Now that Brenna, Ryan, and myself have had our say on the year in game music, we want to hear from you the OSV community. Let us know in the comments what are your favorite game soundtracks and arrangement albums of 2017?
For just a quick cursory reminder some of 2017’s most major mainstream and indie titles include Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Night in the Woods, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, NieR: Automata, Persona 5, Prey, Mages of Mystralia, Tekken 7, Splatoon 2, Pyre, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Observer, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Tacoma, Steamworld Dig 2, Cuphead, Super Mario Odyssey, and Assassin’s Creed Origin. That’s just a super small sampling. If you’re really dedicated to making the most informed choices, check out Wikipedia’s full list of 2017 video game releases and get back to us… sometime in 2018.
Tags: Community Question, Features, Game Music, Game Soundtrack, OSVOSTOTY 2017
Rime was my favorite game soundtrack this year. The game was fun but never hit the heights of the games which inspired it (Wind Waker, ICO, Journey), but the music was fantastic and ranks up there with other indie soundtracks like Journey and Abzu. I also enjoyed Cuphead, Pyre, Sonic Mania, and others, but Rime caught me by surprise.
My favorite arranged album is difficult because there were so many strong releases this year. If I had to choose it would be “Hero of Time”, the orchestral Ocarina of Time album; I loved the Joe Hisaishi callbacks used throughout. Other great arranged albums include “Final Fantasy XV Piano Collections” (another fantastic addition to the FF PC albums), “Resurrection of the Night” (Castlevania: SotN), “Square Enix Jazz”, “Pokemon RBY Piano Collections”, and the Materia Collective releases for FF Tactics and FF X. I enjoyed other releases, but many ended up having a couple of great tracks surrounded by forgettable tracks.
I also discovered new artists this year which I will follow closely, such as the Consouls, Insaneintherainmusic, The Travelers VGM, String Player Gamer, and Super Soul Brothers. Looking forward to another year of amazing VGM!
My favorite game soundtrack of last year would have to be NieR:Automata. I’d highly recommend checking out the live concert of the game’s music, I think you can still find it on YouTube. I also loved Pyre’s soundtrack, which isn’t a surprise as I’m a huge fan of Darren Korb’s work on Bastion and Transistor. The lyrical songs are definitely the standouts for me, I was so incredibly happy that they finally did a bunch of Darren Korb / Ashley Barrett duets. Speaking of lyrical music, I really loved Laura Shigihara’s music in Rakuen, as well as her song “Wish My Life Away” at the end of Finding Paradise, the To the Moon sequel. I also really liked “Jump Up Super Star” and that other song at the end of Super Mario Odyssey. Oh yeah, the new theme in Danganronpa V3 was great as well, I love how they jazzed it up.
My favorite arranged album would have to be NieR: Glory to Mankind from Rozen and Reven. Admittedly, it’s the only full arranged album I’ve listened to much of, but it’s pretty great. As far as other individual arrangements go, I really loved insaneintherainmusic’s Shovel Knight medley, Green Hill Zone cover, and Gusty Garden Galaxy medley (yes, a single-song medley, he plays it in the style of a bunch of other Galaxy songs, it’s real good), and Ace Waters’ Gerudo Valley cover.