First post on this thread of 2022. I'd expect this thread to be even more active after the release of Legends: Arceus and potentially whenever Gen 9 gets announced. Speaking of Arceus, I might actually have a migraine if I hear
this theme in the new game.
Let me tell you a little story about everyone's favorite llama-god. Long before Legends: Arceus was ever conceived, the Pokémon did have one appearance within the main series canon. The Ranger series has a host of excellent songs, but this one sticks out in particular, because so few people have ever actually heard it. When you think Arceus music, you probably think of its main series theme from the fourth generation games, which was later repurposed for the initial reveal of the Legends: Arceus game.
The different with this theme, however, is that it's within the game itself as opposed to part of some Wi-Fi event. This game did have its own Arceus event back in the day, but here's the catch- that event ties directly into Guardian Sign's lore, which in turn is connected to both Arceus and the region itself. There's just something about this that I find unironically genius when I compare it to the new game we're seeing over 11 years later.
And I haven't even talked about the song itself yet. I very rarely go into this much detail about a single music piece in a Pokémon game, if ever, but let me just say that there are few things as terrifying as the inclusion of Arceus in this game's context. If you'd like to know more, PM me sometime. Even in the Wi-Fi event where the actual battle with it is much easier than the real fight in the past, the sounds of that organ as Arceus descends from above gives me the chills in a way that I almost never experience in Pokémon. Serving as an encounter theme and a battle theme in one fell swoop, I consider this underrated masterpiece to be Arceus's true theme. Most fans today will never understand the sheer brutality of even
trying to reach Arceus in this game, something that not even myself was ever able to do as a child.