Music is a powerful tool in any storyteller’s kit. While you may not remember any specific boss fight or cutscene from a game years after you’ve finished it, there’s a good chance that a kickass battle theme or emotive piece of music will still be floating around in your head.
Almost every game has one or two individual tracks that stand out as masterpieces, but if we were to talk about all of them we’d be here all day. What makes for a truly special experience is when an entire soundtrack comes together with a strong theme to create a litany of powerful and memorable tracks that you’ll want to add to your playlists immediately.
Shadow of the Colossus
Shadow of the Colossus is a powerful experience, mixing unique and epic boss battles with a deceptively emotive story.
Things always start out slow as you catch your first glimpse of the beast, keeping things quiet and letting you absorb the gravity of what you’re about to do. Then, a crushing sense of dread washes over the track as the colossus spots you and tries to attack, the odds are truly against you – that is until you finally break through. Get up onto its back as the triumphant roar of “Revived Power” plays, making you feel like a true hero.
Then you finally slay the creature and, rather than a note of victory, you’re hit with a somber track that seems to be mourning your slaughter of this monster – a beautiful twist that becomes even more powerful when you know how it ends.
Octopath Traveler
Plenty of classic JRPGs have memorable soundtracks like Chrono Trigger or the older Dragon Quest games. Octopath Traveler’s composer, Yasunori Nishiki, had the tall task of creating a soundtrack that invoked the game feelings and style of those classic soundtracks, while still living up to modern standards.
This was a task Nishiki excelled at, using a full orchestra to make one of the most consistently brilliant soundtracks in gaming history. Not only do all the battle themes absolutely rock, but the town themes are memorable, and the big story moments go off with a bang.
What’s most impressive though, are the eight protagonist themes, all of which focus on different instruments and masterfully embody each traveler.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The Zelda series has plenty of great soundtracks. Whether it’s the subtle yet chaotic piano of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, or the loud and proud 16-bit tracks of A Link to the Past.
However, we think it’s Ocarina of Time that does the best job with the series’ music. It has a great mix of styles, with themes and leitmotifs the series has already made iconic while piling on fantastic new tracks like “Gerudo Valley” or “Zelda’s Lullaby” that would become reused and referenced in later games too.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
The Ace Attorney games, especially the original, managed to make a hell of a lot out of very little. As a visual novel with a small budget, it’s a minor miracle that no aspect of the first Phoenix Wright game goes to waste. It uses powerful posing, limited animation, and amazing music to bring its story to life.
The bombastic and melodramatic court scenes wouldn’t be nearly as fun as they are without the score backing it up. You have the slow-paced cross-examination theme that invites careful thinking and clever strategizing, which will eventually give way to the over-the-top “Pursuit” theme as you hit your eureka moment and turn the tide of the argument.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
All the Xenoblade games know how to make a climatic moment pop with an epic soundtrack, and all three of the main games in the series have all-time great music, but the third game is the most well-rounded of the bunch.
Battle music like “You Will Know Our Names – Finale” make the toughest battles into godly encounters; emotive tracks like “Where We Belong” still make me cry whenever I listen to them; and remixed old tracks like “Time to Fight” and “Drifting Soul” reference the history of the series while making something new out of the old favorites.
Celeste
Chances are you’re going to be spending a long time in Celeste’s levels as the punishing platformer forces you to retry the same rooms over and over, so the background music better be satisfying to listen to on a loop.
Each level has a unique feel in Celeste, with the music being one of the biggest factors in creating the ever-shifting atmosphere. When I think about the strange curiosities of the Hidden Temple, the emotive battle of Reflection, or the determination of The Summit, the music of those levels is the first thing that comes to mind. It brings these characters and emotions to life more than dialogue ever could, which is really special.
Pokémon Diamond & Pearl
Much like Zelda, you could make a valid argument for just about any of the Pokémon games having the best soundtrack, but Diamond & Pearl is our top pick.
It hits a sweet spot where the DS’s tech allows it to have a retro-feel while still injecting plenty of musical complexity. Just about every battle theme will have you bopping your head, each town theme encapsulates the atmosphere of that area, and it even has the best Route themes in the series.
Then you look at specific tracks like Cyrus’ or Dialga & Palkia’s battle themes and you see the great effort to capture each character’s essence through music. Cynthia gets two separate themes and they’re both all-time greats – very few other characters can lay claim to that.
Sayonara Wild Hearts
Sayonara Wild Hearts is a special game because it’s specifically crafted to tell its story around the music. This pop soundtrack combines with the game’s fairly wild visuals to create a 90-minute rollercoaster ride of a game that takes you through a tale of heartbreak and finding yourself.
To go in-depth on what makes it so great would completely spoil the experience, but you’ll be entirely absorbed into it from the word go.
Sonic Mania
There is perhaps no franchise that has as many fantastic tracks in as many different genres as Sonic the Hedgehog. The classic games have some of the best 16-bit tracks of all time, the 2000s have cheesy rock songs that are still bangers today, and the 2010s dipped its toes into pop music too.
While I’ll always jam to “Escape From The City”, the classic tracks are still the best, and Sonic Mania has the best selection, bringing in plenty of modern musical elements without destroying the original feeling of each track. It just adds more layers without taking anything away, which is hard to pull off.
Persona 5
Every track is memorable, and every track rocks – it’s just that simple.
There is no fat on Persona 5’s soundtrack. It already leans into a unique visual style and the soundtrack only enhances that, pulling in jazz and swing elements into a rock soundtrack that will be stuck in your head after just one listen.
Then you add Persona 5 Royal to the mix and you get even more incredible tracks like the party atmosphere of “Takeover”, the epic scale of “I Believe”, and the tear-jerking emotion of “Throw Away Your Mask”.
It could’ve been released as a standalone album and it would still be a musical masterpiece, but the way it serves Persona 5’s story and world make it even more impressive.
Written by Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.
