So I did a little bit of testing, and I figured out why the songs end so early in this game.
In the first Lumines game, a skin was broken up into segments, each lasting about as long as it takes the timeline to make its way across the screen. Your current segment would
loop, over and over, until you cleared at least
one block, which would progress the track on to the next section.
Heres a screenshot:
OG Lumines
You'll notice the little icon at the top, center of the screen. That changes as you progress through, either showing that the current segment will repeat, or that it will change.
Now I'm not positive if they ditched the system on normal tracks in subsequent games, but licensed tracks in Lumines II and onward play in their entirety, unaffected by how you are playing. The obvious benefit of either system is that you
at least hear the entire song, which is pretty much the half the experience of playing Lumines.
Electronic Symphony, however, ditches prior systems for a "% clear" meter to the right of the screen. As you clear blocks away, this meter jumps up, relative to the length of the song, and matches you with a chunk of the song
about that far in.
This is bad. I noticed last night that if I was playing poorly enough on certain levels I would hear sections of the song I'd never heard before. While theres something charming about that on paper, most people (this might as well be scientifically proven) play better at Lumines when they're playing a skin/song they enjoy, which means you are actually cheating yourself of the music you like by playing well, and forcing yourself to play more of a skin/song you dont like by sucking at it.
While you'll still get the jist of the soundtrack playing through, I cant help but feel like this was a big oversight, especially for an otherwise brilliant game.