Ranking Every Final Fantasy Composer
Thousands of tracks. 28 major composers. How do they compare?
The Final Fantasy series has become renowned for many things throughout its storied history. Hugely immersive worlds and narratives, beloved characters and breathtaking visuals to name but a few. Special praise is often reserved for its musical scores.
Bar a handful of spin-off and mobile titles, every game in the series has been accompanied by an original soundtrack of anywhere from ten to two hundred tracks, depending on its scope. Each was typically the responsibility of a single individual from Square-Enix’s pool of composers, but collaborations have become the norm in recent years.
From high-octane battle themes and emotional character pieces to ambient background tracks and impactful scene music, almost every score has boasted a selection of instant classics (and plenty of duds for good measure), which are celebrated at events such as the Distant Worlds concert series and the annual Classic FM Hall Of Fame induction. Every composer has had their highs and their lows, some more than others, with each making valued contributions to a soundtrack collection that now numbers more than 5000 pieces of music overall.
How do each of them stack up against one another? Let’s find out!
29. Honourable Mentions
Given the immense scope of the series, there are plenty of instances where a musician has only been contracted to contribute a small number of compositions to a game predominantly led by others. As it would be unfair to compare such individuals to those who have crafted huge volumes of music, a cut-off point of 10 credited original tracks has been established to warrant inclusion on this list.
This therefore precludes six of the composers that worked on the recent VII Remake – Shotaro Shima (8), Yoshinori Nakamura (5), Yasunori Nishiki (5), Takafumi Imamura (3), Daika Ishikawa (2) and Keiki Kobayashi (1), as well as seven from XV – Mitsuhiro Ohta (3), Tsutomu Narita (2), Keiichi Okabe (1), Shota Nakama (1), Tai Tomisawa (1), Tomomichi Takeoka (1) and the renowned Dutch EDM artist Afrojack (2).
Other omissions include Ryo Yamazaki (6) and Al Yamashita (1) from the original soundtrack of XIV, Ayako Sasou (5), Kairi Ohkoshi (5) and Hayato Matsuo (5), who are accomplices to series mainstay Hitoshi Sakimoto, miscellaneous individuals such as Hayata Takeda (1 track for World Of), Keiji Kawamori (2 for Advent Children), Hiroshi Kaneko (1 for Lightning Returns) and the pairing of Junpei Fujita and Ryota Tomaru, who assisted in small doses on Brave Exvius.
Many of these have long histories as arrangers of the works of other composers. Some may well be future stars. They are celebrated regardless.