Sea Shanty 2 and I'm only halfway joking
Gaming
Children of the Elder God from Alan Wake. Killing "zombies" while that song plays at full volume from a music stage, I have no more epic memory of video game music than that.
I've never played any FF, but i got 1000 words from FF X-2 in my mp3 collection.
This will be unconventional, but I loved the music from Darksiders Genesis by Gareth Coker, the same composer who did Ori.
Best 3 tracks in my opinion are tracks The Beacons, Astarte's theme, and the Credits/trailer theme.
(Old fuck here) Final Fantasy 6 and Castlevania Symphony of the Night. And it's not even close. Other games I like have some solid bangers (Halo, Doom, Zelda, etc), but I love those 2 games whole OSTs.
I have five fingers on one hand so here are five favorites:
- Far Cry 2 (especially title track)
- Jagged Alliance 2 (especially laptop music)
- Tie Fighter (it’s Star Wars)
- Assassin’s Creed Origins (Just beautiful, Sarah Schachner rocks)
- Crysis (Good example of why music and sound is like 50% of a good game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIFPHVAvOXs&t=203s)
From recent memory frostpunk has some great tracks and signalis is another where the music is just so haunting and really adds to the game
Ori and the Blind Forest
Oh, man. So many good ones, especially in the indie space. Celeste and Eastward both have spectacular, eerie, synthy soundtracks that are wonderful. Another indie game, Flinthook, has a theme song that absolutely slaps. Katana Zero had a rad OST, too.
Undertale goes without saying.
Obv Nintendo games, especially ones composed by Koji Kondo, have amazing soundtracks. OoT is one of my favorites, but there are many good ones. Basically any classic Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, etc. Even the newer games, like Mario Odyssey and TotK, have great soundtracks. While not first-party Nintendo, the first couple gens of the Pokémon games' music will live in my brain forever more.
I'm also gonna shout-out Grant Kirkhope because he is a genius and basically composed the soundtrack to my childhood. You know him from Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Mario + Rabbids, and many more games. They aren't soundtracks I'd walk around listening to on Spotify (probably), but in the context of the game world, they are perfection.
I could go on, but I'm just gonna shout out my faves and walk away before this becomes a giant wall of text.
EDIT: Oh lord, how did I forget Halo 2's theme (Mjolnir mix)?
Favorite instrumental soundtrack themes are from the early Silent Hill games. The theme from SH1 and the Theme of Laura from SH2 are classics.
Favorite lyrical songs used within the game for plot: Alan Wake has characters in it who are 70s rock gods called Old Gods of Asgard, and the creators got a group named Poets of the Fall to actually write the two songs that were featured from the game and they are actually really great songs. Poet and the Muse is a plot point and Children of the Elder God is played during a really good sequence.
The Marble Gallery theme from SotN is aboslutely burned into my mind still.
Umm...let's try going through the ages
I was like 4: Gizmos & Gadgets ending theme. I'm pretty sure it's one of the few original songs The Learning Company did, there's very few clips of it because it was before even .wav was commonly used for music (due to file-size issues), it's a really cheerful song
Early Childhood: Space Quest 6 Main Theme is a bop, also Human 3 from the base game of Warcraft 2, and Orc 6 from the expansion. I miss the less ambient and more intense Warcraft music.
Listened to a lot of anime music around wc3's time...but peak music at the time was Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, plus Phantasy Star Online thanks to the dreamcast. Especially 'Pray For IDOLA The Holy'. Grandia II also giving the Ver.3 and Ver.4 boss fights.
Nowadays with great music being everywhere? Probably Persona 5 in general.