The Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster OST and Everything Wrong with It

Editor's Note: This rant was contributed by LordFizzlebeef and, as with Part One and Part Two, is being posted "as is". All angry bile is preserved as originally written... because it's funny. Also, while we'd love to link directly to the Pixel Remaster sountrack, currently there isn't an official posting for it accessible outside of Steam and the game itself. If you are interested in listening along you may have to purchase the soundtrack officially or find the sparing tracks unofficially posted on YouTube.

Time for the thrilling part 3 conclusion to "what the fuck is wrong with the ff4pr ost".

Track 31: Samba de Chocobo!

Hated it then, hate it ever so slightly less now.

Track 32: Tower of Babil

Weird as choir in the preamble that doesn't fuckin belong. And the brass sounds all wrong. It's hard to put my finger on and express properly but like, this feels like a fucking marching band, and this is "scale the tower" music and like, this is far more heroic than it has any right being because of like, all the reasons you scale the different towers. This is so out of place I don't even know how to make fun of it.

Track 33: Somewhere in the World

Weird dumbass bass guitar in the background and the instruments just kinda give out like 10 seconds in. What the fuck is this track? This is the fuckin JJ Abrams school of ominous where they just leave out random bits of shit that would be there in a normal performance but we have to omit them and then be like "OMG ARE YOU MYSTERIED YET". And is that somebody playing starcraft beeps in the background at the end? Fuckin... what?

Track 34: Land of Dwarves

In the land of dwarves, there is no reverb. None at all. What, you thought it was some kind of CAVE or something? lololol go fuck yourself, it's plinky plonky strings time. At least underworld trumpet is sober, but not really sure why he's here at all.

Track 35: Giott, King of the Dwarves

I mean I guess this is a semi-faithful rendition of the original, which itself was clunky and hamfisted, so.... mission accomplished?

Track 36: Dancing Calbrena

That weird sound in the opening. I'm trying to place it. It sounds so familiar and yet I can't pin down what it's from. Some cartoon show? Don't think it's anime, pretty sure american. This castanets shit can go and WHY ARE THE STRINGS HERE THIS IS CREEPY ASS ORGAN TIME JESUS CHRIST NOBUO'S GRANDSON CAN YOU NOT GET INSTRUMENTATION RIGHT ANYWHERE.

Track 37: Tower of Zot

This is supposed to be a menacing track but I literally cannot take it seriously with this happy puppy Trumpet running around the stage asking people to play fetch with him, like seriously what even is happening in this track, it's menacing and then fido wants to let you know he's very suspicious of that empty paper bag on the floor, and then we're back to kinda menacing again.

Track 38: The Land of Summons

It's so jarring to go from a string of dogshit to something that's actually not bad. Everything here fits, seems faithful to the original, I like it.

Track 29: Lunar Whale

Was perfectly serviceable until somebody tossed the fuckin piccolo out the side of the ship. Sounds like it flew back though. Guess piccolos can enter low earth orbit unassisted, is what we're learning here in this track. Oh, and it sounds like we found a piano at the end? Probably downstairs next to the fat chocobo I guess.

Track 40: Another Moon

You know what? I actually unambiguously like the weird ass 50's sci-fi vibe we got going here because I feel like that's what the original aspired to be, but couldn't figure out how to do it so we just soccer dribbled a trumpet across the yard. Strings do what they needed to, no more, no less.

Track 41: The Lunarians

SANTA IS THAT YOU. IS IT CRIMMUS TIME???

Track 42: Within the Giant

We have to enter the big technological giant and stop THIS FUCKIN DRUNK ASS TRUMPET FROM STOMPING ALL OVER THE COUNTRYSIDE. JAZZ IS NOT COMPUTER. NEITHER IS THIS LOST CHOIR SINGER BUT MAYBE I DON'T HATE IT BECAUSE THE ONLY OTHER SOLO INSTRUMENT I HAVE TO COMPARE IT TO IS THE FUCKIN BOURBON BRASS BOY. Track does its best to recover in the back half but it's just not enough to overcome the front half's fucking toilet fiesta.

Track 43: The Final Battle

This is a mess. This is an unrecoverable mess. The preamble especially is like, "everybody gets a turn" the musical. It's just all over the place. Then we hit the main melody and I have the same problem here that I did with fuckin Tower of Zot. This brass is wrong. It's the wrong flavor for everything else. The trumpet is too front and center, too peppy and like, it just feels like a mid-boss theme. I never was that big a fan of the final boss track before so I can't be too upset but like, this is just not good. Just a big river of not good you have to paddle through to get to safety.

Track 44: Epilogue -1-

This is great. And I'm sad. It's a sad track making me sad because the forethought that went into this didn't seem to go into a solid 80% of the rest of the tracks. But hey, we're at the end. I don't have to listen to these anymo- .........like 1:40 in SUDDENLY THE 80'S. SOMEBODY GET ME 80'S GIANT ROBOTS WE GOT SOME SHIT TO SMASH. Shit, that's what I should have done with my night, play super robot wars instead.

Track 45: Epilogue -2-

Okay, we had fun for a minute there, but now we're into sedated piano epilogue. And here comes the orchestra. It's pretty great. OMG SAD VIOLIN YOU'RE BACK. AND YOU'RE IN THE RIGHT SPOT BECAUSE IT'S THE EPILOGUE. Definitely 2 for 2 so far on epilogue tracks. Shit we even busted out the timpani for this. Wait, what's epilogue 3?

Track 46: Epilogue -3-

Uhh, okay guys, I feel like we had our fun but how long does the end credits epilogue go for? simple math shows almost 12 minutes? uhhhhhhhh. OKAY WE GET IT IT'S THE END. I feel like we commissioned three different grandsons to write "the epilogue" and then just fuckin grabbed all of them. Also I'm more than a little mad that the renditions in the epilogues of some of the themes from other tracks are SO MUCH BETTER than the fuckin real actual versions we got. FINALE PLEASE STOP DRAGGING OUT. Okay, thank you.

Thank you for joining me on this shitfest. 0/10, already uninstalled.