Final Fantasy Distant Worlds Coral review

Not to rehash Naughty and Nice, but Final Fantasy turned 35 back in December. A perhaps less well-known anniversary belongs to the now 15-year-old Distant Worlds concert series. Originally envisioned to celebrate Final Fantasy’s 20th anniversary, the concerts were so successful they continue to this day.

The concerts themselves got a head start last August, and will come to a close on March 16 in Arizona after hopping around Japan, Thailand, Europe and the United States. But this month, Magnus and I seized on an opportunity to see it for ourselves.

The performance itself featured the Distant Worlds Philharmonic Orchestra playing arrangements of music from across the FInal Fantasy series while scenes from that game associated with the piece of music are projected onto a screen. Every few pieces, longtime Final Fantasy concert conductor Arnie Roth stops to introduce the upcoming pieces and hype up the crowd.

The Coral tour (so named as the traditional gift for a 35th anniversary is coral. Also jade, but clearly SquareEnix has backed its horse) is billed as featuring music from every single mainline “Roman numeral” Final Fantasy game. Performances are split into two parts. The first features multiple selections from each of the first six games, opening and closing with medleys. The second half features the remaining eight games with a single piece each. While the majority of the selections were from Distant Worlds now voluminous back catalog of arrangements, several new pieces were prepared for the anniversary, including a medley of battle themes from the first six games that closed out the first half.

But the true highlight came during a new medley featuring Final Fantasy VI‘s “Phantom Forest”/”Phantom Train”/”The Vedlt” in which the entire theater erupted into cheers upon seeing Sabin suplex a train on the big screen.

Intermission was held in between the 2D and 3D selections, which is as good a way as any to split up the material. Row FF being the fourth row from the back of the orchestra section, my sacrifice to get aisle seats allowed for a quick exit to be one of the first people in line for merchandise.

I quickly snatched up a tour shirt for myself — all the men’s sizes above XL sold out before the concert started; make of that what you will — and a souvenir for Magnus, who was picking up refreshments for us in an entirely unplanned yet utterly perfect division of labor.

The biggest draw for merchandise was music, of course. They naturally had on hand the five existing Different Worlds albums (the new music from this year will have to wait, alas). But they also had original soundtrack CDs for the entire mainline series. Sadly, the ones I’d have been most interested were sold out as well, but what’s really stopping me from buying them online?

What I did end up picking up was two CDs from a new line of recordings I hadn’t encountered before, selections from the games in the style of chamber music. They were also noticeably much cheaper than any of the other albums, so I hope things turn out well.

The second half opened with a bang, adding a choir and showing them off immediately with Final Fantasy VIII‘s “Liberai Fatali.” They would be used only sporadically, though, contributing to less than half of the remaining 9 songs.

One such use was for Final Fantasy XIV‘s “Answers,” made all the more memorable thanks to the song’s original singer, Susan Calloway leading the charge. Appropriately enough, she was picked to sing that song and others in FF XIV due to her performance as a stand-in vocalist for “Melodies of Life,” “Suteki Da Ne” and “Distant Worlds” in the earliest Distant Worlds concerts. It turned out we were lucky, as Calloway was not available for all the tour’s stops. In such cases, “Torn From the Heavens” was used as a substitute.

Other featured songs included Final Fantasy XI‘s “Ragnarok”, Final Fantasy VII‘s “Aerith’s Theme”, Final Fantasy XII‘s “Flash of Steel”, Final Fantasy XV‘s “Apocalypsis Noctis”, Final Fantasy IX‘s “Not Alone” and Final Fantasy XIII‘s “Blinded by the Light”.

The orchestra and choir performed a new arrangement of series’ main theme to a credits roll while the concert was still missing a game. For whatever reason, Final Fantasy X‘s selection, “To Zanarkand,” was saved for an encore. Considering that the concert was billed as containing selections from the entire mainline Final Fantasy series, saving an entire game for the encore is a bit odd. As it turned out, “Suteki Da Ne” was supposed to be in the set list but for reasons unknown was skipped.

The second encore, featuring “One Winged Angel,” was a great crowd-pleaser to bring this to an end.

Overall, the concert was a more than worthy experience. While listening to the CDs over a nice set of speakers has always sounded just fabulous, there’s frankly no substitute for the sound of a live performance. It was worth every minute, every penny, every trifling inconvenience that occurred along the way to get there. Years ago, when Distant Worlds was new, I never thought I would ever have the opportunity to see it (or any video game concert, really). But even with all that yearning, the experience was beyond my expectations. Should opportunity ever knock for you, don’t pass it up.