← First soundtrack release review
Game info: Wikipedia
Listening/music info: soundtrack album
Info
For the first part of the Final Fantasy VII remake, FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE, a few months after the big beefy soundtrack was released, SQUARE ENIX released an additional four discs of music as the FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE Original Soundtrack Plus. They just did the same thing for the second part, REBIRTH, as well, though it’s five discs this time and they took a whole two years to get it out.
I haven’t played REBIRTH so I can’t make a complete account of where every track here comes from, but since they covered most if not all of the major area, battle, and story themes on the first soundtrack, it seems like a lot of what’s here are miscellaneous cutscene themes. There’s definitely some other stuff here too though: some area theme variations, more area themes and their battle variations, English versions of the vocals, etc. Stylistically it’s all pretty much just “more REBIRTH orchestra/electronic music with random outliers,” though with a narrower spread because of the more limited scope of what wasn’t previously released; the fact that all(?) the boss themes were on the first soundtrack release means there are very few intense action pieces here, as an example.
There are some good pieces in this compilation too but I didn’t like it anywhere close to the original release, which I promise isn’t just because there aren’t any new Masashi Hamauzu pieces and barely any new Mitsuto Suzuki pieces, though that’s certainly a factor. But even for the composers who are here the second time, I mostly didn’t feel like their pieces were as good as their ones that got released the first time. Which maybe should mean that I should compliment the SQUARE ENIX production staff on picking all the bangers the first time around? I’ll never complain about more complete soundtrack releases, though, and like I said there are some good pieces here too.
Recommended tracks:
Tracks where the artist is marked with an *asterisk are arranging/quoting something originally by Nobuo Uematsu from Final Fantasy VII or earlier.
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“Materia Cavern” (Shotaro Shima) pretty smoothly slips in a bunch of measures of 5 throughout
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“Nibel Reactor” (Shotaro Shima*) has some nice weird sounds and the reharmonization in the second half is nice
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“Chocobuddies” (Takeo Asami*) is some quirkcute with pretty erratic phrasing
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“Victory Fanfare: Jam Session” (Miki Hirose*) is a pretty fun jazzed up cover of the battle victory music
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“The Planet Is Listening” (Yoshinori Nakamura) is really warm in a way a lot of the ambient music in this release isn’t necessarily
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“Who Are You? – Drawn by Fate” (Yoshitaka Suzuki*) is a minimalist piece with a little bit of VN vibes to it
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“Northwood Port” (Ryo Furukawa*) is a nicely orchestrated piece in this kinda typical adventurous JRPG style
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“Condor Watch” (Shingo Kataoka*) starts off with super new age vibes before switching into more Wild West mode when the acoustic guitar comes in
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