Music

Composers: Taro Hakase, Yuji Toriyama
Arrangers: Yuji Toriyama
Catalog #: HUCD-10015 (limited edition HUCD-10014/B)
Length: 8:45
Tracks: 5, on 1 disc
Release Date: 1 March 2006

There’s no getting around that this is a weird release. It’s basically just the ending theme (the one played over the credits), except they put it out as a single and split it up into five tracks, or movements. For years I actually had no idea what it was until I finally figured out that oh, it’s the ending theme. Then it made sense.

There was even a limited edition released for it — again I don’t own it, but apparently it just contained a DVD with some of the FMVs from the game and other miscellanea.

Like, don’t get me wrong, the music is good and all, it’s a lovely extension of the ending theme and the performance is great, but I don’t see the point of releasing this other than for pure promotional reasons. And I’m the kind of person who has 3000+ Final Fantasy songs in her iTunes library and gets excited when OST PLUS albums come out. When you go too far for someone like me, you should probably rethink something.

Then again, Wikipedia tells me that this release somehow reached #15 on Oricon (the Japanese music charts) and stayed there for 16 weeks. I have no idea how this happened. I guess Final Fantasy fans will pay for anything. That or nothing else was going on in March 2006. Actually, now that I look, this came out before the game itself did, and was the first piece of music released for FFXII. Maybe that had something to do with it.

Composer: Nobuo Uematsu
Vocals/Lyrics: Angela Aki
Catalog #: ESCL-2810 (Japanese release; limited edition ESCL-2808~9 )
Length: 20:00 (Japanese), 19:41 (English)
Tracks: 4, on 1 disc
Release Date: 15 March 2006 (Japanese), 16 May 2006 (English)

Ever since Final Fantasy VIII’s “Eyes on Me,” the Final Fantasy series has used a vocal theme song in the endings or at significant moments in many of the main series titles. For Final Fantasy XII this song was “Kiss Me Good-Bye,” sung by Angela Aki.

While a Japanese version of the song does exist (and was released as a single), the song was in English for both the Japanese and English releases of the game. This is notable mostly because the songs for both Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy X-2 were changed to English versions, something that would happen again with Final Fantasy XIII. It seems to happen intermittently with the series.

Anyway, the song. While I’m not much for analyzing lyrics, I do think the song is gorgeous, and Angela Aki’s voice is absolutely lovely. I’m reminded a lot of “Eyes on Me” when listening to it, and fittingly when “Kiss Me Good-Bye” was released in the US it came with a cover of “Eyes on Me.”

There’s an interesting interview with Aki about the song’s creation here.

Composers: Hitoshi Sakimoto, Nobuo Uematsu
Arrangers: Hitoshi Sakimoto, Kenichiro Fukui
Catalog #: TOF-033
Length: 73:23
Tracks: 31, on 1 disc
Release Date: 31 October 2006

Essentially this is a “best of” album for the FFXII OST, and it does seem to have been released in the US around the same time the game came out in North America. I presume, then, that the entire point was to provide an option to fans that allowed them to purchase music from the game without the heavy costs of importing — something I do appreciate, as a fan who has paid those extremely heavy costs many, many times.

The thing is... why is only a third of the soundtrack? It’s a good third and the songs chosen aren’t bad, but if you didn’t happen to see this in your local store in North America in 2006 or 2007 I can’t think of any reason why you would look for this album today. It’s not the whole soundtrack, it’s missing a lot, and unless you’re a die-hard collector it’s hardly worth the money.

I do appreciate the effort to try and bring these things to overseas fans, I honestly do, but this seems like a half measure to me (or really a third measure given the content). I suppose not everything had moved to iTunes by 2006, but I certainly remember buying Final Fantasy soundtracks online in 2007. It’s probably not surprising, then, that this is the last release I can find for the record label that published this album before the label closed. It’s an interesting look at history of Japanese music in the west, if nothing else.

Composers: Hitoshi Sakimoto
Arrangers: Casey Ormond
Catalog #: SQEX-10347
Length: 61:48
Tracks: 13, on 1 disc
Release Date: 7 November 2012

Released quite a long while after the original game, this is the obligatory piano album for the game. Nearly every game in the main series has had a piano album; this one is performed by Casey Ormond.

What’s interesting about this album is that the arranger was actually a fan who had posted a piano arrangement online, and that Sakimoto not only heard it but ended up reaching out to Ormond to keep in touch. There’s a full interview with Ormond here about how this album came to be, and it’s absolutely fascinating.

I’m really terrible at listening to the piano albums; I enjoy them, I just never remember to put any of them on. (This goes for all of the piano albums in the series.) Considering how distinctive Sakimoto’s sound is, though, I think it’s remarkable how good the arrangements are. I definitely recommend checking the album out; it’s available on iTunes in the US and hopefully in your country as well.

A bundle of the OST and the piano collections album was released at the same time, making for a convenient purchase (at the time; it's since gone out of print).

Technically this is not an album (although a few have been released) but a rhythm game for the Nintendo 3DS released in 2014. Have you ever wanted to tap along to Final Fantasy music? Now you can — and you can play as Vaan, Ashe, Fran, and Balthier in the process.

Curtain Call is actually the sequel to 2012’s Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy, but given that Curtain Call includes all of the content from the first game, we’re going to ignore the original. (A brief aside: I loved the original Theatrhythm, but man, never has a sequel so completely replaced the original as to render it worthless. At least in Dissidia 012 you had to beat the game to unlock everything from the first one.)

As mentioned above you can play as four of the six playable characters from Final Fantasy XII, and you can tap along to a number of songs. The songs included in Curtain Call are as follows:

If you enjoy Final Fantasy music at all, by the way, I highly, highly recommend Curtain Call if you haven’t already picked it up. It’s a love letter to the entire series and super fun.

Composers: Hitoshi Sakimoto, Hayato Matsuo, Masaharu Iwata, Nobuo Uematsu
Arrangers: Hitoshi Sakimoto, Masaharu Iwata, Shota Nakama, Yoshimi Kudo, Azusa Chiba, Kazuki Higashihara
Catalog #: SQEX-20034 (limited edition SQEX-20035~6)
Length: 5:50:53
Tracks: 108, on 2 discs (LE)
Release Date: 19 July 2017

Naturally, the HD remaster of FFXII didn't just involve the graphics — the soundtrack has been completely remastered. The entire soundtrack sounds incredible, and while I don't really have an ear for music even I can tell the new orchestrations are fantastic.

It's important to note that this is actually a Blu-ray album; in recent years Final Fantasy OSTs have been coming out on Blu-rays rather than CDs, probably because they tend to be very long soundtracks. It's packaged with mp3s as well, which is convenient.

The limited edition comes with a bonus disc of arranged tracks.