Games you love in large part due to the soundtrack?

For me, I'd say the biggest one would be Septerra Core. That game has a lot of repetitive battles, but I just love the battle music (thanks Marty O'Donell). I'm not sure I'd rank it anywhere near my favourites if it wasn't for its music.

Also, I doubt I'd have been able to beat Super Hexagon without its music getting me pumped to dodge random lines and shapes. In fact, I probably would have given up pretty quickly otherwise.

Oh, and the early THPS games - particularly #2.

The obvious pick for myself would naturally be Hotline Miami. That game loses 90% of it's charm without it's pumping soundtrack.

I really love the visuals and relaxed gameplay in Journey and Abzu, but the music in both is also a really big part of the athmosphere and some of the scenes would've been way less impactful without the music.

I guess I don't necessarily love Undertale and 'am not even a huge fan of it, but some of those tunes kinda instantly became real earworms the moment I heard them and still come back to play in my head frequently. I sometimes kinda want to play it again just to hear them, even when Youtube exists.

THPS games are also definitely high up there because of the soundtracks.

Owlboy is an excellent game! The Score to that game however is one of the best I've ever heard for a game like that :D

I also found the music in Undertale to be amazing, even if the game itself was quirky but not amazing.

Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours. It's a good shooter, but the Darius series has always been boosted from "good" to "great" territory largely on the back of its music. Zuntata is great.

My love for Super Mario 64 runs much deeper than just the soundtrack, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a huge part of why that game stayed with me and sparks such intense nostalgia all these years later.

@viking_funeral: I really liked Undertales music as well. Then I read an article about leitmotifs and how the game basically lives off it and it made me fall in love with the music instead.

The best part about Hyper Light Drifter is the exploration, which would lose a lot of its luster without the excellent ambient soundtrack.

This song in particular, but the entire JSRF OST is amazing in my opinion.

@militantfreudian: I've listened to the HLD soundtrack for months. Put a lot more time into the soundtrack than it took me to play the game.

Other games I would throw out would be Ori and the Blind Forest. It's a great game overall but its soundtrack is also amazing. On the other hand, I love the soundtracks of the Banner Saga games but don't really enjoy the gameplay..

Super Hexagon is a great example, I'm with you there.

I think Okami benefitted greatly from it's soundtrack, I didn't have much of a problem with some of the more padded/tedious sections because I'm still not tired of the music.

And when talking about repetitive games that at least get carried by their soundtracks a little bit, Bullet-Hell comes to mind. Ikaruga is goddamn fantastic in it's own right, but the soundtrack might be what makes it.

Oh and finally. Asuras Wrath would not be half the spectacle it is if the music hadn't been as good as it is.

Yep, JSRF is the first thing that sprang to mind. So quirky and old-school. The track "Count Five or Six" by Cornelius would've worked well on that OST.

Tekken 3 has one of the best ever, also. 1:25 onward is glorious to my ears.

Silent Hill 2 and 3 are a trip-hop extravaganza. My fave by far.

Shadow of the Colossus and ICO's music wins the emotional resonance category. They soar, they crash, they flutter, they sink, and they pull the heartstrings. Kow Otani's work on Shadow might be the most standout musical creation in video game history.

The most prominent example for me is Crypt of the Necrodancer. I mean, sure, that game is nothing without its soundtrack but damn if it isn't good.

There are actually a lot of games that I've never played but of which I do love the soundtrack. Inversus is a game that comes to mind in this category.

It is amusing to me the Super Hexagon soundtrack comes up not because it is bad (I love it) but because I turned it off as I found I played better w/o the sound (I have almost 400 hours in SH, was top 200 on the hardest difficulty at one point but haven't played in over a year so that's probably gone).

I know I talk about this game a lot, but the soundtrack for Hollow Knight really makes it easy to lose a ton of time to that game.

The Ace Attorney franchise. The stories in those games range from "decent" to "good" (for the most part), but those games would likely be terrible if their soundtracks weren't good.

Chrono Trigger/Cross, amazing soundtracks!

I completed Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage with every character, partially because i don't mind the monotony of Dynasty Warriors style games which also have awesome soundtracks, but what drove me was the extensive heavy rock/metal soundtrack, it really gives the game its identity.
They reused the soundtrack for the poorly made sequel, but "remastered" it and in my opinion made it sound worse, most people don't realise this so most uploads of the first game's soundtrack are actually from the second.
Regardless, here's a sample.

I think there are plenty of games I love where the music being great is definitely a plus(Final Fantasy, Bloodborne, Undertale, etc.), but some games I love almost only because of the music.

I probably would've lost my emotional attachment to Kingdom Hearts long ago if the music wasn't so fantastic. Curse you Yoko Shimomura :'(

Asura's Wrath's story and characters are generic as hell and the gameplay is mostly uninteresting, but the over-the-top visuals helped largely by the music are amazing. The music is so powerful and makes me wish for more games with epic portrayals of Asian gods and mythology. Or for Chikayo Fukuda to get more work.

Very close to 100% of the games I play. I have a really hard time sticking with games without music or whose soundtrack doesn't work for me, and I can easily overlook flaws in gameplay if the soundtrack is really good (I've been singing praises for the soundtrack of the deeply flawed 7th Legion here for years already, so I won't embed a video of it this time around).

Trion's Defiance certainly was a game I kept returning to thanks to Bear McCreary's music, and Jeremy Soule had a big part in why I kept playing the Elder Scrolls games despite huge amounts of bugs that would make you lose hours of progress at regular intervals (the same could probably be said for Fallout: New Vegas, which played the original Fallout 1 and 2 soundtrack in some areas which I would regularly return to when I got frustrated with a mission taking place in an area where the framerate dropped to single digits).

Also, even though Star Trek Online reset the skill tree every time I logged in to the point that I gave up trying to make any progress in it, I still regularly logged on to hang out and chat in sector space around Earth just to listen to this song:

I still remember the amazing soundtrack from Super Mario RPG. I guess you need to focus on the melody when your music is 16-bit.

Doom. Hang on, I should clarify:

DOOM

an honorable runner-up from 2015 would be Transformers: Devastation, decent little game with a truly ripping ost

doom, undertale, persona

TellTale's first Sam & Max season had a fantastic, atmospheric jazzy score. It's the only game soundtrack I ever bought separately (and on CD, no less!).

Also, though I play the actual game with the sound off, Crusader Kings II's title theme is my favorite title theme of any game (with Baba Yetu from Civ IV close behind). Though it's not as intrinsic to the experience as Sam & Max's music, it never fails to get me really hyped up to murder my way up the medieval hierarchy.

A lot of Chrono Cross wouldn't work without that killer soundtrack

Rain is also a really good one, because like Journey it's basically just imagery and music to create a powerful emotional response.

Rise of the Triad (original, but remake as well). Largely a great game anyway, but the soundtrack just elevates it to an all-timer for me.

I mean, good god, man... in both MIDI and metal, it's just insanely good:

The best part about Mass Effect: Andromeda is that main menu screen suite.

Legend of Mana is on my list of favorite game soundtracks, a game I absolutely adore without finding it very much fun to actually play.

@thewildcard: Dreams of the Shore Near Another World is one of my all-time top video game tracks.

I love this game so much. I can't even...

Surprised nobody got in before me.

Hm, a game that I love because of the soundtrack (as opposed to "as well as the soundtrack")...

Guacamelee! is probably the best example of that. I didn't enjoy the game so much, but the music is catchy and varied!

Hollow Knight and Dust: An Elysian Tail had soundtracks that made being in those worlds all the more delightful. There are very few soundtracks I listen to outside of the game itself but both of these managed to be special. Helps that I love both games but the soundtracks remind me of all the wonderful moments I had when playing them.

@tobbrobb: holy shit I love Okami soundtrack sooooo much. That music just brings back such fond memories, thanks! But I loved everything about that game so doesn't really fit the question....

Hmmm off the top of my I'd probably say Luminous.

Definitely FURI for me. If it wasn't for it's visuals and specially it's soundtrack, I would probably never care about that game. As soon as I knew Danger did tracks for it and listened to the first track, I was all the way interested.

Also Marck Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure. I mean, I already liked the game anyway, but the fantastic soundtrack made me appreciate it even more.

I think these are the only game soundtracks that I still listen to outside of the games.

I have no interest in this game but damn this song is great.

Homeworld.

Although it's been a few years since I played the World Ends with You (I played the solo remix version on IOS for the record), the soundtrack is always what stands out to me. Additionally, I used to love the Kingdom Hearts series (1 & 2 mainly) but with time I've started to see its flaws. That being said, music in those games is fantastic, dearly beloved still gets an emotional reaction out of me to this day which is kind of crazy since I don't consider those game's stories to be exactly amazing. For whatever reason though their soundtracks always get me in the feels.

@militantfreudian: i love the shit out of that soundtrack, even if i havent gotten awfully far in the game itself.

Master Spy is definitely a game that fits this description for me.

Although the game goes from being alright to tedious, the soundtrack is easily the best thing about the game. Worth buying to get that soundtrack.

Honestly too many to count? Good music is incredibly important for me. Though, for games that I enjoy pretty much entirely for the soundtrack my brain immediately goes to Diddy Kong Racing: an otherwise okay-but-nothing-special racer with some of my all-time favourite pieces of game music.

I will never stop using these threads to try to convince people that Ace Combat 4, 5, and Zero have great music. I freakin' loved those games. I didn't get as deep into AC 6 or Assault Horizon, and I can't help but think that is in part because, to me at least, those two games had weaker soundtracks.

While I do love the big "final battle" pieces of music (AC 5's The Unsung War, AC 4's Megalith -Agnus Dei-, and AC 0's Zero), a lot of the other music in the series is real good.

...This just made me realize I would give an arm and a leg for a good remaster of the PS2 Ace Combat games...

Final Fantasy 7, as cliche as it is.

Music is one of the biggest memorable things for me in gaming. I remember feelings and what was happening in a game by listening to music. I can hum or whistle a hundred songs off the top of my head from games throughout my entire gaming history. I absolutely adore a game soundtrack that speaks to me. Don't mind my spam... Looking back at my list here the biggest through line I see is "japanese", followed by "rpg". There are dozens of other games I listen to some or most of the soundtrack to. Some have already been listed in this thread. There are some small bits of soundtracks I love while the rest is fairly unremarkable to me, however the stuff listed here I like the majority of the soundtrack. Now I'm going to go back and listen to a lot in this thread that I don't already know.

Chrono Cross. Fell in love before playing, barely remember the game.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Nier. Seriously, just listen to the whole fucking soundtrack and automata, holy hell they're amazing.

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight. One of the newest and bigger surprises for me for this category, frankly all around mood and atmosphere are absolutely stellar.

Xenogears. Never even it beat it, I love the soundtrack.

Katamari Damacy. I mean come on.

No More Heroes. Jeff: "Styyyyyyylllllle"

I love pretty much all the soundtrack to the Amiga version of Turrican 2, but this one always stood out for me.

It's cheesy and dumb but I love Metal Gear Rising's OST. Metal Gear in general has great music. Yakuza also has some songs that are hype as hell.

Godhand is really something else though.

Also Streets of Rage 2.

Is it weak to toss in Journey?

The Curse of Monkey Island

Danganronpa V3 came out in January in Japan (and doesn't come out until September over here!), but I've been listening to the OST a buuuuuuunch ever since its release. Masafumi Takada's work on the DR series specifically is excellent, and he steps it up even more in V3. Those games have a sound that can't really be found in any other games, even other games that he specifically has worked on outside of the DR series. I originally got into those games largely because of the music, too, so it's great that those soundtracks just keep getting better.

I'd link tracks, but I'm trying to stay relatively unspoiled leading up to the game's release, and YouTube is a spoiler minefield; tracks for stuff like the Monokuma Kubs' theme and Brain Driver do a great job of just making the game as a whole more quirky/fun/bizarre. The Scrum Debate theme is also really good.