Immersion Breaking Mini-Boss Music in Dungeons

[Fynlar]

And hearing it from every single last boss of a dungeon wont?

Not really, no. At least it feels appropriate for the final boss, particularly when most of them throughout the 5.0 dungeons have been Lightwardens, which were rather central to the plot (not to mention appropriate to Insatiable's lyrics).

Now though, with even the mini bosses basically playing the same theme, running into your first Lightwarden (for instance) isn't going to have the stage set for it nearly as well as before.

Honestly, in general the only reason people are complaining here is because people didnt even notice the generic boss music before, because its been played in dungeons for years, and then suddenly when Soken puts in the effort to make a theme and add it in to existing dungeons for verity, and people get annoyed? Wew.

The problem isn't that it's something new, the problem is that it isn't technically new at all. Again, it's just a less intense remix of the same music you hear at the final boss. That diminishes the impact of the final boss encounter, because you've basically heard it already in the very same dungeon run, twice.

No previous dungeons in earlier xpacs just remixed the final boss music and just used it for all of its bosses. No final boss themes in dungeons felt like they were just retreads of what you already heard for the first two midbosses.

Again, it wouldn't have been such a big deal if this was something they only did in the new dungeon in 5.2 as a once-off stylistic change, but to just take all the previous dungeons and do the same thing feels egregiously lazy.

[Destati]

I'm just glad they changed the mid-boss music, I was getting very sick of the old themes.

[Iscah]

but the 1st and 2nd boss music in amaurot before was generic 14 boss music, so why is this bad that they made a track specifically for non-final bosses of dungeons for an expansion?

The problem (for me at least) is that they haven't "made new music", they've effectively taken the final boss music and added it to the midbosses, thus diluting its effect as epic final boss music. It becomes overplayed and instead of only hearing it for the final encounter, you've already heard it twice per dungeon before you get there.

[TheGrimace]

The problem (for me at least) is that they haven't "made new music", they've effectively taken the final boss music and added it to the midbosses, thus diluting its effect as epic final boss music. It becomes overplayed and instead of only hearing it for the final encounter, you've already heard it twice per dungeon before you get there.

I agree. I like all the music, but I do dislike the melody being overused because I think it does take away the impact of the final boss fight.

I'm in a difficult spot right now because while I love the music, I do think that they shouldn't over-saturate it.

[Granyala]

I find any combat music off putting in this game.
Overworld combat music is the worst offender by far.

There you are, having a nice track playing only for it to be changed to noisy, screechy electric guitars because you happened to venture too close to a mob.

Ugh. In the Overworld you can deactivate it but in dungeons you are stuck with it.

Solution: use a media player instead and feed it the games soundtrack.

[Rasikko]

With the exception of a few places, the majority of the tracks in this game are all remixes of the Final Fantasy iconic main theme anyway. The generic boss fight themes that were removed are part of this exception..

I like 'remixed' version of those major boss themes for Shadowbringers, but I think it's not very fitting for all the boss encounters for the expansion, just a few.

[Theodric]

On one hand, I'm glad that the old music was replaced. Having heard some of it in pretty much every single dungeon throughout multiple expansions it did become a bit grating. On the other hand, I think a better move would have been to create a handful of new 'mini-boss' themes and spread them around to bring about more variety.

[Gemina]

It's not as immersion breaking as the older ARR dungeons, where battle music plays for the trash mobs, but I think the dungeon music continuing to play until reaching a mini boss started happening as early as 2.1

There are definitely some dungeons where I wish the music would continue playing up until the final boss, but there are also some dungeons where the mini boss music is welcome. I think maybe the issue could possibly be that a standardized mini boss track won't fit in all dungeons, as is the case with Amaurot. In this case they could either use an existing track more fitting, compose another, or just leave the dungeon music playing.

The good news is that the music for dungeons continues to evolve and get better. I even thought the radio tuning in Akademia Anyder was briliiant.

[Theodric]

I even thought the radio tuning in Akademia Anyder was briliiant.

It's a great touch, though sadly it isn't present on the orchestrion roll.

[Nestama]

It's not as immersion breaking as the older ARR dungeons, where battle music plays for the trash mobs, but I think the dungeon music continuing to play until reaching a mini boss started happening as early as 2.1

Kinda. Haukke Manor and Copperbell Mines Hard both used the same theme (which was the original dungeon theme back in 1.X), while Pharos Sirius' theme was nearing two minutes long and didn't loop (and was actually a hard dungeon in 2.1 that people wiped in/left frequently). I think it was thanks to Pharos Sirius that dungeons now have music play until boss fights, as I'm pretty sure there was some backlash that a nice theme just played once at the start and then never again.