The Shrine

Well, I was playing the game today and I couldn't help at how well the music has been done in the game. So I am going to make a poll:

Of the following characters, which one has the theme that you like the most:

Ovelia
Delita
Algus
Dycedarg
Ramza
Zalbag
Cid/Orlando
Alma
Izlude

Most of these characters don't actually have a character theme... at best a loose association.

And where is Under the Stars, the theme that obviously associates with Izlude?

Don Wang wrote:Most of these characters don't actually have a character theme... at best a loose association.

And where is Under the Stars, the theme that obviously associates with Izlude?

Most don't have themes because there are dozens of characters. All of the main characters have their themes though. Some of them, like Ovelia, have multiple themes; Ovelia has a song called "Ovelia theme" which I used, as well as "Ovelia's Worries" which is essentially a remix of the Ovelia theme, similar to Maria's two themes in Xenogears.

I just went with the 8 songs that were labeled by the character name. I am not really familiar with the names of the songs, but I will add in Izlude's; I seem to remember this song as battle music though.

The character themes are pretty forgettable. They're pretty much calling the music the guy first appeared that person's theme. Ovelia's the theme is the only one that really stood out out of the real character themes. And yeah, Under the Stars was really a battle music. But, given you can take a character that appears once and call them their theme with the music that happens to be playing at that time, I don't see why this is any different.

FFT's music strength was more in the battle musics than the theme musics.

Hmmm, now that you mention it, Ovelia's theme is a very standout theme. I didn't actually realize how good this theme was (until I listened to it like 4 time). I think I might like it better than Schala's Chrono Trigger theme.

I still also like the other themes quite a bit. They aren't as standout as, say, Chrono Trigger, but they are still fairly good.

There wasn't any music in FFT that was particularly bad, but maybe it's because of that very few of them actually stand out. It's just like the game's characters. None of them are bad, but no one stands out either because they are quickly relegated to irrelevance or quickly killed after their introduction.

Don Wang wrote:There wasn't any music in FFT that was particularly bad, but maybe it's because of that very few of them actually stand out. It's just like the game's characters. None of them are bad, but no one stands out either because they are quickly relegated to irrelevance or quickly killed after their introduction.

I found the most standout characters in the game to be Delita (obviously), Gafgarion, Algus, Dycedarg, and Ovelia. Those are the ones that immediately come to mind when I think of the game. Ramza is who you control, but he is really just the eyes you view the events of the history of the Lion's War through.

I've said it before, I find that many of the characters have historical equivilents dating from late antiquity to almost the Restoration period of England. The historical inspiration for the events of the game seems to come primarilly from the late 4th century and early 5th century Rome. As well as 15th Century England. The Lions War itself is obviously a reference to the war of the Roses (The Red Rose and the Wite Rose), whereas Delita seems to be the equivilent of Alaric the Goth (a disenchanted recognized commoner who played two sides politically and eventually came to conquer Rome. At the same time there was much classism going on, and the Church was manipulating things heavily to gain power.)

Delita and Wiegraf (counting Miluda as part of his character, since they are siblings after all) are the only two characters in FFT that had lasting significance in the story. That doesn't mean that you can't like the other characters, but they're really unimportant or even irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Who important thing did Miluda Folles do? Izlude Tingel? Olan Durai? Agrias Oaks? Or even Alma Beoulve? Aside from one or two events that won't be possible without the said character, it's usually nothing.

I think one of biggest strengths, namely the myriad of interesting personalities available, is also its biggest weakness. There are some seriously cool characters with a good story to tell, but there are so many and they fade to irrelevance and/or die so quickly that you never get to hear their story.

Actually, there were quite a few stand-out themes in FFT that I really enjoyed. FFT OST was great in that there was no bad song, or even so-so song. All of the music was really good and some of the songs were even better. That's really hard to pull off when you're writing 70-80 songs for a game.

SineSwiper wrote:Actually, there were quite a few stand-out themes in FFT that I really enjoyed. FFT OST was great in that there was no bad song, or even so-so song. All of the music was really good and some of the songs were even better. That's really hard to pull off when you're writing 70-80 songs for a game.

The music of FFT added so much atmosphere to the game. It really dramatized things.

FFT's music leans very heavily on the combat side. Aside from Ovelia's theme and maybe the one that was labeled as Ramza's theme (when Balbanes died) I don't recall any standout music that wasn't part of a battle.

Edit: Err, I forgot about the opening, but that has some many battle music variations that I started thinking of it as a battle music.

Looks like Ovelia killed everyone.