I don't usually do Soundtrack of the Year threads, but what the hell, I'll do one this time around.
1) Freedom Planet
Admittedly the other ones are probably marginally better, but this game has a damn fine soundtrack that is going to be completely and utterly swamped by the other two in my list simply because everyone already knows
them already, so up to the top it goes. The soundtrack's almost entirely done by Leila "Woofle" Wilson, who also remixed the soundtrack for the Steam release of
Bunny Must Die. This one's more original work from her than remixing, but it turns out she's actually pretty good at her task! Every stage has at least two themes, borrowing the
Sonic 3 & Knuckles motif of every sub-level getting its own take on the stage's overall song. It even gets a bit of mileage out of leitmotifs, if only for the villain Lord Brevon (who gets a suitably chilling leitmotif for a surprisingly well-written and utterly heartless character).
Highlights include:
2) Shovel Knight
Virt always does a good job with his soundtracks, although I must give him special commendation for this one. Not only is it fairly compositionally interesting, making even heavier use of leitmotifs than
Freedom Planet does (he gets a lot of mileage out of remixing the title theme, in particular), but it's entirely done on Konami's VRC6 sound chip for the Famicom, a real testament to just how far Yacht Club Games went to make the game look and feel like an NES title (albeit one with parallax, widescreen, a few extra colors... well, at least the sound is 100% authentic!). No joke, he even put up
an .NSF rip right on
the Bandcamp page for people into emulated music files, and it's nigh identical to the music in the game. Even got
Mega Man [1] composer Manami Matsumae to contribute a couple of tracks, which fit in seamlessly with the rest. A real love-letter to chip tunes.
Highlights include:
3) Super Smash Bros. [4]
Mostly remixes of older Nintendo tracks, including older remixes of older Nintendo tracks, but when Nintendo has this much good music to remix, who can fault them? This deserves a spot on the overall list for one basic fact: it has "Id (Purpose)" and "Gaur Plain" on the same soundtrack. Granted, they're both cut-down versions, but otherwise, what more could a guy want?
Highlights include:
LttP 1) Xenoblade Chronicles
2011's Soundtrack of the Year continues to impress. Admittedly I started my run through this game after moving out of my parent's basement into my own condo in late 2013, but the bulk of my playtime was spent in 2014, so I'm counting it. Six different composers, and yet for the most part you can't really tell who did what just from a cursory listen (well, beyond "Time to Fight", which is so blatantly Yoko Shimomura that it could pass for an unused
Kingdom Hearts track). Granted, Manami Kiyota and ACE+ (CHiCO and Tomori Kudo being "ACE", Kenji Hiramatsu being "+") actually did the bulk of the soundtrack, but given I'd never heard the work of these guys before, it's a very strong showing to first come upon them with.
It has a wide variety of styles, too, from the upbeat "Gaur Plain", the slow and enchanting "Satorl the Shimmering Marsh - Night", the playful "Makna Forest" or "Frontier Village", the intimidating "Alcamoth, Imperial City", the frosty "Snowy Valak Mountain" (or even its more soulful "Night" variation), the somber "Into Deadlands", the wondrous "Mechonis Field" or the triumphant "we're coming to kick your aaaaaaass" themes for "Central Arsenal" or "To the Last Battle"; various rocking battle themes like "An Obstacle in Our Path"/"One Who Gets In Our Way", "Mechanical Rhythm", "You Will Know Our Names" or "
", or finishing up with the more ethereal "
"; or even incidental pieces like "Engage the Enemy", "Crisis", "Sorrow", "Mystery", "Tragic Decision", "While I Think...", or the obvious best track in the game, "Riki, the Legendary Hero", before wrapping it all up with a token Yasunori Mitsuda song, "Beyond the Sky" (which isn't as energetic as his
Chrono Trigger/
Cross work, but still a fitting end to the whole shebang).
Really, I can't overstate how great this soundtrack is. Its spot atop 2011's SotY was well-earned.
Highlights include: I suppose I'm going to have to link every single song I listed up there, aren't I?
LttP 2) Fire Emblem Awakening
Okay, fine, so only
Xenoblade actually counts for my LttP vote. But I'm giving mention to this one regardless.
I actually haven't finished this one yet (only up to Chapter 21 or so), but it's got a fairly strong showing for what I
have seen. My first encounter with the game's soundtrack was the admittedly amazing final stage theme, "Id (Purpose)", but the basic stage tracks are also quite catchy. A lot of recurring leitmotifs throughout the game, too, and not just the traditional
Fire Emblem theme any
Smash fan is surely familiar with by now (I mean, it's in there, it
had to be, but still), although I'm not 100% what they're tied to (nor do I want to look too closely at the OST, since the game still has some plot twists yet that could be spoiled). I suppose I could just be gushing since
Awakening is the first
Fire Emblem game I put much time into (adding a no-permadeath mode is almost certainly what did it for me), but I think there's some genuinely great music in here.
EDIT: Okay, beat the game since writing that initial paragraph; expanded the highlights considerably now that I've had time to delve into the OST.
Highlights include:
