ACTUAL FANTASY

This album is good but non essential... 3 Stars. Personally, I like it a lot, it has that classic Ayreon sound... a bit more atmospheric and quiet like the Dream Sequencer or Ambeon. While it's still a really great work, I still say that it is non-essential to a prog music collection, although it certainly is a good edition to it. But I think that this album is like that one album that is still good but is not so overly amazing as the others. But fans still buy it, and listen to it regularly, and enjoy it.

Rather than tell overarching storylines like in all the other Ayreon albums, this album has many storylines, one for each song. The storylines vary from old medieval tales to futuristic science fiction, to dream-like fantasies. A lot of the songs on this album are precursors to the stories of other Ayreon albums later.

The main thing that makes this album a bit less amazing than the rest of Ayreon's albums is the fact that none of the songs are very memorable. With a good album, you will generally be able to remember the tunes and stuff for all the other songs... but with this album you kinda go in and out and then say wait, I was just listening to that for a hour? What happened? Nevertheless, when you go back to pay attention to it every once in a while, you'll always come to an exciting part and find yourself entertained.

This is the worst Ayreon album thus far. That of course doesn't mean that it is BAD, but simply that all the other Ayreons are better than it in my opinion.