Freedom Planet 1 has a much more dance / rock / synth-rock soundtrack going on with a 90s kind of flare, while Freedom Planet 2 skews a lot more orchestrated, jazzy, and fusion electronica with only a couple of tracks that have the synth-rock/dance vibes of FP1. And I feel like a lot more of that is down to the instrumentation than the composition.

For anyone who paid for the Freedom Planet 1 Official Soundtrack, I think Track 67 “Beta Schmup Stage” along with it’s accompanying commentary kinda highlights this the most. Taken out of context, one could probably easily think that track is actually from FP2, especially past the 15 second mark where it drops the synth-driven intro for orchestra strings and fairly light overdrive guitar. The guitar is probably the most FP1 thing about it.

In a similar way, most of FP2’s boss tracks would be impossible to mistake as FP1 music because the pacing and vibe is radically different. However, “Boss – Arena” is a very butt-rock style track with a constant driving pace and simple but compelling bass line that feels right at home with FP1’s soundtrack pieces. The rock and overdrive guitars are the things that brings its identity closer to FP1 than FP2, but the…organ (0:11 – 0:34)? type sound used to fill the sonic space for much of the intro kinda detracts from that vibe and feels like something else.

When we go back to Freedom Planet 1’s Major Boss Battle, that song is far more of a dance piece than a rock piece, with catchy and memorable leads, a simple on the beat percussion track, and the guitars largely being background edge for the bass and occasionally a highlighting factor in the upper end of the lead parts. But the bulk of the melody is being carried by synth saws with plenty of delay and reverb.

The counterpart track in Freedom Planet 2- “Boss – Robot A”- is… not that. It’s decidedly synth-y yes, but something is going on with the mixing that results in a lot of the instruments seeming to overcrowd the same frequencies.

• The bass used in Robot A feels lighter and more “distant” and doesn’t have the edge of Major Boss. It’s using the same galloping pattern that is used in FP1, but the dynamics don’t seem to put as much emphasis on this as its counterpart. Or perhaps it is, but it’s being buried in the other layers of sound?
• No idea what’s up with the organ sound here (0:03). And it tends to crash into the same soundspace as the new synth lead (0:06) becoming muddied. This new synth in general tends to fall kinda back in the mix in general, which is not great as it feels like the bit it’s playing was meant to be the focal melody.
• The Breakbeat is actually a really good choice imo and probably hints more at what this track was going for that what it achieved.
• The guitar (0:31) is reasonable, but it feels like it’s maybe a little too on the clean side for a boss battle theme. I dunno.
• So this is another part where things get kinda weird. We have what I describe as a hypersaw melody lead (0:46) which works pretty well and kinda has the FP1 vibe, but it doesn’t have the delay nor the reverb one might expect this kind of energetic lead instrument to have. And I don’t know why? It ends up making the rests feel a little jarring too.

Like. I just dunno, that’s the one where it feels like the intent was to simply have a modern update remix of the original iconic boss theme and it ended up feeling like a completely different song and spirit. But it’s still melodically recognizable as the same motif.

There’s also Boss – Robot B. It’s got a bit of a jazzy saxaphone thing going with bouncy synths and percussion. And quite a bit of the background sirens going on to lean into the idea that the Main Four characters are now effectively the law enforcement / disaster response team. Or maybe just to evoke a general sense of “WARNING, DANGER AHEAD”.

Overall, neither the pacing, instrumentation, or composition of Robot B really reads as a boss theme at all to me. It’s solid music. Just. Doesn’t feel like something to get up and motivated to, and definitely not in the spirit of FP1 though it’s clearly not trying to be.I do like the guitar riff they bring in at (0:45) though.

Not much reason for me to bring this up right *now* in particular. I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to do for the soundtrack for my RAMP 2024 submission. But the way the soundtrack is almost an entirely different vibe from Freedom Planet 1 is something that’s been bugging me since Freedom Planet 2 released a year (or two, almost?) ago. Some of the issues of the perceived quality of the music seemed to have been simply down to the volume being unintentionally low in-gameplay in the earlier versions of FP2. But FP2 wanted to set an identity for Freedom Planet that was all its own without being forever tied to the fandom roots. It succeeded. Just, this is one of the things I much prefer the original for.

That’s not to say that I think FP2 is a bad game or that I don’t love it. I kinda favor the two games almost equally, though for very different reasons. FP1 I enjoy a lot for its boss battles and soundtrack. FP2 I like more for the characters, environments, and overall quality of life improvements (Carol is so much better in 2, probably the most comfortable character to play in the game compared to being fairly plain and painful to play in FP1). Or to put it another way, Freedom Planet 1 has the specific gamefeel and audio aesthetics I’d want to build fangames off of than FP2. Freedom Planet 2 has characters, settings, and lore I’d be much more interested in seeing fleshed out with with fanwork or supplemental content than FP1.

(And frankly, feeling that way kinda hurts because FP1 is an absolute nightmare to do any kind of meaningful gameplay modding or additional content for, while FP2 is much much easier to mod and add things to, but I feel like I’ve already gotten all of the enjoyment from its mechanics that I’m going to get. Short of people making brand new boss battles or something anyway.)