Collection remade !

There's no doubt...back in the day, Square was a major force. Makes their downturn over the years all the more intolerable (shoutouts to Ishimoto!). If I felt the need to limit myself to a number of albums, several classic Square albums would be in there (FFVI, CT, FFVII and probably Seiken 3, MAYBE Chrono Cross and FF Mystic Quest). As is, I like them as part of my VGM "pool" when I set my player on random.

The most classic of the classics. No matter what, there are always old school (or semi-old school) Squaresoft albums that I always find myself coming back to over the years: FFV-X, FFT, FF Vocal Collections, SaGa 2 Piano, Vagrant Story... truly timeless albums.

Most agreed. SQEX is but a mere shadow of what SS used to be, and maybe not even..
I got into VGM as well thanks to these early games. I remember making a cassette tape out of SD2 music to listen on my beloved walkman, I never would have thought CDs/OSTs existed back then XD

And yeah, great (and expected) choices Dragon, although I'd put FFV and Soukaigi mandatory as well

Dragon God wrote:

Romancing Saga 2 OSV

I've loved Kenji Ito since I discovered him with Romancing Saga 3. But after hearing all 3 OSVs, I feel that #2 has the best overall work. Little to no filler. Plus the battle themes on here are easily the best of the triology in my opinion.

You and me both - even though Romancing SaGa 3 didn't start my import collection, the purchase was the push for me to dedicate myself to importing Game Music CDs, via places that sold them in magazines and especially comic conventions, which were HUGE on the import CD stuff back in the 90s.

RS3 Battle Themes vs RS2 Battle Themes? That's actually pretty tough for me. I'd say 2 is better overall, but I think SaGa 3 "Battle 1" has the best song. Battle 1 is simply insane, and I always seem to come back to it. But they're all excellent though. PS: I would love this to be Chip-Tuned by the SQ Chips Team.

A slight switch.

Tsugunai OST, Lord of Vermilion OST and Last Story OST are to be replaced by...

SaGa Frontier II OST

I have never been much of a Hamauzu fan, but I did enjoy what was found here. Time to look into it again and re-appreciate it.

Front Mission Alternative

I may be the only person on this forum that actually really enjoyed this album. I used to listen to this while playing in online tournaments.

Street Fighter Tribute Album

I've always desired this album since day one. Time to finally claim my "prize".

GoldfishX wrote:

I'm no Hamauzu fan either, but swapping Last Story for Saga Frontier II is a damn good swap! Likewise, can't say I'm too big on Lord of Vermillion, outside of the main theme that keeps popping up. SF Tribute is pretty decent, one of the better all-star arranges but has mixing issues (too loud!). Tsugunai is actually rather fresh to me at the moment, but it's definitely one to get after Mitsuda's "big 3" (Chronos + Xenogears).

I had forgotten how good SaGa Frontier II's music was... definitely way ahead of Last Story in the melody department. It's also much more cheerful, which I like. LoV relies too much on the main theme, so going back with Front Mission Alternative is a smart move in my mind. Granted, not everybody will enjoy Arai's unique approach, but it can be good working-out music. Last but not least, Tsugunai simply doesn't surpass Mitsuda's big 3 scores at Square. He isin't being completely phased out of my collection since he does one arrangement on the Street Fighter Tribute album. And this particular album reunites me with many artists I enjoyed during my "VGM collection career" such as Yack, Hosoe, Hayama and Koshiro to name a few, so I still end up on top and happy with such a limited collection.