So many years after Final Fantasy VII's release, it is hard to look back at the soundtrack and not recognize what it did. The sampling is awful, even for its time. Some of the tracks are horrible - Uematsu deserves to be shot. But outside of all that, it stands as one of the best soundtracks a game could deserve to have in 1997, because it transcended any typical expectations of what a game should do with music, and blew us all away. The main theme is both epic and tragic, reflecting a strong melody throughout the game and keeping you inline with your goals whenever you hit the overworld map. The Chocobo theme begot more refinery here than ever before, resulting in not one, but five variations to its theme. And, of course, the heralded final battle theme, One Winged Angel rests as the sole survivor of Uematsu's input into FF7's music. Nothing could stand in its way at the time, and it's questionable whether or not Uematsu could even hope to surpass it now - and that while it is essentially nothing more than a ripoff of the Carmina Burana. Aside from these stand-out tracks however, the game's soundtrack forms a solid and presentable musical overtone, giving it a depth it would not have without it (Cid's theme definitely helps to flesh out the accompanying character), and tracks like Those Chosen By the Planet or You Can Hear the Cry of the Planet are as memorable as Aerith's Theme has become, because they helped strengthen that one hopelessly incredible scene all those years ago. Uematsu may never achieve an epic feel like this one again, but it's debatable whether or not this was a perfect work. It was, however, an exceptional one.