Masayoshi Soken Won't Work on Two Games Again After Hell of Final Fantasy 14

Final Fantasy 14 has had such great music coming out over such a long period of time that I wonder how composer Masayoshi Soken actually manages it. The combat, story, characters and writing all peaked and fell during the game's nearly fifteen-year runtime but the music remained excellent and Soken has established himself as not only one of the best Final Fantasy composers, but also one of the best in the industry currently.

Credit _thegamer

It makes sense that Square Enix would want to utilize Soken's talents outside of Final Fantasy 14 as well, which is what it did during the development of Final Fantasy 16. Having Soken compose for the game was a wise decision, especially since Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida was directing. The two of them are practically inseparable.

Final Fantasy 14 Composer Reveals Hell of Balancing FF14 and FF16 Simultaneously

However, just because something sounds like a sensible idea doesn't mean it is one as it seems that Soken did a lot of work for both Final Fantasy 14's Dawntrail expansion and Final Fantasy 16 at the same time. In a recent interview with PCGamesN Soken claimed that working on both games was actually a freaking hell.

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It appears that due to the different tones of Final Fantasy 14 and Final Fantasy 16 Soken had difficulty working on both simultaneously explaining that 14 has variety and 16 needs stories.

So I can not really give any specific examples, mainly because it required so much more work but in terms of the emotion that went into the making of 14 and 16 I would say it was very different says Soken. Every day was literally a freaking hell literally beyond your imagination of hell.

Thankfully Soken was able to use his experience working on Final Fantasy 14 1.0 and A Realm Reborn simultaneously, and his efforts earned him the Best Music award at The Game Awards, but he admitted that this would be the last time he would have two major projects at the same time. When asked if he'd do it again for Final Fantasy 17 Soken joked that he would need two bodies to handle it.