The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Uematsu:
Final Fantasy 1-11
Super Mario RPG
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy Legend series (Saga)

Sakimoto:
Ogre Battle series
Final Fantasy Tactics

Mitsuda:
Xenosaga
Xenogears
Chrono Cross
Some on Chrono Trigger

Kikuto:
Seiken Densetsu (Secret of Mana)
Romancing Saga</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Ooo, Uematsu or Mitsuda, too close to call</div>

<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Sakimoto and Mitsuda. BTW, Mitsuda was the main composer for CT. Uematsu contributed only a few tracks.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Baskerville; text-align: left; '>Mitsuda</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Ah! woops! Got them mixed up there, thanks for the correction.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>I like really like the Breath of Fire 4 soundtrack too (i think it was composed by Yoshino Aoki). But his crappy stuff on Breath of Fire 3 takes him out of the running. (I'm still looking for an explanation why they completely ripped-off CT songs for the soundtrack)</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I also loved what Hideki Naganuma did with the Jet Set Radio soundtrack (and I should really play JSRF one of these days.)

Random factoid - I'm currently playing Legaia 2, whose soundtrack was worked on by both Mitsuda and Sakimoto (and one other guy, but I don't know what else he's done.) It hasn't blown me away yet, but I'm only 13 hours in at this point.

I don't have anything against Uematsu, his stuff is amazing as well, but Mitsuda has been more consistenly in his "damn, that's good"-ness. Not to mention he always picked a better instrument set. I mean, the music in FF7 and 8 was good, but it sounded like ass - kind of like the Rolling Stones.

<i>-57</i></div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Wherein lies the inherent "goodness" of a piece of music if not in the sound?</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>In most cases, people like certain songs/pieces of music because of two factors: they like the composition of the song and they also like the particular performance of that song. The second most likely scenario is a good or catchy performance livening up a bad song - most flash-in-the-pan music acts are like this. Britney Spears, every boy band imaginable, the Spice Girls, etc. - all these groups perform trite pieces of shit that are made popular by catchy choruses, the occasional five-part harmony, or boobs.

Then there are some cases where someone can like the composition of a song but not the performance, i.e. me in the two cases I mentioned in my previous post. I liked the music in FFVII very much (the melodies, harmonies, rhythms, etc.) but thought the synthesized instrument set they used sounded like crap - the brass instruments all sounded like bus horns or sick geese, the guitars all had 50% too much twang, and the strings...well, I can't even think of an analogy that describes how wrong the strings sounded.

I also like the songs of the Rolling Stones but wish I didn't have to listen to the Rolling Stones perform them.

On the other hand, I thought the three arranged pieces Uematsu did for Reunion Tracks were all fantastic, and if a cover band decided to do some Stones tunes that had a singer who could sing and a guitar player who could actually play guitar, I'm sure I'd enjoy that much more as well.

Am I making any sense here?

<i>-57</i></div>

<div style='font: 12pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Yeah, I see. I kinda figured that's what you meant, but I wanted to add my ridiculously pedantic-sounding commentary : )</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Uematsu has some wicked arranged stuff for his FF music as well</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>That is true, I even have most of it...but Brink of Time and Creid both absolutely blew me away.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger's normal music rule ass as well. The CC ST is the best one I thought from Square for a normal ST</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Mitsuda, definately. BTW, he did ALL of Chrono Trigger. Uematsu had no part in that. Also, nobody mentioned the two guys who did FFT.</div>