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Music Friday: Sagacyte's 2016 in VGM

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The final Friday of the year! Rebecca Black would be proud! Speaking of musical talent, let's remember some memorable themes from this year, shall we? And to make things a bit easier and familiar let's close this, the year of Final Fantasy XV, with some FF themes!


In February, Final Fantasy XIV allowed us to fight the first of the Warring Triad, Sephirot and the best theme from that patch was arguably the first phase of the battle. Why? It's a remix of "A Decisive Battle", the "Atma Weapon" theme from Final Fantasy VI! Sure, come phase 2 it changes to his own exclusive theme, but if you pass phases before reaching the section that homages VI's regular battle theme, you need to lower DPS a bit!


Before we knew Final Fantasy XV's true release date (screw September!) we got the Platinum Demo, a weird playable technical showcase for the engine of XV that I think looked worse than the final product (thankfully!). It included a play room with Starlit Waltz, a wonderful theme that... I don't recall hearing in the game proper. Maybe I missed it, I did rush after a certain part to avoid spoilers so... my bad.


Around mid year we got the mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, a cute FF game that mixes the heart of the SNES era games and the... wonderful... "gacha" mechanics from most mobile games these days. The "home" screen theme, if you can pry your eyes away from the constant notifications and calls to spend real money, plays this marvelous theme that even has hints of the Prelude in it. It's so calming... so charming... and no, Exvius, I am not spending money on gachas, not even if Noctis has "increased drop rate". Bullsh**.


Nearing the end of the year we got "RISE", the theme for the final battle for Alexander in Final Fantasy XIV. A fast-paced theme with lyrics that as far as I can tell haven't been released officially yet... but people have tried to decipher them, with hilarious efforts. One of the coolest aspects of this song can't be appreciated in a direct theme video - while you battle Alexander he can stop time, during which the song turns to a neat quick almost clock-like little loop.


Quite likely the best regular battle theme to appear in a Final Fantasy in decades, imho. From the first area in Final Fantasy XV, it's a bombastic theme that sets the tone for the brotrip's battles. Simply amazing.

Now, I want you to imagine that you're counting down to midnight and to welcome the new year... and you 10 know the party 9 is about to start 8... you need 7 a proper theme 6 to celebrate 5 ... to 4 move... to 3 enjoy... to 2 dance... so you 1 play...


Happy New Year 1977!

I mean, 2017! Sorry, got caught up with the rhythm!

Comments

  1. Fiye -
    Fiye's Avatar
    https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...yrics/d9nh79c/

    These are pretty accurate lyrics to Rise.