Ranking Every Final Fantasy By Their Soundtrack

Final Fantasy XV OST: Tracks - 96, Composer(s) - Yoko Shimomura, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV OST: Tracks - 39, Composer(s) - Yoko Shimomura & John R. Graham, Songs From Final Fantasy XV: Tracks - 3, Composer(s) - Florence & The Machine

A few months after its release, the dust has begun to settle on Final Fantasy XV, which balances considerable strengths with a number of gaping flaws, feeling radically unfinished in places despite more than ten years of development. As Square attempt to address this with explanations and downloadable content, composer Yoko Shimomura, making her debut on the Final Fantasy series after working on each of Square's Kingdom Hearts titles, can be content with the fact that she is responsible for one of the its best features - the soundtrack.

Numerous themes bring the game's main theme of brotherhood to life, whilst the main narrative that grows darker and darker as it progresses is well served by a mix of tense, emotional and hard-hitting tracks such as 'Somnus' and its variants, 'Apocalypsis Noctis', 'Tenebrae' and the tear-inducing 'Dewdrops At Dawn'.

Mainstream artists Florence & The Machine also got in on the act, contributing a mini-album made up of three amazing songs, their take on 'Stand By Me' being deep enough to bring tears to the eyes.

What is perhaps the game's greatest scene, meanwhile, has no soundtrack at all, as the leading foursome's campfire flashback shown during the game's ending is made all the more poignant by the presence of just ambient background noise.

As a slight negative, the dungeons in which much of the endgame takes place are rendered somewhat dull by the compositions that accompany their repetitive layouts, but elsewhere, the likes of 'Ardyn' and 'Luna' do more for their characters that their underwritten parts in the storyline do. 'Hunt Or Be Hunted' also leads a host of well-crafted battle themes.