I'm relistening to the Sonic Forces OST and god it makes me so conflicted.

It's the only mainline Sonic OST where I'm hesitated to say I like it, but it's not that I don't like it...

With Lost World yeah it's good music, just not good Sonic music.

But with Forces there are some genuinely great tracks that fit in super well with Sonic, it's just that the instrumentation completely ruins most of them.

Luminous Forest is a great example, I really like the parts where the guitar kicks in, the song has great energy, and the overall melody is, you know, good.

But that synth... oh my god, this song would be 10 times better without it.

Here's a more extreme example, the song starts great at first. But then after 9 seconds... Yea

What's worse is that the composition is GREAT, it's the god damn saw synth that's ruining it. Why is the OST is so insistent on using it in every single track?

In fact, all the Modern Sonic songs use a very similar instrumentation style for some reason. What happened to variety?

SA2 did a similar thing with its music, yeah, but at least there they managed to make the songs themselves sound distinct.

Sure, some of those styles were too similar (I'm looking at you Eggman), but the individual tracks didn't blend in with each other as much as they did in Forces, and they sounded NICE.

Jun's butt rock from SA2? Awesome!!!

The weird synth-y rock from Forces? Nah.

But then there are also tracks that are straight-up not good.

Like, what is this? There's nothing here that even correlates to the level, this is just generic EDM. Boring.

Then there are the Classic Sonic tracks. They are also not bad compositions, they either suffer from bad instrumentation (again), or being unfitting.

This one is an example of both.

Even when the instrumentation isn't bad, it's trying to emulate GEMS sound instead of the typical Classic Sonic sound.

They went for the generic Genesis music style even though what made Classic Sonic music great was how it pushed the limits of the chip.

Either way, did it really need to sound as Genesis-y as possible? In Generations it wasn't like that, there they went for a more electronic sound and it worked very well, especially with the more modernized visuals.

Here it's kind of clashing you know.

At least some of the music for Avatar stages are pretty damn good.

I've always liked DnB, like I have a very soft spot for shit like Pendulum, so maybe I'm a bit biased there, but this song, in particular, is fucking great.

Am I alone in thinking that? It's legitimately my second favorite song in the OST, excluding the Shadow remixes, which are also kind of awesome.

Fun fact, when they first released Sonic Forces on Steam they shipped the game with unfinished music for the Shadow DLC

You can listen to the "beta" version of the Supporting Me remix, the differences are very apparent, especially around at 1:15

They later patched it out but wow, that is embarrassing.

Also, I don't like Fist Bump but I don't have much more to say about it.

Though... Forces has one vocal theme that's like, one of my favorites in the whole franchise.

Infinite's theme.

God DAMN this song is edgy, and straight out of 2000s.

I'm not being sarcastic, I legitimately love how unapologetically edgy it is like god damn.

Shame that it only got used in like 1 cutscene for 5 seconds. Good job Sega, once again.

CAUSE IF YOU'RE MESSING WITH ME
I AM A DANGEROUS WEAPON
I AM THE SHARPEST OF BLADES
I'LL CUT YOU DOWN IN A SECOND

Ok, actually you know what, I'll comment on Fist Bump.

What I don't like is the vocals and the premise. I like some cheese in my Sonic music, but like come on, "Fist Bump"?

I get that this whole game's theme is "Sonic and Buddy are now best friends, friendship" but that theme sucks ass too anyways.

Also, the song sounds better without the vocals.