Ishikawa commissioned Smile T__T

[ZephyrMenodora]

The hate of Smile feels so overblown. It's not a musical marvel but it's so harmlessly cheesy.

Can people just dislike things without pretending that it's the end of the world that a thing they don't like exists.

Maybe because "harmlessly cheesy" just indicates that it doesn't fit for the setting, story, and music we are used to for this game. Combined with the decrease in writing capabilities, it's not hard to just look at the entire downward trajectory of this expansion with distaste.

[CuteBucket]

Honestly I think the "Dawntrail" theme is just as awkward if not worse. To me the theme sounds like way too many songs with horrible, disjointed transitions attempting to be one. Like "Footfalls" but way worse. I don't know why it doesn't get as much shit.

YOU'RE RIGHT and you should say it LOUDER! I was very "eugh" on the main theme from the first moment I heard it. It was like "what am I listening to? why does it keep suddenly shifting into another song??"

I agree with the general sentiment I'm seeing in this thread though--The music in Dawntrail just feels very disjointed and all over the place compared to previous expansions, which felt more thematically whole, just like the writing feels disjointed and all over the place to match. There's some great tracks here and then, but then there's some real stinkers too, or songs that could have been okay if the lyrics weren't so clumsy and the singer matched the genre more, and y'know, it wasn't played in the strangest places in the story. Like both times Smile started it was like a jump-scare for me because it was so jarring and out of nowhere to just launch into the CHORUS from out of nowhere.

[Hallarem]

If Koji Fox and Soken want to pursue their band lives, let them go do that. But please don't let them anywhere near a main theme of a FFXIV expansion ever again.

Dawntrail was just a handful of songs (not bad songs, aside from Smile, which I also think is a very bad lackluster campfire song) inserted into places where they don't belong.

Smile - bad placement
Main theme - bad placement
Tuliyollal - bad placement

[CuteBucket]

Unpopular opinion time (?), but as much crap as they get for... I don't know, making what would be a rather bland translation more colourful (but something something stilted anime accuracy), the localisation team have silently contributed significantly to parts of the game Ishikawa more often than not gets full credit for, Emet-Selch's depiction in Shadowbringers and the DRK quests to name some just off the top of my head. She's a very emotive writer, she knows how to make characters that players love and her storylines tend to have more heart and poignancy than her cohorts (who kind of stick to the more repetitive JPRG fare you'd expect that runs a little dry in the West) but she's not actually all that raw or gritty as the writing can get (the JP version rarely is, regardless of who's behind it) and she can definitely get it wrong - including but not limited to, like you say, being no stranger to a healthy amount of cheese, lol. I think purely from a writing perspective she's made several mistakes, but for most players it just flies under the radar compared to her achievements and let's be honest, most FF fans have withstood enough cheese that Ishikawa's writing is positively R R Martin-esque in comparison.

I've gotten some flack for not liking the lvl 60-70 DRK quests AT ALL, so I feel that. I did not like Myste and thought the whole thing made no narrative sense and was some corny, hackneyed slop after how good the HW DRK story was. Ishikawa created most (if not all) of my favorite characters, but she can still miss. No one's perfect. But to be fair, she only commissioned a song in the genre, she didn't literally write it. So Smile being weird and cringe still isn't directly her fault.

[Windfire]

*wry chuckle* I don't like any of the drk quests, guess how popular that makes me lol. As far as Smile goes it's not the worst song I've heard but where they put it is really, really bad.

[Basteala]

I thought this song was supposed to be "literally black gospel"?
Does this mean I'm not racist for disliking the song?

Real talk, but to anyone that actually subscribes to that logic: are you racist if you hate rap? And what if it's by Eminem? Then what?

[Dikatis]

If Koji Fox and Soken want to pursue their band lives, let them go do that. But please don't let them anywhere near a main theme of a FFXIV expansion ever again.

Dawntrail was just a handful of songs (not bad songs, aside from Smile, which I also think is a very bad lackluster campfire song) inserted into places where they don't belong.

Smile - bad placement
Main theme - bad placement
Tuliyollal - bad placement

Tuliyollal was not bad placement. It perfectly conveys how Tuliyollal is a vibrant, diverse, and bustling metropolis. I'd have been bored of a stereotypically Latin American conga or cha cha song. I don't understand where the main theme was placed badly.

I even get the intended vibe of using Smile at the train scene even if I can understand the criticism for it.

[Aexnidaral]

I generally think Dawntrail had weaker leitmotifs than past expansions; but Smile is the first MSQ song that I genuinely think is terrible.

[All_Nonsense]

I used to think Beauty's Wicked Wiles was the most cornball lame song in the game, but Smile was so excessively trite and cliche that it makes Beauty's Wicked Wiles sound like Close in the Distance.

Ironically it fit the theme of "tonedeaf story" perfectly - I couldn't have made it worse myself.

[SWATomega]

It is fine not to like a song. There are plenty of music genres I don't like at all, and that doesn't instantly make me a bad person. It is normal, everyone has a right to like or dislike a song/music.