“Actually, I don’t think that my music has evolved that much at all,” he said.

Could it be that his music is still evolving? Even after over 30 years of stellar soundtracks, Uematsu truly seems to believe that he has surpassed himself. Quality of music is mostly a matter of taste, but for me personally, I think that Fantasian has become the best soundtrack I have ever made.”Ĭoming from someone often referred to as the Beethoven of video game music, that’s quite a statement to make. I really did everything the way I wanted it. “But for Fantasian, there’s a lot more pieces in there like that. “Of course, my soundtracks for Final Fantasy titles each have two or three pieces that I’m really proud of,” he said. Uematsu tried to approach Fantasian’s soundtrack with the mind of a fresh, dreaming young composer. But now that I’ve composed so much music in my life, I want to create more opportunities to play music in front of people in the future, rather than just working on the next game,” Uematsu said, indicating that fans should be able to look forward to more live performances in the future. This time, all my concerts were cancelled due to the pandemic, so I really had the chance to focus just on Fantasian. Composing the soundtrack for a big RPG is time consuming, and once you’re at it there’s no time for anything else. “After making music for Fantasian for over a year, I feel that giving my everything for one soundtrack might become difficult in the future, both from a mental and physical perspective. Uematsu thinks that Fantasian could become the last game he creates a complete soundtrack for. It can be embarrassing to express your true self, but without ‘going nude’ there’s not much meaning to being a creator.” The Soundtrack Nobuo Uematsu Is Most Proud Of In order to reach your true essence as a creator, it’s essential to be yourself. But now that I’ve become older, I think about why I make music in the first place. I wanted to make better music than anyone else. “When you’re young, you want to stand out by doing something no one has ever done before,” Uematsu continued.

“I can hear you’ve become a bit older!” he said. Sometimes, that idea can scare me, but I think it’s important to step away from that fear and simply make what I feel is right.”Īfter listening to Sakaguchi, Uematsu started laughing. I realize that modern users might call Fantasian old-fashioned. For me, RPGs of that era are the games I could make by just being myself. Being an old genre alone should not be a reason to no longer make such games. “But now that about 40 years have passed since video games became popular, I think it’s time to realize that old styles can be great in their own right. “The video game industry is still relatively young and advances with so much speed that doing the newest thing is often seen as the right way to go,” said Sakaguchi. Some might even go as far as calling it a genre of the past. With a few notable exceptions like Persona 5 and Dragon Quest XI, JRPGs with turn-based battles are not as popular as they once were. When he had the chance to replay Final Fantasy VI together with other members of the original development team, Sakaguchi realized that he wanted to make more of a classic game this time. While innovative tweaks like being able to stock random encounters to fight your enemies all at once later have the potential to make the experience feel fresh, Sakaguchi says that the emphasis is still on recreating the glory days of JRPGs. In a nutshell, Fantasian is a classic turn-based JRPG. If you want to know more about the actual gameplay, be sure to check out our previous interview with Sakaguchi as well. IGN sat down with these two legends to talk about Fantasian’s music, art and setting.

Fantasian soundtrack