**Rate the Music: Week 2!**

[OssMan]

Originally Posted by drave Context definitely helps. The party thought they had defeated Sephiroth at the base of Meteror. The screen goes black, this music starts with a black screen. You slowly see the new big bad in his final form descend and then the real fight begins. But also, "newer" versions that are higher quality than what PS1 could push at the time also help. This is easily one of the best main villain themes to have ever hit gaming.

Originally Posted by Destor This is an extremely difficult song to rate. Im not one who is enamored with FF7. Its a fine game. I have a good time playing it. But i dont love it the way other FF dorks do. Id rate 7 toward the middle of the series. FF definitely has some bops but that isnt what FF7s OST excells at. Its score is great at setting tone. And to the end One Winged Angel absolutely captures the intensity of the moment and it really informs the audience how to feel in the moment and its obviously an iconic piece of music. So despite me not loving FF7 and me actually finding Sephiroth to be honestly a very low tier villain Nobuo Uematsu's achievement here as a composer cant be slept on. Its a 10.

What Destor says is very true. AFAIK One Winged Angel doesnt incorporate any motifs from the rest of the soundtrack which adds to the shock & awe of the spectacle and makes it feel like it truly came out of nowhere. It is such a momentous moment.

Originally Posted by drave FF6 is known for "Dancing Mad" and FF9 for "Dark Messenger". Both are great listens and make the "boss moment" pretty damn good. Hell, FF X did a helluva job with the Jecht fight too, despite him not being the "final" boss there. It really seemed like it was, but he wasn't. FF X was incredibly good

Dancing Mad is the best final boss theme of all time. Creating a piece of that complexity with separate movements on the SNES hardware has been equated to painting the Sistine Chapel with crayons.

"Dark Messenger" is the penultimate boss theme of FF9 IIRC. The actual final boss moment in FF9, which most people forget, is pretty interesting. It's against an enemy you've barely heard of. People complain about that but you need some context - the game is essentially a "gaiden" composed of homages/references to the earlier FF games as a sendoff before to "traditional" FF before the jump to PS2. The boss appearing in this way is another one of those references; the Cloud of Darkness from FF3 appears in pretty much the same way. There are some similarities between the themes

I legitimately thought the opening/Final Boss theme in FFX was Motorhead when I first heard it

Originally Posted by Lock Jaw FFX was naff. I don't want to watch a game I want to play it. No world map either.

Avoid Persona and Metal Gear Solid then. I know FFX was advertised as the "cinematic RPG" when it came out but it's hardly that. The real issues with the game are the voice acting and the pacing slowing to a crawl every time the narrative starts to get good. The combat is really satisfying and the story is pretty creative, plus it's set in a very intereting world inspired by Asian culture. All this is a testament to how bad the voice acting is