Something that I noticed is that hacks often either have the battle music be different, like in vanilla, or the same, meaning the map music continues to play even during the battle animations. I think it’s an interesting difference, with battle music “breaking up” the map movements. Personally I like when the map music continues, I think that having it flow into the battles makes everything smoother. But it’s an interesting thing to consider when crafting a hack.
I think it could be used as a tone setter for specific maps. Some would have a particular theme playing in its map, that continues into battle unlike other maps. That would be interesting.
Personally, in a ROM hack context, I prefer when games stick to the format used by pre-Awakening titles; a track for each faction’s phase, battle initiated by player, battle initiated by enemy, and then boss themes for bosses. In the grand span of the entire series, I do think the “Map Theme/Map Theme (Ablaze)” format used in non-remake titles from Awakening onwards is cool and works just fine, but I don’t personally like it as much in the GBAFE engine where to my knowledge nobody has really figured out how to do proper “(Ablaze)” or whatever versions of the map track yet in the same way the 3DS-and-onward titles do (though I think it’s probably possible with the right technical know-how and setup), so it’s always just the same deal as Renewal where it’s literally the exact same track playing through the whole thing. That can work for some maps depending on story context, but I’m not so much a fan of it as the default.
I prefer when the battle and map music are the same except when it’s the bossfight. I feel the boss fight deserves the extra attention of an unique battle theme.
