedy this with some more interesting and representative graphics from the game, such as the following:


I randomly chanced upon the soundtrack and it has this ethereal and soothing quality with a tinge of melancholy that is instantly attention-grabbing and so refreshing. One of the tracks, Obaachan (Grandmother), is being featured on the right. There are so many good tracks from the 2-CD OST release that it is hard to pick one to feature... perhaps I will feature the other ones later.
The OST, composed by Okabe Keiichi (岡部啓一) and a group of other composers, is from the video game NieR released in April 2010. The version for XBox 360 is called Gestalt and the one for PlayStation 3 is called Replicant. They are virtually the same except the protagonist's relationship to the girl he is trying to rescue from the plague (daughter vs. younger sister) and his physique (rough muscular father figure vs. slender older brother type). The game is a loose sequel based on another game called Drakengard. Both are basically action games with missions and battles. The information on these games is a bit vague; suffice to say the stories take place in another world with dragons and monsters and magic and infection and gigantic swords and mostly pretty people. Can you tell I'm not a big fan of the game? The story's too convoluted and the gameplay is not all that exciting and from what I can tell, the actual in-game fighting graphics (not the animated clips or the game posters) are a bit shoddy.

But the story does give that sad vibe that is perfect when translated into music. Characters are fighting against destinies that they eventually succumb to anyway (in a general sense; this is absolutely not a spoiler). But they keep on fighting still, which is inspirational but sad. The soundtrack proves that in music, "inspirational but sad" sounds pretty good.