Ranking Every Final Fantasy By Their Soundtrack

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII OST: Tracks - 74, Composer(s) - Masashi Hamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta, Mitsuto Suzuki & Nobuo Uematsu, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII OST PLUS: Tracks - 25, Composer(s) - Masashi Hamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta & Mitsuto Suzuki

Lightning Returns was the second follow-up to Final Fantasy XIII. It's open to debate whether the game needed one sequel, let alone two, and the gameplay experience received a mixed critical reception as it wrapped up the story of Lightning and company.

Four composers were involved in the creation of its soundtrack including Nobuo Uematsu, who contributed three chocobo themes, none of which are up there with his best. The rest of the work fell to his three counterparts, who crafted a solid if unspectacular soundtrack that is perhaps less memorable than it deserves to be as a result of the game's storyline, as something is lost when great pieces of music aren't accompanied by similarly great gameplay scenes

The game makes use of a clock, resulting in different tracks scoring different environments (sometimes radically so) depending on the time of day. This certainly helps to keep things fresh as you continuously explore the same four locations. Each of these gets their own battle themes, with 'High Voltage' and 'Crimson Blitz' (a remix of XIII's battle theme) standing out as high octane pieces.

Other highlights include the subtle 'Meeting You', the emotional 'A New World', 'Divine Love', which kicks off the game's final battle and the 'Epilogue' that wraps things up once and for all. Love is also shown for XIII and XIII-2 in 'Humanity's Tale', which incorporates four of their best tracks.