In-Game music - do you like it??

[Cleretic]

There are plenty I like less than others - I'm not the biggest fan of Oblivion but I enjoy Footsteps In the Snow a lot, and the acoustic version of Oblivion is really great! But in-game? Nah, it's pretty mid.

I think Oblivion works for two reasons.

A: The actual spectacle. Like, this is the first time the soundtrack really breaks from expectations and stops being what Final Fantasy sountracks have already been before. Even the genre breaks before that point had some roots in classic themes; Good King Moggle Mog is based on FFV's moogle theme, Under the Weight (which I think is generally underrated probably because people don't expect it to have meaning) is kinda Soken's attempt at Otherworld from FFX. But Oblivion breaking into female-vocals rock doesn't actually have an equivalent, everything with female vocals before that in Final Fantasy was either more of a ballad (Answers) or a lot more pop (like Real Emotion).

B: It's the first time we really start noticing the music helping to tell the story, honestly to a degree that even most earlier FF games never did. Again, Under the Weight probably got overlooked for how well it works at that, but Oblivion's the first song where it actually tells us things about the character it's for. Not only do the lyrics do a hell of a lot to tell the story of Ysayle, who at that point in the game was mostly an unknown, the fact the song busts into a rock version of the song that was playing before kinda helps to outline her emotional storytelling; that Ysayle puts up this elegant and composed air even when she's fighting, but when she lets loose, it turns out she's PISSED.

If I were actually ranking songs from the soundtrack, yeah, Oblivion probably wouldn't wind up super high, and I also prefer the piano version if I'm going strictly by what my ears like to hear. But I think Oblivion is a landmark part of the game's soundtrack because that's the point where the game starts actively using its musical choices to help tell the story, rather than just it being supplemental 'stuff that sets the tone and sounds good'. And I think perhaps you could argue that only Oblivion could've opened that door so well; the song so very clearly has something to say that requires you to sit and listen to it, but also isn't too impenetrable when you do. Contrast that with what would come in 3.0--Unbending Steel is almost too easy to read, while Locus was incomprehensible to the point of potentially coming off as gibberish if we weren't actually trying to interpret it.