Just to set one thing straight: I don't think instrumentation should be discounted. There are some songs (I'm thinking of Blue Fields in FFVIII) that have poor in-game instrumentation but are orchestrated beautifully, and essentially remain the same other than that. Having lower quality synthesized MIDI instruments play a tune is less pleasing than having higher quality recorded instruments play the same tune. I think this applies at least a little bit here, because I think the orchestrated Reunion version does a great job of capturing the punctuation of the brass section, especially the brash, over-buzzed lip staccatos in the beginning.