A great game soundtrack does something specific that film scores cannot: it loops. It sits under twenty, forty, sixty hours of play and has to remain engaging rather than fade into wallpaper. The ones that manage it tend to be built around themes that develop rather than simply repeat, and around music that enhances what the player is doing rather than commenting on it from a distance. Here are the ones that get it right, including several from 2025 that deserve serious attention.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025)
Lorien Testard’s score for Clair Obscur topped the Billboard Classical Albums chart on release, spawned a sold-out live tour, and has prompted multiple critics to call it the greatest video game soundtrack ever made. The game itself is a French indie RPG inspired by Final Fantasy and Studio Ghibli, and the 154-track score reflects both influences while developing its own identity across the runtime. The music scales with the emotional weight of the narrative in a way that larger-budget scores frequently fail to achieve. If you are interested in game music specifically rather than just game music as a bonus, this is the current conversation.
Hades and Hades 2
Darren Korb’s work for Supergiant Games is arguably the most consistent body of game composition in the current era. The Hades soundtrack sits in what Korb describes as “Mediterranean prog-rock” — propulsive, guitar and drum-driven with orchestral elements that escalate as runs progress. The Hades 2 score expands the palette with a darker, more experimental approach that reflects the different setting. Both are genuinely excellent as standalone listening outside the game, which is the test that matters for how good a game soundtrack actually is.
Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal
Shoji Meguro’s Persona 5 soundtrack uses jazz and J-pop to create a specific energy that matches the game’s visual identity so completely that the two are inseparable in memory. The battle theme “Last Surprise” and the Velvet Room theme are recognisable to millions of players who have never heard them outside the game. The Royal expanded soundtrack adds new compositions that integrate seamlessly. The accessibility of the genre — it is genuinely listenable pop and jazz regardless of gaming context — makes it one of the most streamed game soundtracks outside gaming platforms.
NieR: Automata
Keiichi Okabe’s score for NieR: Automata is built around a central question the game explores thematically: what it means to feel something in a context where feeling may be constructed. The choir-heavy compositions use multiple languages (real and invented) and shift between electronic and orchestral approaches to reflect the game’s android protagonists and the apocalyptic world they inhabit. It is the most emotionally ambitious game score in this list and rewards full attention in a way that most game soundtracks do not ask for.
Celeste
Lena Raine’s Celeste soundtrack is tied to the game’s mechanics in a specific way that makes it a particularly interesting case. The music builds in layers as players progress through chapters, adding instrumentation that mirrors Madeline’s emotional and psychological state. The tracks are engineered to loop without feeling like they loop — an extremely difficult compositional challenge that most game music fails at. Raine has become one of the most discussed composers in games, and Celeste is the work that established that reputation.
The classics that earned their reputation
Chrono Trigger (Yasunori Mitsuda, 1995), Final Fantasy VII (Nobuo Uematsu, 1997), and Undertale (Toby Fox, 2015) are referenced in any serious conversation about game music for reasons that hold up. Chrono Trigger’s time-period-specific motifs. Final Fantasy VII’s use of leitmotif to carry emotional weight across 40 hours. Undertale’s ability to transform simple chiptune themes into genuinely affecting emotional experiences through repetition and variation. All three are worth listening to as music rather than just as game music.
Game soundtracks available on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp in their complete versions represent a category of music that repays the same attention as any other. The best ones are not background music. They are scores that happen to come with an interactive experience attached.
