Ranking Every Final Fantasy Composer

Works: XV, Kingsglaive

Aside from Final Fantasy, many of Square-Enix’s other games are also beloved for their music, perhaps none more so than Kingdom Hearts, the Disney-themed franchise that is made up of nine games, the most recent two of which have frustratingly not been the recipients of official soundtrack releases. The sole composer of seven of those was Yoko Shimomura, who also led collaborative efforts on the other two.

Given that she has worked on behalf of Square-Enix since 1993, it was astounding that Shimomura wasn’t assigned to a single Final Fantasy title before XV, though it was still Versus XIII when she began creating tracks for it in 2006, a whole ten years before its actual release.

XV was of course a collaborative effort rather than a solitary one, but almost all of the games most breathtaking standouts are attributable to Shimomura. These include all variants of ‘Somnus’, the game’s signature track, as well as the heartful ‘Dewdrops At Dawn’ and ‘Ravus Aeterna’.

Few of the tracks created for the game's DLC episodes were her creations, indicating that she’d probably moved onto finishing up Kingdom Hearts III by that point, but her strong catalogue and longstanding relationship within the company should almost certainly see her let loose on another flagship title in the future.