Last week we skipped around a bit and talked about my absolute favorite track from Trails of Cold Steel (and honestly, a top-10 all-time pick for me).

This week we’re shifting back to what got me into the series, a long overdue playthrough of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Other than hearing from random people that the LoH games were good, I went in blind on Trails in the Sky. It had excellent reviews on Steam and the trailer looked pretty cool, and I was itching for a more old-school JRPG experience at the time.

Turned out to be a great decision. While it feels a little slow at times (mostly because it’s a 2004 game, so the mechanics aren’t quite what we expect today), the story and characters and music are phenomenal. Once I got hooked a few hours in, I plowed through the game.

Hollow Light of the Sealed Land is the music from the final dungeon, and it employs a mechanic I’ve always loved in RPGs: when a dungeon theme plays the entire time, taking over the battle music as well. It means there are no interruptions for encounters, and if the song is epic enough, it really locks you into the experience.

This track gives you just enough of a sense of urgency considering what’s at stake when you get to this part of the game (no spoilers here). It’s also longer than most of the music in TitS: FC, which means you don’t mind it looping for a half hour or so while you fight your way through hordes of enemies.

Music to My Ears covers soundtracks or individual songs from video games. You can view all posts in the series by clicking here.