Square vs. the World

[Wolf Kanno]

Lately I've been listening to a lot of VGM music while I work on projects or just playing some retro titles, but I've come to the conclusion that Square, and by extension Square-Enix really does dominate in this area. I can't really think of another studio who can go soundtrack to soundtrack up against the library of titles SE has released over time and really win out on how dominating SE has always been about having stellar soundtracks.

So, do you agree? Does SE produce the best VGM?

[Fynn]

Pretty much. They’ve attracted some incredible talent over the years and while those individuals have made music for other companies as well, I feel SE has always had the biggest concentration of them.

[Karifean]

Nah, Nihon Falcom has them handily beat.

[WarZidane]

Nope, my preference goes to Falcom's music library. On an individual OST level there are more I prefer over SE but this thread is about entire library vs entire library, and other companies do have some lesser ones.

Falcom however, entire library vs entire library, I prefer over SE.

[Wolf Kanno]

You both know you're going to have to back this up now right? :lol:

[Fynn]

Don’t worry, WK. judging by the Falcon games I’ve played, these are empty threats

[WarZidane]

I don't see how my preference is a threat. :p

I could list a bunch of their tracks but there's no guarantee you'd like them as much as I do, music is about the most subjective thing in the world

[Fynn]

I was of course joking :p

Subjectively speaking, I wasn’t moved by a single track in any of the Ys or Trails games I’ve played. But you should definitely share some tracks - you might get some people more interested in this series ;)

[Karifean]

Don't we win by default on the basis of having played more of the other side's libraries than you?

Well we're comparing entire libraries I suppose, so, you get what you asked for :P

Have the entire Ys VIII OST for their modern soundtracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU4am8acLR0&list=PLzFTGYa_evXi6iVzAPRg4_kkNphkGXG7c

The entire Ys III OST for their retro soundtracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBaQoL7ycNs&list=PLzFTGYa_evXghvFMdAxHMnraBcAcTf8u6&index=2

The Ys Oath in Felghana OST for a taste on how they remaster their old OSTs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mXa704ebYc&list=PLzFTGYa_evXiQUDpjYjUIB45uWkXK1g6k

The entire Trails of Cold Steel OST for another take on their relatively modern OSTs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9s5o6SIhYY&list=PLzFTGYa_evXg9ZudTxcGNs2m5X4O9nj66

and the Cold Steel 2 OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBAeb-xChG4&list=PLzFTGYa_evXiOHCB_cb1Sqsk-LIARmLgd

... and the Cold Steel 3 OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-mlk1EE7Sc&list=PLzFTGYa_evXgvRyxTwNGWJ2MGgI_uwNqp

... satisfied yet?

Also will add that shortly after making the previous post I remember about the Touhou series which while only having around 15 tracks per OST, if you consider from the POV of having the most consistently great soundtracks in a library they pretty much beat out anything else. And they are all made by one guy all solo. Easily my pick for top composer.

And finally, my *actual* favorite OST is not from any of these three, as that goes to Umineko. But that was a coop project between many talented doujin composers that can't well be called a studio's work at all, although they did cooperate on other projects since.

[Wolf Kanno]

I find it amusing that instead of picking out a few choices, you just list the whole OST. I'm not teasing either, I just find it amusing. :D

[Fynn]

It’s fine, WK. we’ll just come back in approx. 52 hours after we’ve listened to them in their entirety.

[Karifean]

I thought that was the point =P but sure, have some standouts.



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xM8tNkB0XI8





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D1STiYPzyGI

FvVswGx0E1k





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nJQdOIAo7Tk

i6yLoUNzqmQ





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Bonus:

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[WarZidane]

To be fair when you're talking the scale of SE and Falcom's entire libraries, a few entire soundtracks isn't that gigantic, relatively speaking :p

As for specific tracks, I'll try to focus on games Karifean hasn't mentioned:

In some cases the names or even OST covers may contain subtle spoilers, don't blame me if you pay too much attention to them ;)


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s3K-jn42Xsc

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V1GhOzlGXQk

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9l0WNF94Wl8

robYHoHOFK8

BUFqkmB5SSA

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USwjWuD0YBg

D3TqH9ileB8



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PB9xkXuHquo

cVSpwMpZ-Aw



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S9mL0PasBkw

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Of course, I realise so far Karifean and I have only been calling out Ys and Trails themes, so to offset that a little:



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And finally,


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[Lord Golbez]

I probably agree. Some games are up there rivaling SE spundtracks better whether any other company can compete overall I don't know, but I kind of doubt it.

[Galuf]

I agree, but the scope of my games (Especially RPG'S) are pretty small. So i may just not have been exposed to something better yet :p

[Aulayna]

I'd say Blizzard are fairly on-par with them in the soundtrack department. Might not have the sheer quantity due to having less games, but their soundtracks are always top notch.

[Jessweeee♪]

For a little while it looked like Atlus might take the crown with the Persona OSTs, then Soken busts out with Shadowbringers and Square is still king :excited:

[Fynn]

For a little while it looked like Atlus might take the crown with the Persona OSTs, then Soken busts out with Shadowbringers and Square is still king :excited:

I've actually talked about this a little in Discord, but I somehow feel that Shoji Meguro is both incredibly overrated and underrated at the same time. Yeah, the Persona 5 OST is undeniably great, but I don't think it is such a humongous achievement as most people on the internet seems to think while also completely ignoring the fact that Meguro is just an incredibly versatile composer. You've got the Personas with their pop influence, hard rock and techno in Digital Devil Saga and Nocturne, more jazzy vibes in Devil Summoner and, of course, Strange Journey, in which he proved he can actually make a very fulfilling orchestral score to a DS game. That choir haunts me to this day.

[Wolf Kanno]

Well after listening to quite a bit of the music from Falcom, I feel I can say a few things about the matter. Now granted I'll point out the established issue of music being subjective, and further point out that it's difficult to appreciate a soundtrack piece without context. Overall, its not bad, but definitely not my thing. I can definitely tell you two love high octane upbeat music cause that was like 98% of what I listened to, which is probably why only a few tracks really stood out to me when they subverted that expectation. I bet you two love Metal music don't you?

What follow is a critique of why I don't personally care for the music, it has nothing to do with looking down on the music itself or people's taste cause "different strokes for different folks" and all that. So don't take any of this personal.

The soundtracks are way too homogeneous for my taste and I kept getting more and more disappointed the further I went in listening as they started to sound way too familiar, not helped by the music teams heavy preference for electric guitars, violins, and piano. I would be curious to see them try to build a soundtrack that restricted them from using these three instruments. Most disappointing for me was how often they would start a track that I'm guessing is either the penultimate boss fight or some major story battle which would start with a cool choral piece and then quickly segue into a thrash metal guitar piece. It was cool the first couple times I heard a track do it, but it really feels like most of their music does this to some degree with the only changes being whether the driving instrument was a guitar, piano or violin.

The Trails games have a very heavy anime style to their music pieces as well, very reminiscent to Yuki Kaijuro's style in some places as I was really getting a .hack/Xenosaga vibe from the soundtracks. Another issue I had was that I do feel a lot of the music is a bit overproduced. This became really apparent when I got to some of the non-Trails/Ys OSTs that were still stuck in their original sound format. I kind of liked those tracks better despite the fact I could tell the melodies and instrumentation followed the same patterns as more modern tracks, they just felt a bit better because the main melody didn't get lost in the production value of the later pieces that really have a "be epic or don't bother" mentality to them.

The one element that did a lot of damage for me personally with my thoughts on the pieces presented was realizing how many of these tracks would work well in a supernatural anime series where the scene kind of goes like this:

Bad Guy: You foolish heroes, you never stood a chance against us!
Lead Female: Sepai watch out! Kyaaa! (group gets blasted by energy beam, Sepai stands up)
Senpai: I won't let the Dolemite Empire win!"
Bad Guy: Do you really feel that your Grubular Engine Power can stand equal to mine and the mighty Dolemite Empire!? (Charges up and blast hero down) Now I'll finish off your friends and be done with this.
(music swells, Senpai gets up with glowing power)
Bad Guy: Nani?! How can you still be standing? (Music hits the main driving track) Has your Grubular Engine Power obtained Infinitus Maximus? But that's impossible!
(Senpai proceeds to be thrash the villains as they become a physical god in a glorious beat down fans have been waiting all seasons, the rest of the heroes look on in awe. Senpai lays the smackdown on Bad Guy. The main chunkc of the battle theme plays here)
Bad Guy: But how?!
Senpai: Friendship is my power! (takes out villain before collapsing from the use of the power, the track finally comes to a close)

As soon as I started playing that generic scenario in my head for each track, and realized how absolutely fitting it was for most of them, it killed a abit of my ability to listen to the tracks objectively. I will personally laugh if a lot of them actually do play in some variation of the scene I just described.

The works are not bad, and you can tell the team designing it knows what it wants and what fans like. Yet the tracks are just not my thing. I need way more variety in my soundtracks to appreciate them and even jumping into the full OSTs posted, I'm not hearing as much as I would like. Not helping things here is that I tend to have a strong aversion to battle themes in RPGs, and that seems to be Falcom's specialty. You can tell Falcom has a very arcade style root with their music, and that is not a bad thing cause people know I love me some classic Capcom and Konami pieces which all fall into the same vein of musical styling as these. I just don't know if I could go a whole RPG listening to this type of music, but that comes down to my personal preferences. Then again, I could see myself changing my mind with a few of these tracks if I had context to the scenes in which they play, so that is a factor. I'm still not against checking out Ys or the Trails series outside of knowing its going to be a huge investment, but I can also say that I don't feel the OSTs are going to be the standout part of the games for me.

[Karifean]

The one element that did a lot of damage for me personally with my thoughts on the pieces presented was realizing how many of these tracks would work well in a supernatural anime series where the scene kind of goes like this:

Bad Guy: You foolish heroes, you never stood a chance against us!
Lead Female: Sepai watch out! Kyaaa! (group gets blasted by energy beam, Sepai stands up)
Senpai: I won't let the Dolemite Empire win!"
Bad Guy: Do you really feel that your Grubular Engine Power can stand equal to mine and the mighty Dolemite Empire!? (Charges up and blast hero down) Now I'll finish off your friends and be done with this.
(music swells, Senpai gets up with glowing power)
Bad Guy: Nani?! How can you still be standing? (Music hits the main driving track) Has your Grubular Engine Power obtained Infinitus Maximus? But that's impossible!
(Senpai proceeds to be thrash the villains as they become a physical god in a glorious beat down fans have been waiting all seasons, the rest of the heroes look on in awe. Senpai lays the smackdown on Bad Guy. The main chunkc of the battle theme plays here)
Bad Guy: But how?!
Senpai: Friendship is my power! (takes out villain before collapsing from the use of the power, the track finally comes to a close)

Yup, if you want me to sum up what I consider to be the company's greatest strength it's that Falcom fully embraces these kinds of anime tropes without being ashamed of them and just pushes them to being the best they can be. And it's hard to argue with it when they really do end up producing some of the best games ever.

And that is reflected in the music as well. It does essentially come down to the fact that Falcom's style of music is heavily to my tastes, and since it's a company that knows what it does well and does it to near perfection, it's hardly a surprise it rises to the top of my list. And as homogenous as they may be to you I still find myself cycling through several different OSTs to whatever the mood may fancy.

Comparatively, Square has some more varied OSTs sure, but it's more their outliers like the Final Fantasy VIII OST that I really love, while finding their average ones (like, well, the entire rest of the FF series) to be good but just ultimately not rising to the heights of the average Falcom OST. Not exactly someone I can give the consistency award to.

[WarZidane]

...Although I have to add, that while Falcom does embrace tropes and does great with them, they don't quite go for that specific scenario. :p

Also, while I can see why someone would call their soundtracks homogeneous, there's definitely enough of a difference between them to me. I'll pick a different OST depending on what I feel like, and if I listen to a track I'll immediately know which specific game it's from.

Unlike, say, Tales soundtracks (or anything by Motoi Sakuraba really) where I wouldn't be able to tell you which game the music is from if my life depended on it.

[Wolf Kanno]

And that is reflected in the music as well. It does essentially come down to the fact that Falcom's style of music is heavily to my tastes, and since it's a company that knows what it does well and does it to near perfection, it's hardly a surprise it rises to the top of my list. And as homogenous as they may be to you I still find myself cycling through several different OSTs to whatever the mood may fancy.





Also, while I can see why someone would call their soundtracks homogeneous, there's definitely enough of a difference between them to me. I'll pick a different OST depending on what I feel like, and if I listen to a track I'll immediately know which specific game it's from.

Unlike, say, Tales soundtracks (or anything by Motoi Sakuraba really) where I wouldn't be able to tell you which game the music is from if my life depended on it.

I'd say a lot of that comes down to understanding the context. The strength of a soundtrack to me is always how well the music invokes the scene or place it takes place in. It's why I've always felt that while Chrono Cross is an excellent score, its a poor soundtrack because I rarely found the score synched well with the story. You guys can tell the difference cause I'm sure all those tracks remind you of your favorite parts of the game whereas I haven't played them, so its kind of just me guessing at best where the track plays based on the title. I wasn't surprised the tracks all sound the same to me but are very distinct to you two.


Comparatively, Square has some more varied OSTs sure, but it's more their outliers like the Final Fantasy VIII OST that I really love, while finding their average ones (like, well, the entire rest of the FF series) to be good but just ultimately not rising to the heights of the average Falcom OST. Not exactly someone I can give the consistency award to.

What I find funny about this is the fact that I consider my main issue with VIII's soundtrack is how homogeneous it is as well. The overall score lacks the peaks and valleys of other FF soundtracks. So to me, this just kind of shows where our ideas of what makes a good score work. I really need variety with my tracks and I actually prefer when the score uses a variety of different musical styles and genres which is why I'm not impressed with Falcom's works, whereas their style is your fave thing, so its no surprise that's your jam and butter.

[WarZidane]

Well after listening to quite a bit of the music from Falcom, I feel I can say a few things about the matter. Now granted I'll point out the established issue of music being subjective, and further point out that it's difficult to appreciate a soundtrack piece without context. Overall, its not bad, but definitely not my thing. I can definitely tell you two love high octane upbeat music cause that was like 98% of what I listened to, which is probably why only a few tracks really stood out to me when they subverted that expectation. I bet you two love Metal music don't you?

[snip]

The works are not bad, and you can tell the team designing it knows what it wants and what fans like. Yet the tracks are just not my thing. I need way more variety in my soundtracks to appreciate them and even jumping into the full OSTs posted, I'm not hearing as much as I would like. Not helping things here is that I tend to have a strong aversion to battle themes in RPGs, and that seems to be Falcom's specialty. You can tell Falcom has a very arcade style root with their music, and that is not a bad thing cause people know I love me some classic Capcom and Konami pieces which all fall into the same vein of musical styling as these. I just don't know if I could go a whole RPG listening to this type of music, but that comes down to my personal preferences. Then again, I could see myself changing my mind with a few of these tracks if I had context to the scenes in which they play, so that is a factor. I'm still not against checking out Ys or the Trails series outside of knowing its going to be a huge investment, but I can also say that I don't feel the OSTs are going to be the standout part of the games for me.

(Probably should've addressed this in my previous post rather than making another post, sorry, I can't help but feel like I'm derailing the thread a little :D)

Keep in mind there are a lot of slower paced and/or non-battle themes as well, particularly in Trails soundtracks (Ys less so since it's more of an action RPG dungeon crawler series), I did post a lot of battle and dungeon themes because that's what I gravitate to a lot, though I also tried to mix in some of the other types of themes.

Spot-on with the metal call-out in my case though, that is indeed one of the music genres I love. ;)

[Aulayna]

I started typing out a big spoiler tagged post of various Blizzard track's but it go to about 30 videos and the post preview was basically lagging like crazy at that point.

So I'm just going to pick one track per game back to the Diablo I (which will still be around 30 odd tracks, but y'know) (EDIT: I lied, and went right back to Blackthorne) and try and avoid the more grandoise/bombastic epics that Blizzard are known for to give a more diverse sample.


2018/19 WoW: Battle for Azeroth
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2016/18 WoW: Legion
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2016 Overwatch
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2015 SC2: Legacy of the Void (hard to not go bombastic space opera epic here as that's pretty much the entire soundtrack)
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2015 Heroes of the Storm
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2014 WoW: Warlords of Draenor
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2014 Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
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2013 Hearthstone
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2013 SC2: Heart of the Swarm
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2012 WoW: Mists of Pandaria
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2012 Diablo III
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2010 WoW: Cataclysm
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2010 SC2: Wings of Liberty
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2008-10 WoW: Wrath of the Lich King
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2006-08 WoW: The Burning Crusade
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2004-06 WoW
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2003 WC3: The Frozen Throne
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2002 WC3: Reign of Chaos
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2000 Diablo II
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1999 StarCraft: Brood War
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1998 StarCraft
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1996 Diablo
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1995 WC2: Tides of Darkness/Through the Dark Portal
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1994 WarCraft: Orcs & Humans (Great PC debut, terrible 6 track OST lol)
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1994 Blackthorne
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WoW: Battle for Azeroth
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WoW: Legion
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Overwatch
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WoW: Wrath of the Lich King
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WoW: The Burning Crusade
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The end result of scouring back through nearly 30 years of Blizzard games is that I could easily sit there and listen to their soundtracks all day as much as SQEX ones. Heck, pretty much any single WoW expansion soundtrack is hours of listening pleasure on its own. :jess:

[Wolf Kanno]

I guess I should share why I love SE's music so much, and why I do feel its library is one of the best in the industry. For now, I'm sticking to non-FF/KH soundtracks since I'm sure we're all familiar with them.


Secret of Mana
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Trials of Mana
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Legend of Mana
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SaGa 2
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Romancing SaGa
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Romancing SaGa 2
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SaGa Frontier
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SaGa Frontier 2
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Unlimited SaGa
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LTj4n0L9Uh0 I'm sure this is going to sound really familiar to a few FF fans despite never playing this game. ;)



Front Mission 1
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Front Missions 3
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Front Mission 4
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Parasite Eve
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Parasite Eve 2
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Chrono Trigger
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Radical Dreamers
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Chrono Cross
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QFsN0u0HzkM I honestly feel this is one of the best vocal tracks for a game period.



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Sorry page. You're going to hate this thread even more as this goes on...

[Fynn]

Of the four Falcom games that I’ve played so far, there was literally one track that stood out to me and actually left an impression:

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Wolf Kanno pretty much summed up my thoughts on the music as well. Though it’s not like I need every soundtrack to have music from all across the board, since there’s a lot to be said about a choosing a style and going with it, this music does all blend together for me and doesn’t stand out from what I’d describe as, no offense, “generic anime music”. The heavy metal and heartfelt violins are just something I’ve heard a million times before, which is why to me personally they aren’t that appealing. A good soundtrack imo is one that is distinct, on top of actually fitting its game’s tone.


Now, to add to that extensive SE list WK posted, I’m just gonna say SE wins if only because it’s the only game company that has hired Revo :monster:

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[Wolf Kanno]

Blizzard does make some good tracks. Not going to deny that. It has a very Hollywood ambient feel to it which I feel is a really good fir for many of their games. It is a little too ambient for my taste, but again, I'm not exactly a huge fan of the games Blizzard makes, so not like I have any emotional attachment here. It has a bit of the same issue I have with Sakimoto or Hamauzu's scores where it becomes a bit too easy for me to zone out the music after awhile. I ended up listening to a few of the longer tracks because I forgot I was listening to them while I was working on something else. Granted, even soundtracks I adore can do the same thing to me. Not exactly going to try and say that the Guardia Castle theme or Figaro Bros theme keep my full attention and on the edge of my seat when they come on.