The Shrine

To me, music is always one of the primary driving force in any game simply because most game totally suck at driving the game in any other way. When I play one of my game OSTs I think 'oh this event happened when track X is played', not the other way around. I identify the music first before identifying the event. Aeris's theme is the music played when Aeris died, not the other way around.

And this brings to two of the biggest annoyances: the battle music and the boss music. Almost every game that features some kind of encounter and some kind of boss have such music. I think when games are first made, it must be written in blood that all battle music must be some kind of high tempo action music, and all boss music has to be a more epic version of the battle music. Well, if everyone is going for the epic feel, then that means what is 'epic music' suddenly isn't very epic anymore. Now obviously some composers do get it right, but by definition most have to screw it up because it can't be 10 out of 10 battle type music is epic.

I find that I much prefer music that actually matched what was supposed to be going on. In FF7 when you fight Jenova LIFE the background music is Aeris's theme, because Aeris just died, as opposed to the generic JENOVA theme which is just another generic boss music. In Chrono Cross when you go the the Cleft of Dimension (or whatever the equivalent of End of Time was called) you can go fight all the random battles in the various eras, and they always use the ambient music of that area. To me that is far better than the generic 'Gale' music that is just another generic battle music. When you fight Miguel you got the sadish theme "Those Imprisoned by Fate", and it make sense because the fight is supposed to be very sad.

While there's no way to ensure all music just spontaneous become awesome, it seems like if people at least tried to match music to whatever is supposed to be going on instead of just saying here's a boss so we got to have boss music! Even if all you're working with is fast action music, take a game like Wild Arms remix, all the major bosses have some boss music-like theme that generally reflected the character well. Boomerang's music sounds more honorable. Zed is more nonsensical. Alhazard is definitely the most creepy. Even though all the boss music share similar traits, you can definitely tell the difference between them. Jane Maxwell's battle theme is way more upbeat than the generic one since she's a hyper energetic girl in a bunny costume.

It's pretty weird that even though gaming has become much better, music doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and if anything it's declined. I realize music doesn't become better by throwing more polygons at it, but you'd think it shouldn't get worse with better technology, either.

This generation hasn't had any games with ground breaking music yet. I see you referencing a lot of JRPGs, and brother there haven't been a lot of those coming out o these new fangled consoles yet. Although I enjoy and appreciate the orchestral numbers usually found in those games, I have recently been drawn to games with slightly less conventional soundtracks for their genre - Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and Persona 3&4 being some nice ones.

Music is something that I like to reflect on. While technology has vastly improved, my enjoyment of music hasn't. Some of my favourite tunes are on NES and Gameboy. While I also love much more advaned music from later PSX games like Xenogears and FF8, I find Faxanadu and FF Legend 2 tunes to be highly enjoyable too.

As much as I love a good game ST, I hardly notice the music when I play them game except in exceptional circumstances (such as Symphony). Really, as long as it's not atrocious or just completely out of place, it doesn't affect my impressions of the game.

Same with movies. I mean, one of the worst movie soundtracks in history is Scarface but everyone loves that movie.

Usually only RPGs occasionally break the mold of 'battle/boss music must be some kind of fast action music.' Take a game like Symphony of the Night. There is really no battle music since the music is more ambient, but whenever you walk into a 'boss room' it's still some generic 'boss music'.

I tell you what has a great soundtrack to match its style is The World Ends With You. I am very sad that I have not been able to find a downloadable soundtrack of that game.