I've been listening to some of Motoi Sakuraba's best music, and while it is awesome he has a tendency to reuse given melodies and instruments. Every one of his RPG compositions has a counterpart in another game.

Compare the first 10-20s or so of each of these:

Mario Golf Ring Shot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TNdHbXGyII

ToS "Decision": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7bI-Vl8LpY

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Mario Tennis Tournament Finals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8k-kRMQN3Q

Mario Tennis Ring Shot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaszDBPmOkw

This song has the same feel as the above:

ToS "Like a Glint of Light": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFWadiZkA_8

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Baiten Kaitos "The True Mirror": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNtWj4bStOY

Eternal Sonata "Leap the Precipice": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM3BIOvEJSw

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Eternal Sonata Boss Battle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWO6Q0YAmBA

Mario Tennis Tournament: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O0BRLEpZ-I

Bonus: Compare 0:37 to 0:42 of ES with the first 8 seconds of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7R4gfM2wc

EDIT: Whoops, transposed the a and u in his name in the title...

Not heard his music in Infinite Undiscovery ?

I liked it so much I bought the 3 disc music cd

No, Motoi has a very personal taste in music, he uses the same intruments alot which to untrained ear sound like rehashing the same songs...Music wise Valkyrie Profile1 is his best work EVER

Add this one to the list:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJRmZqep6TI

I never played Mario Golf, and never noticed the similarities in Mario Tennis music, but hearing it outside the game is very weird o_O

Tell me honestly that "True Mirror" is different from "Leap the Precipice".

I know what you mean though, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing at all. I also think it's funny that epic RPGs sound like Mario games.

He's my third favourite composer after Mitsuda (Chrono Cross) and Koji Kondo (everything).

EDIT: WTH? Just found out Mitsuda did Mario Party. Nintendo really take their music seriously...

oh and for the record, he shares alot of his songs with alot of different series, "Mission to deep space", and "Incarnation of the devil" are in every tri-Ace game

Similar, yes. The same? No. He made music for Tales, Star Ocean, Valkyrie, Golden Sun and much more... I often thought the music sounded familiar but it's just because that's Motoi's style. I personally like it and he does music that fits the mood very well.

Yes, I was thinking of that some time time ago. Listen to all the battle themes from the games he's composed, they're virtually the same. That's not to say he's a bad composer, far from it, I still think that the SO3 soundtrack (and specially the battle theme) is brillant.
He just needs to be a bit more versatile (or maybe compose less soundtracks, so it's not as noted)

nope, shining force 3 is his best work

anyway opinions aside, your definitely right about the first thing,all composer's music tends to have a certain sound to it,  Handel, Mozart, Bach, just as examples, their music, though every piece has different have certain attributes that make it their music

right up to the present day all composers have certain sound to their music, song may have similar phrases, and instruments might be more common in their music but they compose different pieces

Yeah, they tend to use a lot of the same instruments in their music, so it does sound the same.

Besides Sakuraba, Michiko Naruke (Wild Arms series), Koji Kondo (about everything) and Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Xenogears/saga) are my favorite composers.