wow, thank you so much for the in-depth feedback! sorry about the descriptions thing though haha
means a lot that you're drawing comparisons to all these venerated jrpgs, a good number of them served as inspiration for the sound. regarding the clap thing, it was a snare flam hit - i'm not a drummer so idk if that was a sensible choice, i just did what i thought sounded alright lol
for deja vu, i can see the bass being a bit overbearing. the composition itself was inspired by bravely default, though, which had sort of a marching band-type of victory theme. i thought there was a certain whimsicality to that, which is why i went for it... though listening back i don't know if i captured that same whimsicality lol
and i do agree that the strings at 0:45-1:07 could have been boosted, hell, maybe i could have just added more melodic elements in general, it sounds a fair bit empty now that i'm playing it back.