I don’t know the dynamics behind the scenes of this album. Thankfully, that answer is right here, in the Heavensward OST.
One could ask then, what would happen if Soken and Uematsu were to both work on an album? What musical euphoria would result? There aren’t many composers that can take over for a legend, but Soken proves his talents again and again. If you read my intimidatingly long A Realm Reborn OST review, you know that I have nothing but immense praise for Soken’s work on that album and its followup from 2015, Before the Fall: Final Fantasy XIV. The result was that ARR was mostly Soken’s work, with some of Nobuo Uematsu’s songs from 1.0 being so good that they remained in the reworked game. And not only because the original release featured a soundtrack by the man who created the music for Final Fantasy as a whole.
While these are all noteworthy titles to have worked on, taking on FFXIV must have been daunting. Prior to 2013, he composed music for 2006’s Dawn of Mana, Front Mission 5 (which sadly never saw an English release), a pair of Mario sports games, and some others. The soundtrack to Final Fantasy XIV’s second coming, A Realm Reborn (aka 2.0), featured music largely by Masayoshi Soken.
