Favorite Square/Enix music of the past

[Tanooki]

While DQ until it went MMO reflected a land of little change and the quality was retained, Final Fantasy has been all over the board especially once they went to Sony and in particular from 10 onwards. They have their moments and stuff, but despite the better tech I for one felt the music has lacked in them at least for being memorable if anything else. Personally I think the era of the 16bit stuff has the most stand out music that really just grabs you in the Square games from Final Fantasy titles, Secret of Mana or even Mario RPG. Enix in their own right either stuff they made or just published(Quest--Ogre Battle) were in every way just as special and memorable.

Do any of you have any particular pieces from the 20th century stuff or even the refined more recent re-releases you prefer and have any reasons why?

[Alpha2099]

I can't pick out a favorite, but I do have a majority of each soundtrack from FFs 1-7, as well as the soundtrack from 12. I think the biggest change in the music happened when Nobuo Uematsu left to do his own independent work, and other people took over. For example, the soundtrack of FF12 is very different from anything in the first seven. While I can listen to the soundtrack of FF7 from start to finish, I can't do the same with 12. The music in 12 blends together too much and everything begins to sound the same. Additionally, Uematsu made it a point to try different styles of music for songs within one game, whereas 12 is purely orchestral, which adds to the repetitiveness.

[aingevt]

I had the soundtrack to Seiken Densetsu 3 long before I played the game. I love that music. I also love most of the music Mitsuda composed. Xenogears epic score kept me playing through some of the really annoying parts of that game. The only thing I liked about Chrono Cross was the soundtrack, and boy did I love it! The same could be said for Final Fantasy VIII. Especially the orchestrated soundtrack. I listen to that often but will never ever never play that game again. But back to 16 bit. I loved the music for Final Fantasy VI so much that it was the first soundtrack I bought. I made my brother listen to Chrono Trigger's soundtrack years after he thought he was done playing video games. It was so good he's now played through CT about a dozen times and loves it. The way those composers and programmers were able to cram so much excitement and emotion into those chip tunes was just amazing. It's something that lots of modern games lack.

[LiquidPolicenaut]

My absolute favorite from Enix is Actraiser. I love both the OST itself as well as the Actraiser Symphonic Suite....

As for SquareSOFT music, there is just so many good ones Chrono Trigger, FF VI, Xenogears, etc....

[Tanooki]

Actraiser was the one to show the beauty that could be had with a gaming console on the music side of things. Up until that point it was downright just the PC with XM music and great moving tracks in a rare game here or there that truly stood out. Then you get the SNES that drops in later 1991, it with its then consumer not understood 33khz output with music samples for the audio. Little was out before it with the basics of Mario, Pilotwings, FZero and a few more generic launch games that had more the usual soft tone beepy generated fare. ActRaiser once this thing called 'music' was invented and the audio dropped to silent for a few moments to then come up with a legit piece of orchestra music was just stunning.

I had a copy (yeah I know) of the Actraiser music in MP3 format a very long time ago, never could find a legit disc and it was great. Back in the day I did have FF4-6 and SD2(SOM) on CD and I played the hell out of those. If you didn't know they were video game music you'd think they were some random symphony piece.