Video Game Music Playlists Finalized:

When I upgraded fifty songs all at once up a star, I was worried the quality of the invaded playlist would suffer from all these mediocre additions.  That proved not to be the case.  The upgraded music chosen for their length were also very high in quality.  Which means the 2 star list is now both long and good, flawless at its new size of 750 songs.

I did, however, find two remixes.  The ending credits song for FF 13 is just an instrumental version of sunleth waterscape, and Eien no Paradox from FF 13-2 is just a mashup of Caius' theme and Yeul's Theme.  I deleted those two, but I had nothing left to replace them with.  To preserve my beautiful symmetry of exactly 3600 songs, I had to go back to the well of remixes I'd just succeeded in eliminating.

So, if it has to be a remix, I picked the two best ones -- Emo~1 from Xenogears and Crossing those Hills from Final Fantasy IX.  These instrumental takes on vocal songs are so good they might even be better than the vocal versions.  If I'm going to have any remixes, these would be the ones.

Going through my 1 star list again, I found a bunch more remixes of Sunleth Waterscape/Serah's Theme -- Battle Results, Fabula Nova Crystallus, etc.  On top of that, there was this awful song named 'Trauma' that was perfectly titled because it was traumatic to listen to.  Even though it wasn't a remix it had to go.  To fill in all the new gaps I had to add back the best remaining remixes I'd just taken out -- Love Grows, Life Faraway Promise, Main Theme of FF IX and Meribia.

But this goes to show that there's diminishing marginal returns.  At this point any additional remixes I find can only be replaced with other remixes, so hunting them down any further is virtually pointless.  If my 2 star list has been successfully transformed to its proper length without any loss of quality, and it's pointless to hunt down any further remixes, then there's nothing left to fix in any portion of my video game music playlists.  I really like the aesthetic balance of 700, 700, 700, 750, 750, for a total of 3600.  I also like the balance of 1.4 days, 1.4 days, 1.4 days, 1.1 days, 1 day.  It makes sense that the 2 and 1 stars would be shorter than the 5, 4, and 3 stars because they're meant to be the runts of the litter, but at least they're all above 1 day in length which makes them close to equal.  It's remarkable how well balanced, time wise and number of songs wise, I managed to keep the 5, 4, and 3 lists.

So this is my music's final form.  Any further tinkering is likely to do more harm than good, so this is the right place to, like God, sit back on the 7th day and rest, relax, and just enjoy the music.

5 star:  FF:  415.  Tales:    98.  Other:  187.
4 star:  FF:  375.  Tales:  209.  Other:  116.
3 star:  FF:  199.  Tales:  457.  Other:    44.
2 star:  FF:  358.  Tales:  273.  Other:  119.
1 star:  FF:  146.  Tales:  552.  Other:    52.

As you can see, all five playlists are now vibrantly diverse, featuring a wide array of different series.  This was the goal from the beginning, this was the ideal, and I have reached it.  Yet another reason why there's no reason left to change anything anymore.  There's a beautiful symmetry in song numbers, song length, and song diversity across all five lists.  I took a junkyard of overlapping and bad songs and turned them into an optimized cathedral to sound.  QED.