This is trying very hard to be happy and upbeat. The opening sort of sets the tone by trying to incorporate as many little happy sorts of noises as possible, and while it becomes less of a polyphonic assault on the maximum number of things you can have going at once, it's still trying very hard. Which brings us to the first cardinal problem. Things which are trying to be happy, by definition, aren't.
Now, right around 50 seconds, the song seems to settle down for some serious soul-searching, and decide it isn't happy after all, it's just music. This is an improvement. Then it decides around 1:20 to settle down for some more soul-searching, culminating in finally arriving at the impression it was trying to reach in the beginning here at 1:50...
...at which point it decides it liked the whole polyphonic assault thing and decides to go back to it posthaste. Damn. So much for finding its voice.
I'm pretty sure you exceeded the reasonable limit of seperate tracks playing at one time, along with your own limit, in the beginning. Had it been just the track the song opened with it would have been more than reasonable; the lower pipes weren't a bad addition either, but the tinkly string-something was really pushing it (at least until it changed into faux piano, or is that something else entirely? I've listened to the same thirty seconds at least twenty times and I can't even keep everything straight, this is not a good sign), the drums were a useful reinforcement for what they were worth, but then the higher pipes came along to replace the opening whatever and we transitioned directly to Out Of Bounds.
In short, if you were trying to push the envelope, and I'm left with the sense from both this and Gravitation (which had a similar fascination with changing the tones used, but less of the poorly interwoven multiple themes/tracks/whatevers) that you were, this one crashed.
Now, I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb here in the belief it's not always easy to see something from the inside of it. This is something I've noticed you doing with a lot of your work. Take Renascent for an example: you like to change the sound of it. Not for any particular reason, but because you can. Renascent does it once at 19 seconds, again much more smoothly at 50 seconds, relatively smoothly once more at 1:07, even more smoothly at 1:46 since you introduced the replacement beforehand, not so smoothly at 2:24, relatively smoothly but very briefly at 2:55, again at 3:05, again at 3:27, and mercifully, this is the final one.
This is not a good thing.
There is a saying about the author shutting up when his work begins to speak. It's something you seem to be struggling with. This is not to say you have not turned out good works; Duress comes to mind, but it had a "theme" if you will, a specific sequence, that was used to tie it together. Much the same can be said about Cell Potential and to a lesser extent Black Horizon. You tried to invoke the theme, here, with Now, as well, but you succumbed to the urge for a noticible variation and that was the undoing of something that was already fairly weak. Cases were you seem to have actually let the work speak are harder to come by; offhand, Everything Burns and Eyes Through a Window come to mind.
Oh yes. And the Openlancer - Intense Battle track you posted on Sectorgame, lo those many eons ago. Yes, I still have it.
EDIT: Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, I just spent a good hour writing this whole analysis. \o/ Bedtime now.
