It's been one entire month now since I started this project, and already we've been through three full game OSTs. I didn't actually think I'd manage to stick with it, and that it would join the gigantic pile of unfinished projects that litter the path behind me and various shelves in my home. But here we are, with all 87 songs ranked—and I haven't even strayed from my twice-per-week posting goal. Still, before we finally dive into the SNES era of Final Fantasy games, I had some reflections on the past month that I want to work through here, so I hope you'll indulge me—I'll be honest, I figure you probably will if you've made it this far.

On Final Fantasy III

Painting of four heroes looking up at a tower made of Crystal

Our four onion knights look up at the Crystal Tower as they make their approach. Artwork by Akihiko Yoshida, released for the DS remake.

Hey, that was pretty good, right? Unlike the first two games, I'd never heard the NES OST for FFIII before, and I was impressed at how good it sounded. There are versions in here that I prefer to the Pixel Remaster soundtrack, which generally have very good rearrangements! If I had one comment&emdash;that I repeated over and over, yes&emdash;it's just how much Uematsu evolved over in order to just slam into the NES' technical limits throughout this soundtrack.

Yes, there are some incredible songs on here. My Top 10 is littered with them, but even so you can hear how much he wanted to use more than 4 audio channels; they're basically all going all the time in this one, and the degree to which he uses tempo to try to increase the output of each channel is noticeable, especially in tracks like "This is the Last Battle." We really are just preparing to feast next time when he suddenly has access to twice as many audio channels and samples that are actually legible as specific instruments.

Honestly, I don't love the game that much. It's interesting and has some cool moments (wow, the whole continent is floating? just how many final dungeons are there??), but the job system is so rudimentary here, and the implementation of gimmick boss fights like Garuda is mostly just annoying. It's perfectly fine but not one of my favourites at all, but I think it easily has the best NES soundtrack. If, like me, you're not quite as nostalgic for FFI's original charm as the average fan, I think the soundtracks really are just improving game after game. FF2 was an improvement on the first, and FF3 was an improvement on that. I know this trend won't continue forever, but for now at least, it's hard not to see how each game was not an improvement on the last in terms of musical styling.

Unnecessary Statistics for FF3:

On The Ranking

Meme image of Charlie Day from It's Always Sunny having a conspiracy theory-driven breakdown.

This is how I feel when I'm trying to figure out where to put the FF3 version of the Prelude vis-a-vis the other two versions I've already ranked.

The act of ranking the songs has been really instructive about what I like and don't like, especially with the limited instrumentation available on the NES. Just as a reminder, my process for ranking is as follows: I listen to each song in order—usually around 1 to 3 times—and I decide where it sits in the current ranking. I try not to take the style of song into account, but that I'm sure is still biasing my results unconsciously. Then I write a short (okay, sometimes not that short) blurb about it and move to the next one. This has led to a pretty surprising Top 10, which probably would not have happened if I were just selecting a Top 10 out of all the songs at once.

Like, if I were drafting a Top 10 list, I'd probably try to make sure that I'm representing all aspects of the series equally; I'd probably feel like I need to include a town theme. I'd definitely want to include all the classic songs that became series staples as the years went on. But doing it like this really frees me to say "Hey, do I like this song better than all these other songs?" in a way that leads to some kind of funny results. Did you know that I like uptempo music? Well, out of the six battle songs I've listened to so far, three of them are in the Top 10. I'm also a sucker for the unique timbre of a sound chip; especially when something sounds like no other real-world instrument. When the NES sound chip goes really high-pitched, nothing quite sounds like it, and I think this is why I love "Chaos Shrine" so much.

Sometimes they end up being ranked high because the song is great and just doesn't get enough attention, or maybe a bit lower than usual because I think the song maybe gets outsized attention. For an example of the former, we have "The Rebel Army," which does have some modern covers but given how timeless it sounds, is still underrepresented, I think. And an example of the latter would be "Eternal Wind," which is a great track (I still have it ranked 14th), but is often listed as a Top 5 track for the NES era, and I just don't love it like that.

Anyway, this list is weird, kind of chaotic, and idiosyncratic: which is exactly what I wanted when I started this project, so I call it a success. But I suspect it's going to get completely blown up as we enter a new era of sound chip, and I'm very excited for it.

What's Next?

I was going to reflect on my writing so far, but this post is already plenty long, so I'll save it for next time. Suffice it to say, I'm happy with where I've gotten but still have a lot of room to improve.

Anyway, next time, we'll be kicking off Final Fantasy IV, and I will be reducing the number of songs down a bit, to around 6 per post, with some flexibility so that I can hit some round numbers for my own personal enjoyment. Otherwise, the plan is to keep going, though that will slow things down as the OSTs also get longer. Thanks for listening and reading, and see you next time!