Square vs. the World

[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.