Perhaps some lesser known soundtracks would be those composed for the Samorost games by Floex. They're all fantastic, weird, and minimal but organic sounding. I love them a lot.
The Last of Us is definitely the one soundtrack I listen to the most.
Honourable mentions: Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption 2, Far Cry 5, Heavy Rain.
Probably not the most unique take, but I still really love Minecraft's soundtrack (and other C418 tracks for that matter).
Ocarina Of Time and Super Mario 64 for sure.
Megaman and Donkey Kong Country also have some great chiptune music.
And The Witcher 3 for including so many different traditional instruments. The Elder Scrolls is also good.
Donkey Kong Country
Aquatic Ambiance has never not been on my cell phone(s)/mp3 player(s) over the last 20+ years and that's how I likes it.
Chiming in with the Professor Layton games on DS. It's a whole vibe, sort of jazzy and woody and folky. Specially love the live versions
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAO5Rhuesqh_AF94WPJyjwhlmDRRG-ybk
Only slightly on topic, but are you as hype as I am for the new one coming to switch??
Yep sad nothing got announced on the direct today but since we only got cinematics I assume it's still early development
Ghost of Tsushima has a very great soundtrack.
I also really appreciate all of the sea shanties in the various Assassin's Creed entries, but especially Black Flag
Saying that the Hades OST is my favorite soundtrack seems like the obvious choice out of Darren Korb's immaculate work on Supergiant's games is the safe pick. I'm still going to say it's my pick though.
Honorable mentions include Fastfall from Dust Force and the Metal Gear Rising Revengancs OST
Maximum Anarchy's soundtrack
Favorite instrumental soundtrack themes are from the early Silent Hill games. The theme from SH1 and the Theme of Laura from SH2 are classics.
Favorite lyrical songs used within the game for plot: Alan Wake has characters in it who are 70s rock gods called Old Gods of Asgard, and the creators got a group named Poets of the Fall to actually write the two songs that were featured from the game and they are actually really great songs. Poet and the Muse is a plot point and Children of the Elder God is played during a really good sequence.
The only game soundtrack I ever recall make a point of listening to is from Faster Than Light, it's some really good ambient music.
(Old fuck here) Final Fantasy 6 and Castlevania Symphony of the Night. And it's not even close. Other games I like have some solid bangers (Halo, Doom, Zelda, etc), but I love those 2 games whole OSTs.
The Xenoblade series has such great OSTs in general. If I have to pick just one track it's probably Engage the Enemy
I'm currently hooked on the Bomberman 64 soundtrack again. That intro cutscene music and the world select still please my eardrums!
The Messenger has amazing music harkening back to the 8 and 16bit stuff from the MegaMan games. Underrated game in general too.
Super Mario Galaxy
Diablo IV has a killer soundtrack.
silent hill and no more heroes are both franchises with amazing soundtracks.
I love the Final Fantasy theme, in all its incarnations. But given how much I've played X4 Foundations, the original main menu music has really taken hold in my brain. And more recently, the Kingdom End DLC main menu theme.
The Chrono Cross soundtrack is just beautiful. I particularly like the opening song "Scars left by time"
Kk Slider slaps
This will be unconventional, but I loved the music from Darksiders Genesis by Gareth Coker, the same composer who did Ori.
Best 3 tracks in my opinion are tracks The Beacons, Astarte's theme, and the Credits/trailer theme.
My favorite game music comes from A Dance of Fire and Ice, although it may seem obvious that a rhythm game would have to have good music. Divine Intervention is one of the highlights for me.
Darksiders II has a phenomenal OST. I still listen to that regularly.
That being said the Burnout 3 music was great but obviously not an OST
Xenogears and Chrono Trigger soundtracks, a lot of that is how they evoke good memories of playing the games long ago.
Ori and the Blind Forest
Cyberpunk 2077 has pretty damn good music with a large variety of styles. I love that they have almost exclusively artists Ive never heard of and whose great music Ive discovered that way.
Ultima VIII also had really good music, so perfectly eerie for this bromen world. From the same artist also Wing Commander: Privateer.
Tyrian had a great soundtrack that sounded really oldschool 8 bitty and perfectly supported, nay made the athmosphere of the game.
Dune though, that has to be one if the best. What that artist produced using just the measley OPL3 FM synthesizers of the first soundcards? Absolutely incredible.
CP2077 has the best character creator music I've heard by a mile. Great for someone like me that spends over an hour in that sort of thing.
Dune was outstanding. If you haven't heard "Arrakis (Wormsign Remix)" from OCRemix, check it out.
The Marble Gallery theme from SotN is aboslutely burned into my mind still.
Umm...let's try going through the ages
I was like 4: Gizmos & Gadgets ending theme. I'm pretty sure it's one of the few original songs The Learning Company did, there's very few clips of it because it was before even .wav was commonly used for music (due to file-size issues), it's a really cheerful song
Early Childhood: Space Quest 6 Main Theme is a bop, also Human 3 from the base game of Warcraft 2, and Orc 6 from the expansion. I miss the less ambient and more intense Warcraft music.
Listened to a lot of anime music around wc3's time...but peak music at the time was Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, plus Phantasy Star Online thanks to the dreamcast. Especially 'Pray For IDOLA The Holy'. Grandia II also giving the Ver.3 and Ver.4 boss fights.
Nowadays with great music being everywhere? Probably Persona 5 in general.
Hard to pick just a few tracks, but some of my favorite original soundtracks are:
Nier Gestalt
Persona 5
The Witcher 3
Stellaris
For licensed ones, I particularly like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Life is Strange: Before the Storm.