Final Fantasy XIV has a diverse soundtrack and a terrific story, but it is a huge time commitment. The story starts off pretty slow and takes a long time to build up.
Yeah I’ve tried FFXIV but it seems MMORPGs aren’t made for me. Thank you for the fight themes tho! “Beauty’s Wicked Wiles” kinda makes me hyped and chilled at the same time.
Totally fair! They did a good job of making the main storyline playable as a solo player, but the core gameplay loop is still unmistakably MMO-style and not to everyone’s taste.
I love that song in particular because (very minor spoiler) it works both as background music and as diegetic music. In the story, that boss is trying to entice you into going permanently to sleep and living in a dream world where you’ll achieve all your goals and desires, while becoming her meat puppet in the real world. When you’re playing the game rather than watching it with onscreen lyrics on YouTube, you are only sort of half-listening to the song while you focus on the battle, so you don’t realize right away that the battle music is the boss singing to you to seduce you into her flock even while you’re fighting her.
It very much depends on your taste in music, but Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice OST is absolutely amazing, especially considering it’s all original scores (I think). After beating the game I put the OST on repeat for several days
A lot: amazing environments and scenery, cool combat with great enemy boss designs, very immersive exploration and the actress did an awesome job throughout it. The “puzzles” bits were a little pain to beat, but everything else was top notch; story was also very cool and made me feel the burden Senua’s carrying.
Caveats with hollow Knight story: you won’t know a lot about the story until you watch mossbag videos after getting to one of the endings.
Hades (OST + gameplay + story)
Genshin (OST + gameplay + story)
Caveats with genshin gameplay: only the exploration and some quests are good. All other gameplay should be ignored (or doused with fire). The exploration is actually one of the best open world exploration I’ve played, and I’ve played Witcher 3, botw, AC: black flag, arkham series, and more.
Caveats with genshin story (context: currently on version 4.0+):
Side stories released on or after 2.0 are good.
Main stories released on or after 3.0 are good.
All other stories are generic af and Paimon is annoying.
Definitely gonna try Hades, since 2 people already mentioned it prior to you. Actually I’m a sorta genshin regular, and the OST is an absolute masterpiece. Dragonspine is probably my fav. Which region is your fav in terms of OST?
I would argue the gameplay falls short of revolutionary. Several parts are frustrating but 90% of the time it’s a decent balance of rewardingly challenging timing & platforming vs. “press X and just watch your character do the sickest flip, yo” dumb fun.
The killer tunes, kickass visuals (one of the best early cel shaded games), lighthearted but spunky lore and just overall vibe make it a genuine classic. If you’re on the fence about it opt for Jetset Radio Future, as its an entire console gen worth of polished vs. the original and imho the music is even better.
I’ve never even played the game and I love the soundtrack! Rémi Gallego (The Algorithm) also did a game called Hell is Other Demons (as well as a load of actual albums) which are all great too.
I can also recommend FTL, Risk of Rain and Risk of Rain 2. Really good OSTs, I’m listening to all of them regularly. They’ve also got great gameplay! But they’re rogue-likes so basically no story in case that bothers you.
Yeah, I think it’s also very impressive how they have different styles but are still very similar in some ways. Most noticeable with Arctic and Antarctic Oscillation.
And “The rain formerly known as purple”, “Coalescence” and “The raindrop that fell to the sky” are just soooo good. Could listen to them on repeat (and have done so (: )
Neir Automata has an absolutely banging soundtrack. You need to “finish” the game I think 3 times to see the final ending. Push through the run as 9s it is worth it. The ending has all the feels and the ending song is with it is phenomenal.
To The Moon has a beautiful soundtrack and a story which made me cry. It’s not a long game, I highly recommend it.
Syonara Wild Hearts is a video game music album. It’s really simple mechanically but the songs are great and it’s a proper Zen game.
Journey has a wonderful sound track, just get to like level 3 where your doing the big slide downhill and tell me that’s not magical.
Similar to Journey (but not quite as good) is Gris.
Bastion has some excellent songs and is a short experience.
Terraria has a brilliant soundtrack and great gameplay, very little story though. Great in multiplayer so find a friend.
Death Stranding has some great songs, a bit to spread out though. The story is Kojimas usual eclectic madness but I enjoyed it.
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