Quote Originally Posted by Boxworm View Post
I have really enjoyed Soken's music so far, but I really hope Uematsu and Mizuta's previous work will stay in the game too. I absolutely LOVED all of it, and it would be a huge shame for it to be tossed away!! They all have such different sounds, and I think it's fun to have music from a few different composers. After all, every area is different, so it's fitting for the music to have distinctly different sounds.

I really think it will be a huge blow to ARR if Uematsu's work is not reused. I listen to the tracks a lot on YouTube, and the number of 'welcome back Uematsu!' comments is amazing. He brought in a fantastic retro FF feel in a lot of his songs, and I think a lot of fans really enjoyed that. For many who grew up playing FF and hearing Uematsu's music, Mizuta and Soken are a cheap second. I hate to say that, but I know it's true for many people. And the retro FF feel fits right in with Yoshi-P's vision for the game. So, I really hope the old music is recycled.
This. Though I haven't heard enough of Soken's non-Boss theme works to say I like them. Fallen Angel and Rise of the White Raven were outstanding, but in more common BGM I've only the Shroud video releases to go off of, and I've yet to hear anything distinct in those. It all seems fitting enough, but bland. I really doubt within an hour of logging out of the game I'd be able to remember which theme belonged to which part of the Shroud. In all honesty, I'd take a single Whisper of the Land over various melding but indistinct tracks. (Honestly though, that may be my personal favorite zone BGM of all time, just from how much it fit with the scenery, so that may be a biased example...)

I agree with Shougun that the use of some less standard (especially, as he said, Asian) instruments influenced by zones or sub-zones would probably help a lot. When I first mentioned the new Shroud BGMs to a friend, I went back and checked various OSTs from Tera, GW2, and WoW. WoW's definitely seemed much more listenable alone, and both more fitting and memorable to their zones. Not to say that WoW's music is bad, nor these new tracks my comparison, but I've gotten used to a pretty high standard from my favorite FFXIV zones. I hope ARR's BGMs will come to surpass those standards.