Can We Talk About This Absolute Unit?

[Mansion]

His work on XIV is astounding, I'd genuinely call him the second Uematsu.

Yass. Like, his theme for Heavensward (the one called Heavensward used in the trailer) is faaaaar above Dragonsong for me.
(And if we could have a 5.0 theme song without Susan Calloway, I would be so happy)

The Rak'Tika snippet struck me during the FanFest, it really is wonderful.

[Nhisso]

Lol is this a joke? That song is just "aight".

[Ameela]

I mentioned this on a YT video; I would have zero complaints if Soken took over the sound development for future main FF titles. His work on XIV is astounding, I'd genuinely call him the second Uematsu.

I love Soken but I'd honestly hesitate to call him the next Uematsu.

Despite the big variety of music styles in FFXIV's soundtrack, you'll find that a lot of it is actually written with the same "rock mentality", where there's a lot of emphasis put on the main melody while kind of shafting every other part of the song.

Uematsu was great because he let every instrument run wild in his compositions, never compromising any of them and it adds a lot more personality to his tracks. Just compare the arrangements of old FF tracks to their original counterparts and see how much is lost when Soken brings them to XIV.

[Hakuro89]

Almost looks like he's riding around on a tiny wingless Nidhogg.