I know, it's a word you can't go five minutes without seeing nowadays, but it's still the best descriptor I can muster. My obsession with this one led me through the rest of the Ogre saga's music (FFT included), as well as Iwata and Sakimoto's back catalogues, even stuff for old PCs. Grateful as I am for what I found, for me nothing quite matched up to TO's particular brand of aggression and scene-setting, so I'm here to ask the experts what I might have missed.

My definition of "dark" is a very picky one, and possibly quite an off-the-mark word choice considering the cheerfulness of the first few tracks and nonstop melodies throughout. It's hard to put into words exactly what I'm looking for, but I'll do my best. While a grim (and consistent) undertone goes without saying, if there's no "steadfastness" to it (like battle themes and noticeable melodies in general) it just becomes boring to me. So I'm not looking for something like Baroque or the Zero Escape series, although they have their place.

FFT's bears some of the closest resemblance amongst what I'm familiar with, but the blaring highs and abundant "happy" tracks make it exhausting a bit too quickly. Mystic Ark is a similar case. The closest overall that I've come across is probably the music for the Shiren the Wanderer series.

With all that said, anyone know what direction to point me in?