Firstly some comments
@MapelSerup
If you like what Persona is, you should play it. It's a great game.
Also if you like the P5 soundtrack, you should check out the Persona 5 Dancing soundtrack also. It's largely the same thing, just remixed versions of the same P5 tracks you know and like.
Also if you're really into this, the P5 Dancing Advanced Soundtrack is mostly extended versions on the P5 Dancing Soundtrack.
I also really like the MK8 soundtrack. To me though it's more a greatest hits of Mario IP music and not it's own thing entirely. Still it's top notch stuff.
@thePlinko
I also really like the SMG soundtrack. I like how the different layers of the tracks there are really well designed. The Wind Garden track being the iconic example there. I also like how many of the SMG and SMG 2 tracks are just reimagined versions of thise same piece, using different instruments. It helps make the music feel immersive to each area though staying in the game's overall theme.
*******
These are 5 soundtracks I like a lot. There are many more I also like a lot but I had to cut it down to 10 as not to go on forever.
Persona Dancing
Specifically Persona 3 Dancing and Persona 4 Dancing. I really like those two quite a lot. As the remix their original soundtracks so well. P5 Dancing is equally as good, I just feel the P5 source meterial is the weakest of the three. All three have a total different sound though. All based on their source material.
P3 - Hip Hop/Rap
P4 - Traditional popular music and some slower folk-ish music
P5 - Electronica/Dance/Techno/Electropop
This all makes sense as they are following the trends of what was popular at the time.
Terranigma
To me this is the best music put out on the SNES. They took total advantage of the sample based SNES music hardware to get in more layers than ordinarily possible with chiptune music. They just sampled a few layers which each were a few layers fused together into a single layer. Also huge effort was put into the composition of each piece here. Just a shame that the SquareEnix merger killed off a fully worldwide release of this game.
Octopath Traveler
What I really like about this soundtrack is how the composers shose 8 different instruments and used them as the base sound for each character and their homeland areas. So when you visit an area or play a characters story, it's not only visually unique to them, it's also acoustically unique to them as well.
If you really want to understand this difference more, listen to the 8 motif tracks on the soundtrack. They do their job well showcasing the core instrument each character's music is based around. Then go listen to each character's theme music to see that instrument within a fully composed piece. Then, you have their homelands, towns, and ending music, which use less of the core instrument but it's still there.
I'll share what I feel the 8 instruments are.
Ophelia - Flute
Cyrus - Violin
Teressa - Harmonica
Olberic- Cello
Primose - Acoustic Guitar
Alfen - Saxaphone
Therion - Oboe or Clarinet
Haanit - Piano
The Quell Collection
A base soundtrack for the 4 Quell games. The soundtrack itself tells a story. What is that story? That's up to the listener to work out, but the 11 track names help with this. The answer is not one specific thing. The story is whatever you feel it is, whatever you feel when you listen to the music.
The music itself is paino and guitar based. Well it's entirely that as I don't hear any other instruments in it. I just really like this soundtrack a lot. It really speaks to me in many different ways.
Dragon Quest
Totally 100% iconic music by now. The same base music recycled for each game. The good thing is the base music is some fo the best ever composed. For me Dragon Quest 3 (go listen to the SNES version) is where the soundtrack really started taking shape. The DQ11 soundtrack is also good too, as a more refined version of it.
As an aside I quite like the Brass Quintet version of the soundtrack. Just the brass section doing it all, it has a stripped down, more simplistic sound which I like. I feel the 2nd Brass Quintet soundtrack tries too hard to be as grand as the source material and loses sight of the stripped back nature that it was originally going for. The first BQ soundtrack is solid though and I do recommend it.
To The Moon
This soundtrack's reputation is well deserved. Mostly paino based and tells the story so well. Full of emotion. I highly recommend it for those into this kind of music. Though I'd recommend even more highly, to just play the game first. It's not a visual novel, but it's close as there's very little gameplay involved, but still the story is amazing and the music really hammers home the themes of the game.
A Bird Story and Finding Paradise do have good soundtracks also. I just feel the first game (To The Moon) is the best of the three. I guess the initial impact of being the first game is why. The initial impact of it all just hit you hard but in a good way.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2
To me it sounds like Monolith took what they did in the first game and dialed it up to 11. Totally over the top but in a good way. Each new area sound epic like you're part of something grand, bigger than life itself. I'm usually not partial to orchestral soundtracks, mostly because they are overused and often the wring type of music for many games. However in this case orchestral music fits in perfectly.
Tokyo Mirage Sessions
The game here is good but not great. However the parts of the soundtrack that matter, the songs are all top notch. It feels like the game was made around the already created songs. The lyrics really don't make that sense but that doesn't matter, as they sound fine when sung in Jap and really fit the music. I found the instrumentals of the songs and downloaded those too. I have to say they are really good too. The actual music is solid. Well compsed. It's not just the same 4 chords over and over. Though I would say having the music there does add to the experience, not just being there for the sake of it.
The stuff not in the soundtrack, ie the general gameplay music is actually pretty good also. I think more games need to be made around songs with vocals. As in not an after thought, but properly composed songs. Persona does this with some of their tracks to a lesser extent though. Songs with vocals in games that are not a total cringe fest, I think there is an open market for this and more developers should take advantage of this.
As an aside, a Tokyo Mirage Sessions dancing game would really work well. But would not sell as not many people are interested in this kind of thing. Though that's a maybe as the Persona Dancing games didn't sell well. That was because they were lasy cash cows, which were not worth their asking price. The concept people really enjoyed, just make it actually with enough content for the price and you have a hit game.
Starcraft
There's not much music here but when you are playing a mission you really feel like you are the race you are playing as. Total immersion. Also when you start campaign 2 and then campaign 3, the total different tone in music is very noticable and really helps to feel like it's a totally different part of the game. The music also totally defines what each race is. It's something that Warcraft 2 didn't have. Warcraft was just race 1 vs pallet swaped race 1. Musically similar as well. This is one of many ways how Starcraft improves on Warcraft. Even Warcraft 3 doesn't improve on this.
Tales of Phantasia
I had a few options for this last OST but I went with this one because I rarely talk about it.
The soundtrack is actually surprisingly good. Easily the best of any game in the series. This is also the best game in the series. The less said about the rest of the games in this series the better. Though getting back on topic, there's a lot to like about this soundtrack. There's no "bad" section of the soundtrack. It's all solid music which does fit in well with the story.
Not my favourite soundtrack ever but it's solid, a few of the pieces here are very well done and as a whole it tells the story very well. Well worth lisening to.
