Nobuo Uematsu's Original Score: Why was it removed?!

[Wiggles]

I stand corrected on Garuda, but I still stand by what I said. I still find ARR's music bland and boring. Older Final Fantasy games sometimes my only motivation to get in a battle was to hear the music. Never had such feelings with ARR.

Maybe Im a fanboy of Uematsu's work, but I would say for good reason. He created some of the most memorable music in Video games. I still think we should have the choice of what music to use.

[KimimiAvesta]

I wouldn't dream of implying that Uematsu isn't important to VGM as a whole or that he's never written anything great, but I find him overrated and a lot of the people that claim he's the greatest composer ever would struggle to name a single Sakimoto/Shimomura/Hamauzu/Otani/Falcom JDK/Kobayashi, etc album if their lives depended on it.

The game's in good hands, and Soken has already produced some amazing work. I can't wait to hear more!

[Korbei]

Please don't feign outrage when you've admitted to never hearing the original score. It sucked. At least it sucked insofar as its context in the game. The entire score was written and recorded in a vacuum without any meaningful direction or collaboration. As a standalone album, it's not all that bad. As the score for FFXIV, it was nonsensical noise. As the score for ARR, it would be a collection of dissonant garbage.

BUT... if you want it, buy it.

[Vejjiegirl]

-snip-

Read the below quote Wiggles. Not sure if it is true or not but instead of looking for answers here, maybe its time to take to the world wide web and do some research.
http://www.dogearrecords.com/

Uematsu is not a Square Enix employee anymore. He has his own company (SMILE PLEASE) that owns the copyright to the music he composes for games.

Yoshida wanted to make sure players could stream and post YouTube videos of gameplay without having to worry about copyright, and that's why not all of Uematsu's music from 1.0 is used in 2.0.

[Azgarde]

Uematsu is credited as a Sound Composer in ARR btw. Watch the cinematic entirely, he's credited right before yoshi-P.

[Rutelor]

Uematsu's work for FFXIV v.1 was frequently mediocre and--at most--it was unmemorable and bland at its substandard best.

Amazingly, for a game composer that seemed to have had through his career a knack for capturing the concept of a situation, and rendering it a few strokes of atmospheric melody, his work for XIV was often mood-deaf. His awful Magnificent Seven/Chocobo Theme rehash is an example. When did you ever have so many people complain before, as they do now, about any installment of his iconic and beloved mount ditty? (A multitude of requests, in these forums, for an optional setting to turn it off testify to this).

There were very few examples of his signature brief and to-the-core, atmospheric melodies. Pressed now to recall any, I come up with only one (the electric guitar riff of the combat music for guildleves, which alas, was heard all too often).

Ul'dah's theme and the crafting music consistently put me to sleep. Soken's work far surpasses (not a difficult task, admitted) this standard. And frequently excels in an early-Uematsu sort of way.

[Keres]

I like Uematsu, but I for one am happy not to have wailing guitars playing all the time while I'm playing the game anymore.

Also, compare the 1.0 Ul'dah music to the 2.0 Ul'dah music.

[Munba]

Hope to listen new tracks from Uematsu in the future patches and expansions. He is still the king.

But also Soken is very talented indeed.

[Kantide]

I think the boss battle music in XIV is some of the best I've heard in a while. Go Soken!

[Mysteltain]

Uematsu is credited as a Sound Composer in ARR btw. Watch the cinematic entirely, he's credited right before yoshi-P.

Actually, isn't Uematsu only credited as the composer for the Main Theme? I thought it was strange at first until I watched the opening cinematic again. But, my memory could be playing tricks on me again.