controversial opinion time:
XC1 and 2's music didn't grab me all that much. can't even remember what those ending themes were. weren't bad, just forgettable to me. hope 3 is better in this regard
I think I take it to a much further extreme: The music actively hinders my enjoyment of the games.
Which isn't to say that I think all of it or even most of it is bad. I actually love a lot of the tracks, especially Mitsuda's cutscene music in Xenoblade 2 and the tracks commonly attributed to Shimomura in the first one (the title theme, Colony 9/Homestead, Satorl Marsh).
But there's an approach to background music that, at best, hampers my immersion, but at worst, actually annoys the living shit out of me.
For an example, take the track for Mor Ardainian capital Alba Cavanich. A fantastic track, one of my favourites in the entire game. And also completely ill-fitting for what the player is actually doing: Walking around, talking to NPCs, buying and selling gear.
Instead, it feels like the composers wrote it with the Mor Ardainian empire in mind. Something grand, and majestic, something that might sound like the national anthem of these people.
It's like the composers want their work to push along the story, but this is a game, and I prefer the approach of something like Untitled Goose Game where the soundtrack is 100% a compliment to what the player is doing at any given moment in time.
On top of that, the tracks are just so loud and busy, especially in the second game. It's utterly fatiguing to me to hear these songs on a loop given how big these areas are and how much time you spend in them. Even something relatively restrained like Uraya is still wearing to listen to because of how unvaried it is.
The worst example for me is the Merc Mission music. What about that song felt appropriate for the player action: Navigating through menus. I would usually mute the game whenever I went into merc missions.
I feel like I'm probably alone in all of this. So many people praise the soundtracks of these games. And so many people shit on the soundtrack of, for example, Breath of the Wild. But if these games had the sound design and score of Breath of the Wild they would be utterly unbeatable to me. Like that one thing alone would just make these the best games ever made. I love these environments so much, but never do I ever feel like I'm actually in them, in the same way that Breath of the Wild conveys the sense of being in Hyrule (which I attribute mostly to the sound and music).
. I'm at the point now that I really just want one more big trailer, like an E3-type trailer that focuses a bit more on gameplay and has some nice 'wow look at this cool thing' shots and then I think I'm good, I won't need anything else. Well, that and the actual release date. This is one game I'm happy to spend a day or two of vacation on, I like taking some in September anyway so this will line up nicely.
