Fantasy TOP - land of best fantasies

This piece of music is so cool! Even though I’ve only played one and a half Final Fantasy games, I’m excited for this soundtrack. I’ve noticed that the FFX soundtrack is one of my favorites in the series, where Masashi Hamauzu co-composed with Nobuo Uematsu and Junya Nakano. Apparently he’s working on the FFXIII soundtrack without Nobuo Uematsu.

FFXIII’s trailer theme, composed by Masashi Hamauzu.

I love the blend of electronic and orchestral elements here. Both genres involve a very different palette of sounds and thought process for piecing those sounds together, but they fit together seamlessly in this piece and Masashi clearly is fluent in them both. It sets up such a colorful sound world.

Since I seem to like Final Fantasy music when Masashi Hamauzu is involved, I started looking into his other works, like the SaGa Frontier 2 soundtrack. I’m finding that I like just about everything I hear of his; at a glance, his music seems to be piano-oriented and mixes a lot of light electronic textures with heavy ambient chords and orchestral sounds. (Did I mention before I’m a fan of light, “sparkly” sounds?) I think I’ve found a new favorite composer!

This piece was especially striking to me during my quick skim of Masashi’s music: “Arrangeur” from SaGa Frontier 2.