Final Fantasy Chronicles (Soundtracks)

With the release (or re-release for sticklers) of Final Fantasy Chronicles in North America, the deluge of accompanying materials has begun. Our good friends at SquareSoft sent us copies of the soundtracks for Final Fantasy IV (or Final Fantasy II on the Super NES) and Chrono Trigger, which were released and can be purchased from TOKYOPOP.com.

The Final Fantasy IV soundtrack is 63 minutes long on 45 tracks, so each track is a little more than a minute long on average. This disk is a complete collection of all of the mood and theme music from the game and for the most part is cleaned up from the actual game. The music style itself holds a blending of styles, namely a sort of Epic-style classical feel with some good synthesizer work. As a result, these tracks flow nicely within the song and sound improved over the console. Unfortunately, the arrangement on the disk is disjointed and at times the tracks do not flow well into each other. It is understandable considering how some of the background tracks are of such a significant difference from other tracks (the danger theme, and the Fabul theme come to mind) but it occurs more often than just some of those outlier songs. Otherwise, this disk is my favorite of the two and does sound great.

The Chrono Trigger soundtrack comes in longer at 73 minutes on 25 tracks (including a "bonus track" but considering that I can’t recall a previous soundtrack I don’t know what it is a bonus over), so the songs come out to a more standard length than the Final Fantasy IV soundtrack. The feel of this disk is more of a mood music/synthesizer blend of music, but the transitions between tracks is improved so that the flow of the disk is superior. Each of the tracks on the disk does try to impress upon the listener the true feel of the surroundings and does nicely blend sound effect cuts with the main line. This disk really lends itself well to leaving it to play as ambient music, but personally I don’t feel as attached to the music as I do to FFIV. Once again, the music is cleaned up and does sound superior to the game.

These disks are great, and are must haves for people who just can’t stop raving over the music on these games.

Reviewed by Tazman