[SPOILER] The 7.3 Trial Music was absolutely mid. What happened?

[HyperiusUltima]

I was listening to this on playback a few times, and there are few things I'd like to note, but I highly recommend someone go listen to it on Youtube for fair comparison. To start, I'm going to talk about the original.

For the record, both renditions use the same opening, though XIV's is only playable during Cutscene for cinematic value before cutting to the main theme.

As for Grand Cross(FFIX), the tempo is faster than XIV's in particular because I think people mentioned it being 'prog rock' at the time, but it is definitely superior to XIV's because there are far, far more instruments involved that help the music flow despite its chaotic feel. Typically, we're fighting an entity who's essentially the arbiter of the dead if you think about it - and in XIV, basically an entity that is literally the 'fear of death'.

Typically this is supposed to be the Final Boss of FFIX(25 year spoilers, I know) but there's always something about taking existing work and making your own rendition of it for FFXIV. For something as amazing as IX to have XIV damage the brand because of its overreliance on 'theme park' themes and nostalgia, it does it an injustice. For music?

There are times where XIV did IX justice in that department, mainly with the Unlost World's area music that is a rendition of 'Melodies of Life' from IX. You've also got the Underkeep dungeon, which takes an instrument from IX and makes good use of it there alongside the Zelenia fight(which is very, very good music btw).

However, for Necron? It is a massive disappointment. The first time I listened to XIV's rendition, I was expecting the guitars to come out. I was wanting to hear that 'prog rock' type again because let's face it: Soken is a rockstar and he loves rock. My problem? It was missing the rock.

As much as 1-to-1 can be, let's roll back to Endwalker and Zeromus for a second. Zeromus' FFIV theme is very chiptune, but when they went from Chiptune to instrumental for Zeromus? It blew me away because it did the reference justice. A slow build-up to the main theme that also had some good mixes instead of the raw theme that gets its own build-up midway through the music. Good sound balancing, and even better utilization of the chorus compared to this.

When you're comparing Grand Cross to XIV's attempt at recreating that, there are a lot of problems that I have. For one? The tempo is quite a deal slower than the original. Grand Cross(FFIX) has a 180 BPM(Beats Per Measure). FFXIV's rendition has it set to 160 BPM on average. However, the tempo and BPM aren't the offenders, leading into an issue with how the decision to make it an Orchestral piece boggles me.

While it's alright for an Orchestral piece, it feels like the mix of instruments for what should be a 'grand battle against death itself' doesn't fit the bill. While FFXIV is chockful of rock, instrumental, and orchestral music, this is the first L I've seen in a while. Not everything has to be mixed the same - but it's about the 'feel' of the music and what impact it delivers when doing the content. XIV's rendition is very generic(and yes, I will also agree that FFIX's is a bit generic too) but to a greater extent that it does this fight a disservice with just how drawn out some of the melody is.

If we're supposed to be fighting for essentially the universe(again) it's a weird decision that makes it sound too elongated in some place and takes away the feel, namely towards the end of the music when it's blaring horns with the chorus in the background before cutting to the woodwinds and trumpets to finish it off that the BPM does not help with.

Even when I playback at 1.15x speed on Youtube for XIV's rendition, I've also found that the build-up at the start after the initial one from the chorus at the start of the music is non-existent and the only thing that's being added to the piano is strings before we get the main theme on board.

And while I know it can't always be one-to-one, there could've been more effort put into Necron's theme since even if not every XIV theme is a banger, it's serviceable - this is below that and the quality drop that Yoshida mentioned? It shows when even the music isn't matching up with a major fight like this. However, I will say that they did try quite a few different pieces this time for 7.3 that we don't normally hear, so I'll give them that.

[PharisHanasaki]

Totally agree, I also thought it was a huge miss.
But I mean, I love the original, probably one of my favorite compositions from Nobuo Uematsu.

[TheDustyOne]

The track doesn't hit the same without the periodic screams and anguish of damned souls that the original had.

[Mesarthim]

A lot of the remixes don't really hit as hard as the originals did.

[Grimr]

This has not been Mr. Soken's expansion. Out of all the music so far i have only loved the bgm for heritage found. He did amazing work in shb and hsw and some endwalker mostly pandemonium. It is this and that and it all adds up. The bare minimum is an expansion like stb maybe endwalker. This is not a turning point.

[Reimmi]

This has not been Mr. Soken's expansion. Out of all the music so far i have only loved the bgm for heritage found. He did amazing work in shb and hsw and some endwalker mostly pandemonium. It is this and that and it all adds up. The bare minimum is an expansion like stb maybe endwalker. This is not a turning point.

The raid music has been fire at least

[SkankyRoe]

It's the significantly slower tempo that ruins the song. The speedy tempo of the original gave it a very bombastic and urgent sort of feel, and this remix just feels very drawn out slow.

[Jeeqbit]

This has not been Mr. Soken's expansion. Out of all the music so far i have only loved the bgm for heritage found.

I love the music in Urqopacha, Kozama'uka, Yak T'el, Shaaloani, the Outskirts in Heritage Found, Skydeep Cenote, the last 7.0 dungeon, to name several great tracks this expansion. The first 4 trials were alright as well. Honey Bee and the alliance raid themes have been alright too.

So I think you're exaggerating to say that he's had mostly misses this expansion. Soken doesn't miss that many times.

[Striker44]

Maybe it's because I only played FF9 once, many many years ago, but I couldn't even recall which boss this was from that game, let alone the theme. Without the original to "compare" it to, it felt like a pretty normal generic battle theme to me, which on a grading scale means I'd give it a "B".

This has not been Mr. Soken's expansion. Out of all the music so far i have only loved the bgm for heritage found.

For the record, to me it's definitely been "his expansion." There's a ton of music from it that I've loved, perhaps the top several being the Town Theme from the second half of the MSQ, the variations of Living Memory (and Alexandria dungeon), Tritoch's theme, the zone themes in the wild west and first two zones, and one particular rendition of the main theme that gets used in a lot of the early cutscenes from 7.0.

See, this is how opinions work. Let's keep them phrased that way instead of trying to make ourselves absurd arbiters of reality, eh?

[SamuraiMiqo]

I feel the music for DT as a whole has been decent, very jungle like and playful, with others having a very wild west tone, or frantic and 'let's do this!' vibes and solution 9's theme is very relaxing. Only song I am not fond of is Smile (for multiple reasons), but all in all I found the music enjoyable.