I need to get something off my chest. I have cried — actual tears, in public — because of video game music. It was the ending theme from Journey, I was on a bus, and I regret nothing.
Video game soundtracks don’t get the respect they deserve. People will argue for hours about whether Radiohead or Pink Floyd has the better discography, but mention that Nobuo Uematsu belongs in the same conversation and suddenly you’re “that guy.” Well, I am that guy. And this is my list.
These aren’t ranked by nostalgia alone (though nostalgia definitely has a vote). I’m looking at composition, emotional impact, how well the music serves the game, and whether the soundtrack holds up outside of gameplay. Could you put it on during a road trip and not skip a single track? That’s the standard.
Let’s go.
15. Celeste (2018)
Lena Raine wrote a soundtrack that mirrors the game’s entire emotional arc — anxiety, determination, self-doubt, triumph. The way the music shifts as you climb higher isn’t just background audio, it’s storytelling. If you haven’t heard “Resurrections”, do yourself a favor. The blend of piano, synth, and ambient textures creates something that feels deeply personal, which makes sense given the game’s themes of mental health and perseverance.
14. Stardew Valley (2016)
ConcernedApe didn’t just make the game — he composed the entire soundtrack himself. And it’s perfect. The seasonal themes change the mood of your farm in ways you don’t consciously notice until you realize you’ve been humming the Spring theme for three days straight. It’s warm, folksy, and comforting in a way that very few game soundtracks manage to be.
13. Doom (2016) / Doom Eternal (2020)
Mick Gordon essentially invented a new subgenre of metal for these games. He ran real chainsaw recordings through synthesizers, tuned guitars to frequencies that don’t technically exist in standard tuning, and created the most aggressive soundtrack in gaming history. The fact that “The Only Thing They Fear Is You” works as both a boss fight theme and a standalone metal track tells you everything about the quality of the composition underneath all that distortion.
12. Hollow Knight (2017)
Christopher Larkin’s score is the reason Hollow Knight feels like a world and not just a map. The City of Tears theme — piano over the sound of endless rain — is hauntingly beautiful. Every area has its own musical identity, and the way the music swells during boss encounters creates some of the most intense moments in any indie game. This is the soundtrack I put on when I need to focus. Something about it blocks out everything else.
11. Hades (2020)
Darren Korb is doing things nobody else in game music is doing. The Hades soundtrack blends rock, electronic, and Mediterranean folk influences into something that sounds like nothing else. “In the Blood” hit harder than any final boss, and the way music weaves into the narrative — Orpheus literally being a character — makes it impossible to separate the soundtrack from the experience.
10. Persona 5 (2017)
Shoji Meguro took acid jazz, threw it into a heist game, and somehow it worked perfectly. “Last Surprise” has no business being as catchy as it is. The vocal tracks give the whole game a swagger that no other JRPG has matched. You’re literally sneaking through a dungeon and the background music sounds like a Tokyo jazz club at 2 AM. It shouldn’t work. It absolutely does.
9. Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)
Woody Jackson’s score does something remarkable — it makes silence feel musical. The ambient pieces that play while you’re riding across open terrain are so subtle that you barely notice them, and then suddenly the guitar swells as the sun sets and you’re having an emotional experience about a fake cowboy. “That’s The Way It Is” during the final ride is one of the most devastating uses of licensed music in any game, ever.
8. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)
Jeremy Soule created the soundtrack that launched a thousand memes and also happens to be genuinely brilliant. “Dragonborn” is the kind of theme that makes you feel like you could fight an actual dragon, even though you’re sitting in your underwear eating chips. The exploration music is what really sells it — those quiet Nordic strings that play while you’re wandering through forests and mountains. Skyrim’s world wouldn’t feel half as vast without this score.
7. Shadow of the Colossus (2005)
Kow Otani’s soundtrack is the textbook example of “less is more” done right. Long stretches of near-silence as you ride across empty landscapes, then massive orchestral explosions when a colossus appears. The contrast is what makes it work. “The Opened Way” during the colossus battles is pure adrenaline translated into orchestra. This is one of those soundtracks where the quiet moments are just as powerful as the loud ones.
6. Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Nobuo Uematsu composed this entire soundtrack on a synthesizer, and it still sounds more emotional than most fully orchestrated game scores. “Aerith’s Theme” is the most famous piece of video game music for a reason — it captures grief in a way that transcends the medium. The battle theme still gets your pulse going. “One-Winged Angel” introduced choral Latin chanting to boss fights and changed what game music could be. This soundtrack proved that games could compete with film for emotional storytelling through music.
5. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)
Koji Kondo didn’t just write music for this game — he made music part of the gameplay. Playing the ocarina to solve puzzles meant you were literally performing the soundtrack. “Gerudo Valley” is the most fun piece of music in any Zelda game. “Song of Storms” is stuck in every millennial’s head permanently. And the way the overworld theme evolves as you travel between areas created a sense of musical geography that nobody had done before.
4. Undertale (2015)
Toby Fox composed 101 tracks for Undertale. By himself. And at least a dozen of them are all-time greats. “MEGALOVANIA” became a meme, but underneath the meme is a genuinely brilliant piece of music — driving, relentless, perfectly matched to the most intense fight in the game. “His Theme” will make you cry. “Hopes and Dreams” will make you want to be a better person. The soundtrack alone turned a low-budget indie RPG into a cultural phenomenon. Fan communities have produced thousands of arrangements across every genre imaginable — from jazz to metal to lo-fi hip hop. The fact that AI cover tools now let anyone reimagine these tracks in completely different styles has only expanded the creative ecosystem around them.
3. Chrono Trigger (1995)
Yasunori Mitsuda was hospitalized from overwork while composing this soundtrack. He literally worked himself sick because he refused to deliver anything less than perfection. And you can hear it. “Corridors of Time” is one of the most beautiful pieces of music in gaming — floating, dreamlike, timeless. “Frog’s Theme” is the most heroic piece of 16-bit music ever written. The time-travel mechanic meant every era needed its own musical identity, and Mitsuda (with Nobuo Uematsu finishing the remaining tracks) delivered something that feels like multiple soundtracks woven into one.
2. Journey (2012)
Austin Wintory’s score for Journey was nominated for a Grammy. A video game soundtrack. Nominated for a Grammy. That should tell you everything, but I’ll keep going anyway.
The music evolves dynamically based on what you’re doing — sliding down sand dunes, flying through ancient ruins, struggling through a blizzard. It builds across the entire game, starting sparse and intimate, growing into a full orchestral crescendo by the final ascent. And when you reach the summit, the music releases everything it’s been building toward. Listen to “Apotheosis” and try not to feel something. It’s the closest a game has come to conducting its own symphony in real time.
1. NieR: Automata (2017)
Keiichi Okabe created a soundtrack that does something I’ve never heard in any other medium. The music shifts dynamically between vocal styles — from operatic singing to choral harmonies to 8-bit chiptune versions of the same themes — depending on where you are and what’s happening in the story. “Weight of the World” plays in three different languages across three different endings, and each version recontextualizes everything you’ve experienced.
The soundtrack uses a constructed language for many of its vocal tracks, creating melodies that feel emotionally universal without being tied to any real-world language. It’s hauntingly beautiful, emotionally devastating, and technically ambitious in ways that most film composers haven’t attempted.
This is the soundtrack that convinced me video game music is the most interesting thing happening in composition right now. It’s not background music. It’s not accompaniment. It’s the emotional spine of the entire experience.
Why These Soundtracks Still Matter
The thing that separates great game music from great film music is interactivity. A film score supports a fixed narrative. A game score has to support thousands of possible moments — the player who rushes through and the player who explores every corner need to have equally powerful musical experiences.
The composers on this list figured that out. They wrote music that works in context and out of it. Music that soundtracks a game and also soundtracks your commute, your workout, your late-night study session.
And the influence keeps spreading. Bands have been covering video game music live for years, orchestras like the Video Games Live tour sell out concert halls, and fan communities produce endless remixes and arrangements. AI cover tools have added a new dimension to this — anyone can take Gerudo Valley and hear what it sounds like as a jazz standard, or run MEGALOVANIA through an AI music generator and get a symphonic metal version in under a minute. The barrier between “I love this music” and “I want to reimagine this music” basically doesn’t exist anymore.
That’s the legacy of these soundtracks. They didn’t just make great games better. They proved that video game music is real music — no qualifier needed.
