Recommended Soundtracks: Final Fantasy VIII

To call Final Fantasy VIII one of the most divisive installments in the series to this day is an understatement. It recently celebrated its 20th anniversary at the end of January, yet merely bringing the game up was enough to restart arguments about whether it was always a quality title with unique quirks, or a game whose flaws weighed the experience down. It’s a testament to precisely how divisive it is that these debates can still happen in an age where titles like the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy and Final Fantasy XV exist.

However, there’s at least one element about FFVIII that most fans agree was superlative: The soundtrack.

The soundtrack is not only composer Nobuo Uematsu’s best PSOne FF soundtrack, but one of the best he’s ever provided, and for good reason. While predecessor Final Fantasy VII’s soundtrack was quality work, Uematsu was given a longer time to compose FFVIII’s work, and he’d become accustomed to the PSOne’s sound technology. The combination of those two factors resulted in a superlative four-disc soundtrack (which had to match the game, you know) with tracks just as memorable now as they were two decades ago.

It’s the hallmark of a good soundtrack when it’s tough to choose the best tracks, and when different fans have different answers about which choices are the best. You could say this about any PSOne FF soundtrack, sure, but it’s much tougher here. It contains several of the longest, deepest, and most melodic tracks Uematsu’s ever composed in his lengthy career, to the point that I just had to include five tracks here instead of the usual four; and I still didn’t include all my favorite tracks.

FFVIII has one of the best and most action-packed intros in the series, which is accompanied by a fittingly good track with “Liberi Fatali.” It’s a sweeping track that wouldn’t be out of place in a big-budget film rather than a video game, still a mind-blowing concept back in 1999. Even though that’s the norm now, few intros are accompanied by a track this good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfd9krEsr-k

“Find Your Way” has been one of my favorite dungeon themes in an FF game since I first heard it in ’99, which I fully realized when I could perfectly remember every aspect of the track after not hearing it for years. The FF series is home to several calmer Japanese RPG dungeon themes, but none of them have piano work this good. I didn’t enjoy any of the remixes this track as well as the original over the years, thanks to being a stickler for this version’s authenticity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn0T6Xh5VXY

“Blue Fields” is one of the calmest overworld themes in the franchise’s history, and fits the serene world the characters explore for a good portion of the game. FFVIII’s themes aren’t quite as immediately dark as Final Fantasy VI’s or FFVII’s, and this theme fits the tone present throughout a fair portion of the game and its locations… at first, anyway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNdGoENQNQ4

“Liberi Fatali” isn’t the only movie-like theme in the game, since “The Landing” also counts. The big difference is how this one is used for more than a cinematic: It also accompanies an action-packed search through a town — though with cinematics sprinkled throughout:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v6BtJaBQmo

This track sounded so close to a movie-like theme that the original version used for the demo included with Brave Fencer Musashi and the Pizza Hut offer sounded too close to the theme to The Rock, and had to be changed for the final game. Both versions are good.

“Fisherman’s Horizon” is one of the most relaxing themes in a video game, which works incredibly well in tandem with the identically-named location. It’s also the kind of track where you can close your eyes and envision a serene location that you’d rather be at right now, which is why it’s one of my favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMYisFOaz1s

The five tracks linked to above (six, if you want to count the discarded version of The Landing, which kind of does) are only a sampling of the game’s fantastic soundtrack. I know I left out someone else’s favorite, but if you haven’t heard the soundtrack before, I recommend doing so even if you don’t plan to play the game someday.

Speaking of that: It’s bizarre that Square Enix has continued skipping over this game for a rerelease, given that nearly every game in the franchise has received the treatment besides this one. The anniversary would have been a good time for an updated port to multiple platforms, but it’s not too late for them to do this for the American anniversary in September. Even if you don’t plan on playing or replaying it, I recommended giving the soundtrack a listen. If you want to purchase it, you can grab it from Amazon or iTunes, though it’s not cheap.