Motoi Sakuraba

Currently, he is the most popular composer next to Uematsu and Sugiyama in Japan.
I know the popularity of composers is proportional to how many big RPGs they could have been involved in, though.
(Btw, if Mitsuda had kept working on more famous games, he definitely would be the third...)

I confess I also didn't like him so much.
As far as I played some of Tales of..., SO2 and VP1, his music was always sort of blatting and cheesy.
I always could find some diggity pieces for battles at the same time, but those were in cheap sound samples and simple composition.
Moreover, I couldn't understand why he always used so many percussions, and composed music in monotone.
Of course it's simply because I'm the sort of person who prefer ambience to other components and love the composers such as Sakimoto, Keiki Kobayashi, Hamauzu and Mizuta.

However, I can dig VP2.
I don't buy the game yet and heard less than 10 tracks, though.
This time, his music is like orchestra and trad, which fit in game so much and not blatting, rather than progressive rock.
Also, sound quality is quite good, contrary to his usual works. I wonder if he uses not synth live but instruments.

Now I have to offer a sincere apology for underrating him.
He is an able composer and could make such a music if he wanted to try.
Still, he hasn't maybe because not so many VGM fans would need ambience as film score for game music.
Actually, I have seen many criticize VP2 music and say "too ambient" lol

EDIT:As for Tales of..., I often hear he has no drive at all. Tales of the Abyss has streaming music, but that music was quite far from VP2.

Jam it back in, in the dark.