General RPG Music Lists 4: See You Bass Cowboy

Well, all, it's been a lot of fun, but just as all good things must come to an end, so, too, do all mildly diverting things conclude.  Except for The Simpsons, it seems.  But as Fox isn't using money to perpetually animate this blog into a sullen corpse of entertainment past, today we end our exploration into my favorite music of the Role Playing Game genre.

So, to date, these rants have covered Battle themes, Setting backgrounds, and Mood music, which covers most of the major bases.  There's really only 1 significant area we haven't explored so far: the melodies related to the nuts and bolts of the medium.  Basically, today we're going to be covering all the music in RPGs that's a part of the process, the engine, the structure of RPGs.  This'll be tunes that relate specifically to the medium of video games, the signature elements and features of RPGs in particular, and the process of storytelling.  If an RPG were a stage play, then Battle music would be the actions, Setting music would be the props, Mood music would be the actors and dialogue, and the stuff we look at today would be the lighting, stage devices, special effects, and overall management of the play's course.  It might not be the most glamorous and thanked role, but the stage manager is an indispensable part of the process, and the musical equivalent for RPGs is just as vital.

So here we go: the Tools of the Trade music that I love most in RPGs!

Note: I do not in any way care about what the actual name of any of these tracks is. I organize the songs I listen to by their function, essentially what I'll remember them for. So if you really love the Skin Legume-y Tonsils song, "Crossroads of the Heart (Help I'm Trapped in a Soundtrack Factory Remix)", which played during the ending, then just assume that I call it Skin Legume-y Tonsils Ending, as that's the game of origin and its actual function.

Also Note: As with the last couple times, if a category doesn't have an A+ song within it, I'll just do a little opinion piece on my favorite of the ones it does have.



MAIN THEME

How better to start today than with the Main Theme?  This is the song you most often will first hear in an RPG, as it usually (although not always) plays on the game's title screen, or perhaps during a pre-game opening.  This is a pretty standard asset for just about any form of media possessing an audible component, and I probably don't need to really go into detail on it--Main Themes are there to be the melody equivalent of a product's logo, something you hear and instantly associate with its game, movie, show, or whatever.  You might not be able to say which 60s era cartoon a certain background jingle happens to belong to, for example, but you sure as hell know the opening song for The Flintstones when you hear it.  An intense, industrial pulsing background sound could come from any number of movies, but the signature theme of The Terminator franchise is immediately recognizable.  And of course, there's no way you could mistake the Main Theme of Indiana Jones for that of any other movie--you hear that tune start, and you just immediately know that you're watching Jurassic Park, I mean Star Wars, I mean Superman, I mean E.T., have I mentioned how thoroughly unimpressive a 1-trick pony I find John Williams to be?

Theoretically, this song should essentially summarize the ideas, atmosphere, purpose, and/ore heart of the work it's attached to.  And it does!  Sometimes.  Occasionally.  Honestly, though, most RPG Main Themes sort of just seem like they're there in their own right, no more or less personally attached to their product than they would be to any other given title in the genre.  Similarly inconsistent is just how significantly involved the Main Theme is in the game itself.  There are RPGs where you may never hear the Main Theme outside of the title screen, calling further into question just how signature it can really be said to be to the game.  On the other hand, there are other RPGs that use their main theme as an appropriate backdrop to pivotal moments in their story, and still others that sprinkle it in more frequently.  Hell, Fire Emblem 16 is so inexplicably enamored with this 1 sequence of exactly 13 notes that I'm pretty sure, no lie, that at least 60% of its entire soundtrack bases itself off of it.  Nethys help you if you don't happen to like that little ditty while you play FE16; it's gonna pursue you everywhere.

There's a lot in this category here, but it's actually kind of surprising that there isn't more, really, given that probably about 90% of RPGs have a Main Theme, and this is sort of THE first and foremost piece of music associated with the game.  I mean, as of the time of writing this, I've played just a couple RPGs over 400, and less than 20 of them are represented below--that seems surprising when this music is theoretically the most important one in the whole lot.

B+
- Fallout 4 Main Theme
- Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon Main Theme
- Grandia 2 Main Theme
- Sakura Wars 5 Main Theme

A-
- Chrono Cross Main Theme
- Chrono Trigger Main Theme
- Dark Cloud 1 Main Theme
- Final Fantasy 10 Main Theme
- Final Fantasy Series Main Theme (FF6 is my favorite iteration, but they all work pretty well)
- Live-A-Live Main Theme
- Mr. Saitou Main Theme
- Whisper of a Rose Main Theme
- Secret of Mana Main Theme (Link avoids unnecessary intro)
- Ys 1 Main Theme

A
- AeternoBlade Series Main Theme
- Breath of Fire 4 Main Theme
- Neverwinter Nights 1 Witch's Wake Main Theme

A+
- Celestian Tales 1 Main Theme
Calming, bittersweet, mournful, laden with the promise of a story that may take as much as it gives...the slow, comfortable finesse of this thoughtful tune never fails to deepen my mental state and give me a pleasant sense of longing.  Love it!



BEGINNING

While the Main Theme pretty commonly doubles as music for an RPG's opening cinematics, that's not always the case--plenty of times, a game's intro will have its own tune independent of the title's signature song, and that's what this category's for.  Additionally, there are sometimes sections and events within the story of an RPG that qualify as beginnings of sorts, such as the music that transitions from a prologue to the main story of a game (heck, just a music representing the prologue as a whole), or a tune that introduces a new chapter in the work, that sort of thing.  It's a lesser category when Main Themes so often pull double-duty, but Beginning music's still a worthy and important component to the soundtrack--first impressions matter, and can buy extra hours of an audience's engagement to give a story the time it needs to properly unfold, so a great opener can significantly contribute to the product as a whole.

When not trying to coordinate with a specific prologue scene, Beginning music generally trends 1 of 2 ways: either it's a heavy, melodious, and slightly mystical piece that's out to intrigue and imply the gravity of the game to come, or it's energetically promising (but not cheery), out to energize and imply the grandness of the adventure that has begun.  They both work, really.

B+
- Live-A-Live Demon King Prelude
- Wild Arms 1 Intro

A-
- Chrono Cross Intro
- Crimson Shroud Prologue
- Legend of Dragoon Intro
- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 1 Intro

A
- Secret of Evermore Intro
I really like how moody and mysterious the soundtrack of Secret of Evermore is overall (even if the game itself really, really isn't), and this is a representation of it at its best.

A+



CHARACTER CREATION

What?  Don't be ridiculous.  Of course the idea of creating an entire song just for the screen in which you select and/or customize your protagonist is excessive and silly.  Ridiculous, I say!  I mean, why would you need a whole other tune devoted to such a small part of the playtime of a game, right?  Certainly no one spends too long at the beginning of any given game fine-tuning every tiny detail of their avatar's history, class, abilities, heritage, affinity, and appearance.  Certainly I never spent over 2 goddamn hours in the Character Creation screen of Pathfinder: Kingmaker which might have damaged my psyche had the background music not been really, really good.

Certainly not.

B+

A-

A

A+
- Pathfinder: Kingmaker Character Creation
Some of my love for this song is probably akin to a self-inflicted Stockholm Syndrome (look, fuck you, I really wanted to get my damn Aasimar monk queen-to-be right, alright?), but you gotta admit, the patient, quiet beauty of this song, promising spectacular adventures and stories to come in its gentle, classic tabletop manner, is pretty damn nice, right?  It's like Inon Zur's condensed every heartfelt, purposeful fantasy track he's ever composed into 1 song.  I so hope that Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous uses this again for their character creator, too...because let's face it, I'm probably gonna wind up incarcerating myself in the character creator again.



CHARACTER

Once the preliminary stages are over and done with, and an RPG has properly begun, 1 of the earliest tunes you'll likely come across, besides the Setting music, is the Character theme.  This is a song that's specifically devoted to a single character, which is meant to embody and put forth the essence of that individual's personality, story, and significance.  Character music tends to play whenever the associated actor is saying or doing something of signature significance to them, or during the major moments of the story devoted to the character's arc and development.  Frog's heroic theme in Chrono Trigger, for example, tends to play when the amphibious swordsman is in the midst of being an honorable badass, thus playing up to his core character traits, while Aeris's affectionate but sad melody is famous for its presence at the conclusion of her story.  Occasionally, a Character theme also doubles as a higher-priority type of music, which is why we've seen a few of them scattered around in the previous lists (CT's Magus's theme was better categorized as Battle music, for example, while Arc the Lad 3's Alec's theme was too clearly a Determination song not to list it as such), but in all other cases, songs devoted to the expression of a single character go here.

Obviously, there's no generalized statement to make on this category.  Character music is as varied and creative as the casts that it accompanies, and that's as it should be.  This genre might be the most creative and unrestricted I've seen in terms of the casts of its games, and while maybe sometimes it goes a little far, it's generally an endearing trait of RPGs that you're as likely to have a break-dancing ladies' man robot and a cowardly winged iguana on your team as you are to recruit an average human being, so it's good that the music attached to them all is equally nonrestrictive and malleable.

B+
- Arc the Lad 2 Gruga
- Final Fantasy 10 Auron
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Riku
- Kingdom Hearts Series Kairi
- Omori Mari
- Shin Megami Tensei 5 Tao

A-
- A Dragon's ReQuest Argon
- Chrono Trigger Schala
- Knights of the Old Republic 1 Bastila
- Lunar 2 Leo
- Planescape: Torment Fall-From-Grace
- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 Al Saiduq
- Tales of Berseria Eizen
- Wild Arms 5 Avril

A
- Lufia 2 Iris
- Mana Khemia 1 Isolde
- Threads of Fate Claire
- Rakuen The Boy

A+
- Planescape: Torment Annah
I may not actually personally like Annah too terribly much, but holy crap is her theme music lovely.



CONVERSATION

What are characters, though, if they aren't talking to each other?  Although sadly not nearly as common as it should be, there are many RPGs which set a special little between-time aside during an adventure, during which party members and other significant members of the cast have a chance to rest, relax, and converse.  Sometimes it's a simple periodic bit of dialogue between battles, as in Children of Zodiarcs, sometimes it's those wonderful, charming dinners in the Grandia series, and sometimes it's a case of the team gathered about a campsite after a long day of adventuring, as seen in Dragon Age 1.  This can be a scenario which only plays out once (such as the iconic late-night discussion that the party has in Chrono Trigger during which Robo speaks about the theoretical Entity), but most often these talks are a periodic part of the game.  They're great vehicles for character development (heck, it's practically the ONLY tool for that in some Fire Emblems), as well as a formation of a general team dynamic within the cast, and I tend to love these scenarios.

Not every game gives these scenes their own music, but when an RPG does create a devoted Conversation tune, it tends to be either cheerful and relaxed, or empathetic, quiet, and meaningful, depending on whether the interactions of the cast during these times are of the "everyone grab a beer and some chicken and just shoot the shit" variety, or more of a "let's open our hearts and souls in the quiet of the night as we watch the flicker of a campfire, my friend" deal.  Unsurprisingly, my favorites tend more to the latter style.

B+

A-

A
- Legaia 2 Camp

A+
- Children of the Zodiarcs Conversation
Reflective and poignant, laced with regret and past tragedy, this moving tune is the perfect companion to conversations between the major actors of Children of Zodiarc's drama of suffering and the ways in which revenge perpetuates the kind of tragedy it was born from.  A poetically painful song to match the interactions over which it plays, this.



WORLD MAP

At first, I had expected to list World Map music as part of the Settings group, but when I stopped to think about it, its relevance to the soundtrack and to the RPG itself isn't so much as a place, as it is a function.  World Maps are really more like a limbo between actual settings than locations themselves, and a device of the gaming format that doesn't generally exist in other mediums, the way a regular Setting would.  Likewise, their place in the score for an RPG is less about the World Map as its own entity, and more about characterizing the adventure as a whole, and doing so to propel the heroes and player onward--they seem to be given to pretty, wistful fantasy tunes, and/or encouraging on-our-way-to-adventure ditties.

Also, let's face it, that Settings music rant was way too big already, so any excuse to trim a category from it is a good thing.

Not that it always has to be a WORLD Map, incidentally.  Any equivalent works--underworld, galaxy, point-and-click like in Final Fantasy 10, regional variants of world map themes, it all gets chucked in here.

I frequently really like World Map music.  It tends to have a lot of the heart and soul of the game contained within it, and have a nice mix of calming and emboldening themes that somehow connect very well to each other.  Some of the more beautiful music in a game tends to be its World Map theme(s), and it's probably my favorite type of this Tools of the Trade music.

B+
- Beautiful Desolation World
- Chrono Cross Home World
- Final Fantasy 6 World
- Final Fantasy 7 World
- Tales of Phantasia World

A-
- Dragon Quest 4 World
- Final Fantasy 3 Ocean
- Final Fantasy 4 World
- Terranigma World

A
- Chrono Cross Another World
- Chrono Trigger 1000 AD
- Legend of Dragoon Tiberoa
- Terranigma Underworld

A+
- Justice Chronicles World
If there is anything in this world that can prove my theory that RPG music is frequently at a whole other, far higher tier of overall quality than the genre it's attached to, it's probably the fact that I have just awarded an A+ to a song from a Kemco title.  But goddammit, I'm not taking it back, this bit is entrancing and really cool!

- Legend of Dragoon Mille Seseau
This is the kind of world map music that makes you hope that the game will never progress to another continent, because the idea of no longer getting to hear this every time you exit an area is tragic.  Just love the quiet, relaxing vibes here.

- Mass Effect 1 Galaxy Map
There has never and probably will never be a better, more lovely representation of the scope, beauty, and grandeur inherent to the concept of space travel.

- Shin Megami Tensei 1 World
I don't know exactly what it is that makes this tune so superlative to me, but I do know that I absolutely love it.



VEHICLE

Airships, boats, submarines, tamed dragons (both biological and robotic), horses, sandships, tanks, giant mechas, rafts, airplanes (including crashed ones that somehow make good boats through shallow water?  The hell was up with the Tiny Bronco, anyway?), whales, spaceships, whales that are spaceships, helicopters, motorcycles, giant birds, regular birds, tiny birds, flightless birds, birds that used to be people, birds that still are people, just a hell of a lot of birds in general really, buses, time machines, sassy witches on brooms, giant ants, entire floating islands, and for 1 brief, embarrassing moment, this stupid fucking thing, RPG vehicles are very nearly as diverse as the casts that ride them--because trust me, I could keep going.  As ubiquitous in RPGs as they are in real life, it's only natural that the vehicles that are almost inevitably eventually required to continue a quest come with their own music.  You know, because without a musical accompaniment, you'd surely forget that you're currently riding a cybernetic war dragon that shoots goddamn missiles and lasers.

Vehicle Music generally adapts itself to the type of vehicle it's associated with--a goofy, chipper tune for those absurd Final Fantasy chocobos, a free and courageous theme for an airship, a hearty and adventurous song for a seafaring vessel,* etc.  The 1 rule that seems inviolable is that, barring extreme plot circumstances, the tune must convey, to some degree, a sense of sallying forth on a journey.  Surprisingly, considering the quantity, there's not a whole lot of these that stand out to me enough to warrant a spot here, though, a fact which I don't really have any explanation for.  Vehicle music just always seems to hit a "good, but not great" mark, for me.

...Oh, and cars!  Almost forgot about cars.  Man, it's kinda crazy that the most obscenely common vehicle in the real world by a wide margin is so rare in RPGs as to almost be forgotten entirely.

B+

A-
- Golden Sun 1 Ship
It's a little brash and in-your-face, but this music really just perfectly captures the feeling of adventure and excitement as you voyage across the sea; you can practically taste the brine on your lips and the pitch of the ship below your feet as it rushes forth against the crashing waves.

- Lunar 1 Airship
- Star Ocean 3 Space Ship

A

A+



MENU

It's uncommon, but by no means unknown, for an RPG to have a spot on its soundtrack devoted specifically for the act of navigating Menus.  Most of the time, it's a situation wherein there's a separate, substantial section of the work that exists outside the actual narrative in which the player can experience other content.  Like, say, the second disc that came with the Playstation 1 re-release of Chrono Trigger, for example.  Although, on rare occasions, there's also a separate theme for standard, in-game menus, too.  It might seem like an unnecessary or even indulgent thing, to create a piece of music all on its own for the sake of just selecting options, and I guess it sort of is, but on the other hand, navigating options on a menu is the primary method of "gameplay", if such it can truly be called, in RPGs, so really, one could instead wonder why more RPGs don't have devoted menu tunes, considering how vital menus are to them as a whole.

Menu music doesn't really have too difficult a job.  There's no feeling or storytelling act it's responsible for conveying, no confines of environment or situation it must adhere to.  My assumption can only be that the sole directive for it is, "Provide some inoffensive noise so the player doesn't sit in uncomfortable silence for the whole time they're in the menus."  Which can be important, I suppose; just imagine trying to read the entirety of the lore-dump archive Xenosaga 3 provides in lieu of an actual game to explain how you got from the end of the second game to this start of this one in complete silence without something relatively soothing in the background to counteract all the ridiculously over-complicated grandiose nonsense you're being bombarded with.  Still, it does kind of make this the hold music of the RPG soundtrack.  But hey, a bit of it's still really good, it turns out!

B+

A-
- Deltarune File Select
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Mission Mode Menu

A
- Chrono Trigger Extras Menu
It's a credit to Tsuyoshi Sekito and Yasunori Mitsuda that this theme, created for the Playstation 1 rerelease of CT, so perfectly captures the aesthetic and quality of Chrono Trigger's music as a whole that it not only fits right into the soundtrack like it was always meant to be there, but also actually manages to embody a retrospective spirit and joy of the game.  It's the perfect accompaniment to an Extras Menu, whose function is primarily accessed and appreciated post-game, and lovely to listen to on its own.

A+



PIRATES

Sometimes pirates exist.  I don't know what else to say about it, really.  Aside from the fact that, in my opinion, Pirate music tends to not be very good in RPGs, even though other mediums seem to do well enough with it.

B+
- Final Fantasy 5 Pirates
It's a pirate song that sounds good, and also like pirates.  Look, what do you want from me?  You can hear this thing as well as I can.

A-

A

A+



CUTSCENE

RPGs from the Playstation 1 on have been very fond of cinematic breaks outside the player's control through which they show a scene in the story that's simply too important or cool to be restricted to normal graphics and modes of interaction.**  And when that cinematic shit goes down, it needs music to sell it, as much as any other scene in the game--arguably more than most, in fact.

Cutscene music isn't so much meant to be a background element as it is a participant in an active, ongoing, real-time scenario.  Most RPG tunes are designed with the idea that they're playing over a scene whose time varies substantially (some players may spend more time in a location than others, and of course, during story events, everyone will be reading through the text boxes at a different speed), so they're a broader, works-for-however-long-it-needs-to kind of melody.  Cutscene songs, on the other hand, have a specific, set time in which they must play, and they generally are supposed to be coordinated to what's actually happening, moment for moment, in the cinema.  I'm not sure whether that's a more or less difficult prospect for creating a song, but it does tend to make for a pretty different, more in-the-moment feeling category.

Interestingly, while this is true of all RPG music for me to some degree, Cutscene music is the category in which my level of enjoyment for it can be most influenced by the game content over which it plays.  For example, if I were strictly judging Leliana's Song below based solely on my enjoyment of the song itself and nothing more, it'd be a B+, not an A-.  But intrinsically linked to the song, for me, is the quiet, gentle scene in which it plays, as we see each member of the Grey Warden's party sit at their camp and react to the lovely song echoing through the night, some moved to reflection, others (Morrigan) stubbornly denying in silence that it moves them (she does have quite a talent at declining every attempt to give her any depth or character development).  As I said, my love for a game's moments is a factor to some degree for just about all the music I've shared in these lists, but with these songs below being so intrinsically tied to specific scenes (and usually substantial ones, at that, to be a cutscene to begin with), it's a stronger factor here.

B+
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Byrne to the Rescue

A-
- Dragon Age 1 Leliana's Song
- Final Fantasy 7 Remake Roche's Defeat
- Final Fantasy 9 Silver Dragon Battle
- Final Fantasy 9 Zidane Alone
- Xenosaga 2 Chase

A
- Xenoblade Chronicles 1 Dunban's Return
- Xenosaga 1 KOS-MOS's First Battle
If there's any song that encompasses how epic, awesome, and promising both Xenosaga 1 and KOS-MOS herself are, it's this tune.  Forget what actually did happen to the series, forget what they reduced KOS-MOS to in the sequels--listen to this bracing, grand musical depiction of a larger-than-life heroine coming to the rescue and showing off why she's the most kick-ass entity in the galaxy and enjoy.

A+


 
MINIGAMES

Fuck you, RPGs.

B+

A-

A

A+



TIME

This category primarily concerns temporal displacement, whether to the past or future.  A fairly common device by this point in RPGs (and any other media, really), time travel has an interesting place in the musical landscape.  In most cases, going to the past or future of an RPG's world will result in music designed for the setting itself, and that setting just happens to be in a different time period, which means that it more falls under Setting themes.  Sometimes, however, the time period you land in really is defined by the fact that it's in the past/future, more than the actual place.  The Magic of Scheherazade, for example, has setting music which varies from place to place in the present, but when in the past, a single tune generally functions as 1 large catch-all theme, so in this case, it's more of a Time music than a standard Setting theme.

And yes, true, the past IS technically a Setting anyway, BUT, the thing is, Time music can also be about the act of traveling through time, rather than the actual destination.  Chrono Trigger, for example, has a separate tune for going through a Gate, and Tales of Phantasia similarly has a tune (which made it onto the list below) that plays while Dhaos is mucking about in the time stream after getting his pretentious, shallowly-characterized ass handed to him during the game's prologue.  That kind of music is definitely not a Setting, and I don't really see a point to separating Time into 2 categories when it's already pretty small and niche, so, here it goes.

Anyway, this category tends to do best when it's weighty, purposeful, and just a touch inscrutable, mirroring the importance and unknowns we attach to the past and future.  Sometimes it's somewhat more scenario-based, if the trip to a new time period is defined by a specific mood or goal, but overall, this category gravitates to the mystical and softly poignant.  Which I'm sure you've observed, by now, is exactly to my tastes.

B+
- The Magic of Scheherazade Past

A-
- Okami Past Kamiki Village
- Tales of Phantasia Stream of Time
It's mysterious, soothing, and yet expectant, a good companion to the idea of moving through the rivers of time itself.  Very pleasant.

A

A+



MISCELLANEOUS

The catch-all category of the catch-all rant, this spot is for all those songs that just haven't managed to fit anywhere else over the course of 4 entire list rant taxonomies.  Any song whose cataloguing perplexes me, but is too good not to share, it goes right here.

B+
- Disco Elysium Mercenary Tribunal
- Fire Emblem 9 Mission Mode

A-
- Child of Light Aurora Grows Up
- Chrono Cross Fateful Night
- Millennium 4 Waiting for Bokden
- Nippon Ichi Games Psycho Burgundy
- Okami Entering the Ark of Yamato
- Sweet Lily Dreams Sea Battle

A
- Dragon Fantasy 2 Ogden's Dream

A+
- Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 Final Days
When the end is not over and done with, but rather a long and lingering thing, regretful yet punctuated by the meetings and farewells of those whose lives you have touched forever, and the clinging, sad, yet overwhelmingly joyful knowledge that it's the spring of their lives even as you've reached the winter of yours...at that time, there is this song to take you through its course.  Beautiful stuff.



NIGHT BEFORE

It's been a long, eventful journey that has changed all who experienced it, through which its heroes have found themselves, raised armies, and campaigned tirelessly for what's right.  Now, all is staked on a final showdown the next day, through which the world will forever be changed.  And so, on the eve of the last battle, the hero(ine) of our story contemplates all that has come and all that shall be, and has final, inspiring words with allies, before retiring for this last fateful evening.

Basically, this is the Suikoden category.  Sometimes other games do this, too, and good for them, because the quiet eve before the last conflict is a very powerful opportunity for the last cementing of character development, reflection of a journey's meaning, and overall deepening of how affecting a game's story will be.  But no matter who else makes use of this narrative tool, it'll still always be Suikoden's special baby to me.

B+

A-
- Millennium 5 Night Before the Tournament

A
- Suikoden Series Night Before the Decisive Battle
This is the iconic song of this category, and it's a lovely, significant piece that perfectly captures the quiet, purpose-heavy eve before the final, climactic conclusion to a long campaign which has tested the convictions, camaraderie, and character of every actor in its play.  There's beauty, finality, and hope embodied within this, and it's the perfect theme to accompany a final round through the castle to exchange last words with each of one's companions and friends.

A+



CONCLUSION

Just as not all Beginning songs are Main Themes, not all tracks signaling the end of something are actual Ending music.  Whether it be a certain chapter wrapping up, the completion of a character's personal story arc, the end of some in-game event, the finish of a DLC, or something else of that nature, there are times when an RPG has to indicate the termination of something with a song, which isn't, in fact, the end of the game itself.  That's what this category's all about, the endings that aren't actually the Ending.

Obviously, this kind of music is all about closure.  What form that takes varies a little--the wrap-up of a character's personal journey is going to sound different, for example, from the completion of an episodic chapter of a tactical military campaign--but the gist is usually the same.  Conclusion music is usually satisfying, purposeful, and designed to indicate accomplishment, and sometimes the nature of that accomplishment.  A good Conclusion tune should make you feel like something important was experienced and achieved, and ready for the transition to the next step of the adventure.

B+
- Gurumin Level Complete

A-
- Disco Elysium Debriefing
- Mass Effect 3 Anti-Shepard Defeated
- The World Ends with You Game's Conclusion

A
- Pathfinder: Kingmaker Personal Journey's Completion

A+
- Mass Effect 3 Return to Duty
As the final DLC of Mass Effect 3, Citadel was our last experience with this marvelous universe, and this final moment, at which all of the teammates that we've grown to love gather by Shepard and prepare to return once more to the fight, could not be better symbolized with this quiet, beautiful melody that bids a loving farewell to the 1 of the greatest science fiction adventures ever created.



ENDING

And so we come to our final category, of our final rant.  Ending music would be the the themes that take us out of the game, the songs that play after the final boss is defeated and the last moments of the game's story play out.  Goodbyes said, communities revisited, memories of those who fell along the way recalled, credits rolled, retrospective visions of the future had, Ending music has 1 of the simplest jobs in theory and hardest jobs in practice in a soundtrack: give closure to the game and make the player feel satisfied with what has occurred.  Wrap things up the way the game's meant to be finished.  Basic in concept, but of course, in practice, it must be quite a task to come up with a tune that manages to juggle the weight of the full experience of the game behind it and the (usually) hopeful, relieved vision of what shall now come of the heroes' victory, all the while staying true to the overall feel of the work, AND often having to coincide with the events of the ending's sequence as faithfully as Cutscene music has to.  Frankly, considering how often RPG creators manage to horrendously bungle the far easier ending task of just writing a halfway decent bit of closure to their game, it's almost a wonder that Ending music isn't generally a hot mess.  But then, I once again put forth my suspicion that the composers who make the music for RPGs are by and large a hell of a lot more qualified for their job than a lot of the writers in the industry.  That no doubt seems a harsh critique, but I'll be damned if I've ever heard a musical disaster the equivalent of Mass Effect 3's disgraceful ending.

B+
- Dark Half Ending
- The Outer Worlds Ending
- Pokemon Generation 5 Ending

A-
- Baldur's Gate 2 Throne of Baal Ending
- Breath of Fire 2 Normal Ending
- Defender's Quest 1 Bad Ending
- Radiant Historia 1 Ending
- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers Ending
- Undertale 1 Normal Ending

A
- Shin Megami Tensei 4-2 Ending
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q1 Ending
- Undertale 1 Freedom

A+
- Chrono Trigger Ending
As it does so often, Chrono Trigger sets the bar.  This is that which an Ending song should aspire to be, the sublime musical embodiment of conclusion, closure, and contentment.  What more is there to say?  This is the song which captures the scope and soul of the adventure it closes, and leaves you feeling fulfilled, accomplished, and happy for the story and characters you've experienced.  It's truly great, and it's everything it should be.



NOTE: Apparently Youtube is extremely unreliable.  If you notice that any of these links are dead, I'd be much obliged if you left a comment to let me know which one(s), and I'll address it as best I can.



Phew!  Well, we've covered it all, now--battles and emotions, places and people, beginnings and endings.  From start to finish, we've covered the whole RPG soundtrack, so this is the end.  Hope you enjoyed it!

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* Airships and regular boats, incidentally, are the major reason why the Sky and Ocean settings have so comparatively few spots in RPG soundtracks, in spite of their frequent relevance--because most of the time, your presence in/on either is defined by the vehicle through which you're traversing it.


** In theory, at least.  In practice, a heck of a lot of FMV/CG/Whatever cutscenes are anything but vital or cool, especially during the era in which they originated.  I mean, how much of various RPGs' cinematic budget was thoroughly wasted on location establishing shots?  And staring at slow-moving wall carvings or scroll paintings or whatever while someone narrates backstory?  And don't even get me started on the stupid boat song in Lunar 1.