Fandevs could use experiences with side-games : not only they offer inspiration for
aesthetics and story, but they have quite a few nice soundtracks that many players are
unfamiliar with and their use would also warm the hearts of the very few who know
where the soundtrack comes from. This is the soundtrack used in Lyra forest and
the west road in the first Pokémon ranger, and despite this serene music is used for
a forest it does, sound pretty much like a soundtrack you'd use on a route, not to mention
that almost every route feels a bit "forestry"... and the part right after 0:24 inspires a
sense of immensity to me...
Let's take an even less known side-game, pokémon pinball RS. The field selection soundtrack
is clearly based off route 101 from the RSE titles, and would make a nice choice.
Back to the Ranger titles, in Shadows of Almia there's three different route themes that vary not
depending on the location, but rather on the game's progress. The first one plays early in-game,
whilst starting the ranger career, then there's one playing mid-game and its arrangement,
playing late in-game after you get an important message from the Ranger Union. Given the fact
these three themes are used on almost every part of Almia, I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to use them
on one route or two...
Not to mention that side-games and anime both contain a wide variety of soundtracks that could
be used in certain events, be it comical, dramatic, intense, epic...
The problem about implementing soundtracks from various sources however is the following :
soundtracks from the anime are made with actual physical intruments : violins, trumpets, trombones,
Kalosian horns(Hoenn confirmed), pianos, keyboards, flutes, guitars, various percussions...
The soundtracks from recent games get quite close to that, but the soundtracks from more
dated titles have... the soundfonts that could work on those consoles. Don't get me wrong,
the soundtracks sound still nice, but the gap of quality does, bother me indeed. This might
be the reason why many fan-devs resort to midis : it's not about the clipping(mp3 files don't
seem to have the clipping while looping), but rather it's about the quality of soundtracks from
different games! The alternative would be resorting to making re-arrangements, but that would
bring on the crediting issue if someone else makes them, and if one wishes to make a
re-arrangement on their own, they need to learn how to make use of the programs...
Midis would thus be the best choice to go for, but let's be honest : midis... don't really sound THAT appealing...
A few possible route OSTs: