The way I view the OST for FFVIIR, specifically as among the GOATs, is that it is practically like a parallel Remaking of the soundtrack on the scale of the game, which can be related to Tim‘s ACTION BUTTON REVIEWS BOTTOM LINE for, not FFVIIR, but The Last of Us–it’s great by default. It‘s titanic, it balances new stuff and old stuff in a new form, some of it is weird and some of it is overblown, but it’s all executed with exceptional love and hypercompetence. Some of it is really banging, from a subjective point of view.
I think it's also impressive to what degree it scores so much of the experience of playing the game and how well it often does that; what will cause me to wish a game's soundtrack would give it a rest is when it is just omnipresent, =like the developers thought silence would for some reason be uncomfortable even when silence and ambient sounds would probably set a better mood than the music (or at least the same music over and over with little or no breaks in between loops (looking at you, _Elden Ring))._ Whether or not every scrap of FFVIIR's OST is good or not, I think it really effectively scores the action onscreen, weaving in and out of battles, setting the tension of the events on screen, exploding in sync with the action heightening on screen... it's a huge part of the cinematic feeling of the game, if you ask me.
Because of that, perhaps whether it lands with someone or not could also depend on how they feel about the game itself. I absolutely can't separate how I feel about the version of [Those Who Fight Further](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W-HzBFdNfc) from how I felt when I played that section. As in, hype as fuck.
That being said, I would have loved to hear a little less orchestral instruments or orchestral ass sounding arrangements and more weirdo synths.
Just thinking of some of those licks in _Those Who Fight Further_ that in the _Remake_ is scored on boring _soli_ violins, and on the original it's some kind of PS1 skungy ass Hammond-esque coming at you in the name of the LORD. Same with the marquee version of J.E.N.O.V.A., as called in the _Remake,_ J.E.N.O.V.A Quickening... I miss that weird ass synth sample that hits the main melody like [someone huckin a frozen turkey stuffed full of batteries down a freshly oiled lane at the bowling alley.](https://youtu.be/9KuDAAy6QO8?t=16)
The FFVIIR would unequivocally be one of the GOATs if they had just one weirdo Doctorate of Music: Performance motherfucker just come in to the studio one day and tear ass on an EWE or one of those Roli Seaboards hooked up to some Sicko Mode samples. Although that could be said of a lot of soundtracks
@“2501”#p70567 Masashi Hamauzu, who’s obviously very good in his own right, tries to be “faithful” to Uematsu in an overly literal way, and the end result doesn’t feel like either his distinctive style or Uematsu’s. (I also can’t remember a single piece from the OST off the top of my head except Uematsu’s ending song.)
I think I get what you didn't like about VIIR's music and don't mean to refute that, but allow me to point out some actually pretty darn good Hamauzu tracks you might have missed or forgotten about, which I think do showcase his composition and arrangement style pretty well.
[Aerith & Marlene - A Familiar Flower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqgcbl3UprU) (used during the cutscene when ||Aerith rescues Marlene from the burning Seventh Heaven||—quotes the Uematsu theme but with some more interesting textures and a complementary, new violin theme)
[Return to the Planet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h314k9oLGA) | [A Broken World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx2TKt0DdNE) | [Infinity's End](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy1M1olZ4xs) | [Solemn Sunset](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BQ_14oEiMM) (xhekros linked this one already)
Also worth pointing out he only arranged the tracks he composed (or co-composed with Uematsu) and composed about 33 out of 156 tracks, which is only 22% of the total (not including jukebox remixes).
hmmm.... on second thought @"captain"#p70356 i should put some hamauzu soundtrack on here, instead of...
@“captain”#p70596 idk I mean, these are… fine? Like the best among them are the most audibly Hamauzu-esque, yet they all feel subservient to a more conventionally “cinematic” orchestral style that tones down his idiosyncrasies while failing to do justice to the Uematsu pieces. None of this is stuff I would go out of my way to revisit outside the context of the game, personally.
I'm also bored by the ff7r soundtrack, but also I like trashy chiptune stuff so I was never going to go in for an orchestral treatment.
Will addendize though that in general I feel like ff7r does a good job of reimagining the uncanny vibe of the original game. Cloud carrying the Buster Sword into a hyperrealistic render of a suburban mud room is an image seared into my memory right next to chibi Cloud crawling up a background image of a pile of industrial debris.
Sometimes rearranging synth music for classical-style instrumentals does not in fact make it better (the OCRemix problem). Did Yellow Magic Orchestra spend the 80s going “Damn, if only we could afford live instruments”?
Anyway even though most of what I actually have to say about it in retrospect is negative comparisons with the original, I _did_ enjoy _FF7R_ on the whole despite the unwieldiness of its attempts to perform several different impossible tasks simultaneously and the fact that, let’s face it, the definitive _FF7_ experience is still the ReMAKO mod. I just also happened to rewatch _Advent Children_ for the first time since high school the weekend _FF7R_ came out, and realized that dumbass movie kinda slaps almost entirely due to its art direction and soundtrack, neither of which is matched by _FF7R_. I mean, does any piece of music from that game substantially deepen the _FF7_ mythos like [this](https://youtu.be/GpzJwgkI3cc) or [this](https://youtu.be/9eqMM5sMcY0)? Does any remixed track rock even a quarter as hard as [this](https://youtu.be/SQbMsQpAjJ0)? Heck no.
@“2501”#p70619 Sometimes rearranging synth music for classical-style instrumentals does not in fact make it better
I understand this is directed not at me but at the game and the general corporate notion that orchestra = bigger = better, and Remake is certainly guilty of that, but I wouldn't say it's guilty of it all of the time, nor do I want to make it seem like that is what [I'm arguing in favor of](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/1507-insert-credit-game-sounds-poll-for-videogame-osts-and-audio/41). Advent Children's soundtrack is tighter, less blemished (though Uematsu and I do not prefer the same guitar sounds), proportionally more experimental. I can't argue that.
This is extremely good, I'd forgotten about it (despite the fact that (a lesser version of) it is in [Remake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftPITDjthA4))
@“Karnovski”#p70894 I am so intimidated by this thread. Top 10 is so hard to decide!
You weren't around for our first or second one which were for [videogames ](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/990-2021-forumsinsertcreditcom-video-game-poll-results-thread/39)and [movies ](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/1264-2021-insert-credit-film-poll-results-thread)respectively, so I'll just say that everyone took their own approach to it, with individual balances of submissions that could be described as personal favourites, critical darlings, cult hits, things that just have a lot of "insert credit" energy (a quality that defies understanding), some people intentionally thought about it as little as possible and just picked whatever they thought of first, then there's [this extremely powerful submission ](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/923-poll-concluded-thanks-the-2021-forumsinsertcreditcom-video-game-poll/226)by @"chazumaru"#146, who very clearly had an agenda in mind.
