About the music in this game

Surely it's not all written by a single person? I was quite astonished when I found that out. Are they purposefully making one person write the whole score, or is it out of other concerns?

Also, what's your impression with the music so far? I thought it's quite good, but a lot of it's wasted from abrupt battle music cut-in whenever you aggro a random mob while riding across the map.

Most of the soundtrack is the work of Masayoshi Soken (who is also the Sound Director), but a significant amount of tracks are by Nobuo Uematsu (most of which was written for the original version of FFXIV that ARR replaces, or from Uematsu's previous FF repertoire), along with a few tracks by Naoshi Mizuta, Ryo Yamazaki and Tsuyoshi Sekito. A couple of tracks in Palace of the Dead are also from Hitoshi Sakimoto's soundtrack for Tactics Ogre ~ Let Us Cling Together.

As for my opinions? FFXIV's OST is amazing, full stop. Soken in particular clearly is on par with Uematsu in composing skill (while equally able to have his own unique style that differentiates him from Uematsu), and Uematsu's songs for the game (Answers, Dragonsong and Revolutions) are now some of my favourite FF tracks of all time. I'll love the FFXIV OST forever. :D

Even if you took out all music from other FF games, and kept only that composed and written for this game, it would still be one of my favorite soundtracks ever. Uematsu is amazing, Soken is amazing, and so is everyone else.

As for music cutting out, and its counterpart, music that plays once then turns into silence, those are things they did more in ARR but moved away from in HW and onward. Most dungeons also just have a soundtrack that plays all the time, even in fights, and it only breaks for bosses, starting with some of the later ARR level 50 dungeons. I think they realized people liked that better, and they do. I still wish some of the music for ARR leveling dungeons was like that, rather than just kind of an intro that you only hear once. I'm glad they stopped that. Unfortunately it still happens in world zones. It would be cool if there was an option to turn random zone fight music transitions off entirely or something. That's about all I could ask for, personally.

Love the music in this game, especially trials. With Stormblood they introduced epic music to dungeons. The one thing that SE has kept at amazing quality is the music.

Something interesting to note with a lot of the world music...when it fades back in after combat it often picks up where it left off instead of starting over, though not all the time.

I also think it's quite good...enough so that I've picked up every soundtrack so far (and have the orchestral arrangement CD coming out later this month pre-ordered).

Pricey but worth it for me with the amount of music and other extras that come on the disc itself (those and the art books are guaranteed purchases for me).

Soken learned so much from realm reborn to heavensward and stormblood is like he poured all his heart into emotion....
I'm really happy for him, he evolved so much and I'm always happy to hear the music he creates now

Uematsu of course is a god....he can't be touched. Answers specially...it's probably the best FF theme ever made. The stormblood one is also really good. Everytime I hear it it really gives you feels.
The one that really got me was Other side of the wall (Fringes), really really Final Fantasy. Also Ruby sea has a pure feel to it, it's right.

Of course the trials...susano with the unique drumming and lakshmi with the feeling.
Can't wait for 4.1!
Thank you by the way for making this topic, I always wanted to thank them for the stormblood music and I'm glad I did now.

It is good pales in comparison to ff11's soundtrack tho.

Music is something Square Enix has generally been good at knocking out of the park.

It's the voice acting they tend to fall flat on. It's gotten better in HW and Stormblood, but some of the ARR voice work made me cringe <_<

I don't think "Revolutions" piece is the 'finale' music for SB yet, in the way "Dragonsong" was the finale for HW. I think we can expect something much better from the musicians for the end of SB. I think the placement of the "Revolutions" piece is more akin to the trailer music "Heavensward", for all the Heavensward trailers and stuff. So I won't take revolutions to be representative of SB just yet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raqrie_Tohka

I don't think "Revolutions" piece is the 'finale' music for SB yet, in the way "Dragonsong" was the finale for HW. I think we can expect something much better from the musicians for the end of SB. I think the placement of the "Revolutions" piece is more akin to the trailer music "Heavensward", for all the Heavensward trailers and stuff. So I won't take revolutions to be representative of SB just yet.

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The trailer songs use CG and become the expansion openings.
But like Dragonsong, Revolution use ingame CS instead of CG and is seen as the official expansion song.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raqrie_Tohka

"Revolutions"

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But Revolutions is amazing. The lyrics fit well with the events of SB.
Also it sounds uplifting compared to the last 2 main themes which I like. I don't see why it shouldn't be the representative of SB.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raqrie_Tohka

I don't think "Revolutions" piece is the 'finale' music for SB yet, in the way "Dragonsong" was the finale for HW. I think we can expect something much better from the musicians for the end of SB. I think the placement of the "Revolutions" piece is more akin to the trailer music "Heavensward", for all the Heavensward trailers and stuff. So I won't take revolutions to be representative of SB just yet.

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It actually is the main theme song for Stormblood, the official music video for it on Youtube actually clearly identifies it as such at the start, and, it actually accordingly does appear in the end credits for SB as well, just like Answers and Dragonsong did as well for ARR and Heavensward respectively (1.0 never had an ending theme as the game's storyline never was 'completed').

So yeah, it really is SB's main theme that is representative of SB's storyline.

FFXIV's music is amazing. Some music I don't really like (ex: Gold Saucer theme or the cathedral music in played in Saint Reymanaud's Cathedral), but that's a matter of personal taste. The primal themes are all top notch, and I even like most of FFXIV's themes and background music. In most MMO's I've played the music is "meh" at best, so I make it a habit to mute all sounds and music and listen to my own playlist. FFXIV is probably the only MMO I play with the sound on.