From rap to thrash metal, the experimentation of Final Fantasy 13-2 lends itself to one of the best soundtracks in gaming.
Welcome to Soundtrack Sunday. Each week, a member of the PC Gamer team will highlight one of their favourite soundtracks in gaming, offering a little backstory on its creation and sharing some of their favourite scores that you should be adding to your playlist.
I’d argue that Final Fantasy 13 was a game the world wasn’t ready for when it was released to the western world in 2010, and then four years later for PC. It had its flaws, sure—the pacing was all over the place, it gutted a bunch of core series features, and, most damning at the time, was incredibly linear for the majority of its 13-chapter run. During a time where having an open world was a major selling point, Final Fantasy 13 was branded as a hallway simulator.
Despite this, I’ve been a staunch defender of Lightning and the gang since day one. It wasn’t all complaints, either. The art direction was a huge point of praise, and it’s a game that still looks gorgeous over 15 years later. It’s also home to a fantastic soundtrack, something which is true of the entire Final Fantasy 13 trilogy.
In fact, though I’ve spent the first two paragraphs rambling about the first game, its sequel is the one I have a real soft spot for. Final Fantasy 13-2 fixes some of that pesky linearity, cleans up the combat system, and scores an absolute banger of a soundtrack to accompany it all.
Longtime series composer Nobuo Uematsu was notably absent, instead bringing in Final Fantasy 10’s co-composer Masashi Hamauzu. He flew solo for the first game of the trilogy, but then Final Fantasy 13-2 brought in two additional composers: Naoshi Mizuta, who was known for his work on Final Fantasy 11 and Parasite Eve, and Mitsuto Suzuki who had done some arrangement work on Final Fantasy 13.
The whole thing was overseen by Keiji Kawamori, with the goal being to produce an ultra-eclectic, edgier score to the previous game.
Time and space
The result? Easily one of the most unique soundtracks in the series, arguably only rivaled by Final Fantasy 14’s huge spread of songs. It’s an OST that’s sometimes jarring, occasionally cringeworthy, but so delightfully different.
A pretty big emphasis was put on vocal tracks, which explains why there’re so freakin’ many of them. By far my favourite of these are the ones who include Origa, a Russian singer who’ll be very well known by my fellow Ghost in the Shell sickos. She brings a super ethereal vibe to starting area New Bodhum, and ‘Historia Crux’ had me lingering around in the wee time-travelling menu for far too long.
Things take a bizarre left-turn with the likes of ‘Crazy Chocobo’ which may be one of the most over-the-top tracks in the series for hopping on the back of a bird. It dares to ask the important questions such as “So you think you can ride this chocobo?” and “So cute yet fierce, is he from hell?” It’s an utterly stupid thrash metal track, one that sounds like absolutely nothing else across the entire game. It’s a track I should unequivocally dislike, and yet I can’t help but love the absurdity of it all.
The experimentation of genres extends to rap, too, with Unseen Intruder. Despite the lyrics being in English, written and performed by Aimee Blackschleger, they were rather rudely removed outside of Japan. You can catch them in the PC port if you play the game in Japanese, but any English-language incident sees them removed, so imagine my surprise the first time I came across the full track. I actually much prefer the vocalised version, which has this juxtaposition of delicate beats overlaid with rapping.
It’s not all experimental, though. Final Fantasy 13-2 is still stuffed with tracks that feel true to the overall series identity, like the softer piano seen on title screen theme Wishes, and Noel’s Theme, a track that goes a long way to really orchestrate some of the pain the character carries with him. Unsurprisingly, the latter even gets a vocals version which does some more surface-level explanation of Noel’s backstory within its lyrics, which is a little direct for my liking but hey, it’s sung pretty darn beautifully.
There’s just something about Final Fantasy 13-2’s score that is so unlike anything the series has seen before or since. Director Motomu Toriyama wanted something that was vastly different to the previous games, and I can’t deny that Hamauzu, Mizuta, and Suzuki nailed the brief to a T. It may not hold the iconic status that games like Final Fantasy 7 hold, but its uniqueness is something that I continue to treasure.
Tracks you should go and listen to:
- Historia Crux
- Unseen Intruder
- Caius’s Theme
- Paradox
- New Bodhum – Aggressive Mix
- Paradigm Shift
- Ruined Hometown
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