Favorite music from games you've barely played.

I watched a playthrough of Sayonara Wild Hearts a few week ago (which might be a clue about what I'm into nowadays), so I started listening to some of the songs again. I bought the game with soundtrack years back, but have yet to actually play the game part myself. This is a similar situation for a few video games for me.

I learned about Frozen Synapse because a few tracks were plagiarized by another project (a hint about what I was into back then). I got the game and while I couldn't get into the mechanics, I listened to the music regularly. The composer, nervous_testpilot, did the OST for Fights in Tight Spaces, which I haven't gotten around to, but seems like it would be my jam.

Another example is Dustforce, which I bought after watching the Quick Look because one of the songs was so chill. I completed the first few levels and it's fine, but I have played the soundtrack for exponentially more time. Lifeformed made music for TUNIC, which I started listening to on Bandcamp. I'm likely going to buy that album before I consider picking up the game.

Are there video games where you've listened to the music much more than you've played the game? Feel free to share your favorite tracks.

WELCOME. TO. THE. FUTURE.

on a more serious note-

one of my favourite aesthetic/stylistic techniques is glitched and/or manipulated acoustic instruments. to that end, this piece of music is super fucking rad.and good lord, what a climax.

i have played neither of these games...i should probably fix that.

Working my way through the Yakuza franchise and I'm anticipating reaching Like a Dragon cuz I need to know the context for what this plays over.

I used to follow the artist Fantomenk years ago, every once in a while a new song would appear on his youtube channel then he did the soundtrack for a game called Rad Raygun and i'm not sure he's done much since, i haven't played the game but of course i got the soundtrack.
Something about how he organises a chaotic amount of sounds into "8-bit" music is great, i expect many people think of 8-bit music as being simple but this sounds so complicated.

Also... shoutouts to Ukraine i guess, this is from the "Super" Rad Raygun soundtrack, originally the track was called Chernobyl, named after the stage i guess.

This next track plays during a boss fight, i don't know if the fight lasts long enough for you to hear the whole thing but i love how it slowly evolves over time.

I played up to the second main palace in Persona 5 and fell off hard on account of how much I disliked the cast, but that soundtrack is a masterpiece.

I haven't played a second of this game, but the soundtrack is incredible.

Black Paradox OST

@mellotronrules: The music was definitely Remember Me's strong point. It carried the mood when the acting and setting couldn't.

For me, I'd say this one because I'm not a big fan of fighting games but I really love this one though.

@cikame: I love me some good chiptune. That reminds of something related. I really like the pixel animations of gobou. They make videos with characters from a game I never played, Yume Nikki, with music from games I usually haven't played either. The work is so expressive that I enjoy it regardless.

I saw a playthrough of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game before reading the graphic novels or watching the movie. It hasn't come to Steam, so I never played it, but the soundtrack is still fantastic.

I enjoy Danny Baranowsky's music, but lack the requisite rhythm to play Crypt of the Necrodancer. Great songs from what I've heard.

I really didn't care for how BattleBlock Theater played, but Stamper sure made funny voices.

Apparently, I bought Out There Somewhere during my badge collecting phase. Didn't know it had a banger track like this.

The soundtrack to Valkyrie Profile. I've never gotten past the first hour or so but I still own two different CD collections.

I've never played Granblue Fantasy Versus (or anything Granblue related) but I keep playing the OST on Spotify.

Anarchy Reigns is a shitty game I can't recommend, but the soundtrack goes hard and I love it.

@mellotronrules: Remember Me is a neat game and I've always felt it's underappreciated. It's pretty wild playing it now though, since alot of the characters look extremely like they could be in Life is Strange (same devs). Their other action game Vampyr is a flawed but very interesting game too, and I hope they get another shot at something different from LiS, because I feel they are on to something special.

The Neotokyo total conversion mod for Half-Life 2 seemed like an interesting project to me back in the day but turned out to be a rather mediocre CTF shooter spruced up with a very intriguing setting. I played maybe half an hour and uninstalled it.

That soundtrack though. For the mod, Ed Harrison (aka 0edit) created a 2-hour musical score that, to me, is the epitome of a cyberpunk score. This is what Ghost in the Shell or Akira would sound like if you made them music. It even overshadows Michael McCann's award-winning DE:HR soundtrack. This probably sounds hyperbolic. But I'm a 43 year-old guy and there are about half a dozen songs on the Neotokyo soundtrack that reliably make me cry.

So I'll just post a couple of those as appetizers and urge everyone to give the whole thing a listen. It's a masterpiece and firmly sits among my Top 3 OSTs of all time.

Scrap I/O:

Tin Soldiers:

Tachi:

The whole Youtube playlist:

Ed Harrison's Neotokyo

The soundtrack on Bandcamp (it's free, but maybe throw the composer a few bucks if you're so inclined):

Neotokyo GSDF and Neotokyo NSF

Haven't played Furi, but I own the soundtrack.

I remember watching the QL for this game, and the amazing defeat song. Never played the game myself, but somehow it's ended up being an OST I come back to every now and then.

There are two ways to look at this question. There are several soundtracks where I saw someone else playing through the game but never played through it myself (Undertale, Omori, Splatoon) but I feel like that would be cheating so I'm picking soundtracks or tracks where I know little about the game. Cuphead has an incredible jazz soundtrack when there aren't many of those around, and the Sexy Brutale similarly has a soundtrack which is pretty much one (amazing) song. Otherwise I mainly get soundtracks when I know the game well, so the rest of this will be single tracks.

It might be a joke song, but the ending song of Double Dragon Neon (by all accounts a pretty mediocre brawler) is a genuinely amazing rock ballad.

I heard this Kirby and the Forgotten Land minigame song during the quick look and had to immediately look it up. This song is a total jam.

To be fair, I did watch someone play through this entire game, but the Recreation theme from the Swapper is a great piano piece criminally few people know about.

I will definitely be checking out the other recommendations on this thread, so thank you for all the recommendations. Furi has a great soundtrack @prl412, I checked out the Remember Me track @mellotronrules, love orchestral tracks and I will be listen to the Neotokyo soundtrack @bulllee.

Edit: Just listened to the first suggested Neotokyo track, and it exceeded my expectations. I think I'll have to get the soundtrack if the rest is as good. Thanks again for the suggestion!

@nuttism: Some of the Double Dragon Neon credits song was likely channeled into The Impresario, Jake Kaufman's rock opera remix for Final Fantasy VI.

I have a soft spot for WayForward and like its style, but can recognize the clunkiness of the combat. Mango Tango was also a staple track in VGCW, so I remember it fondly. It seems like gameplay is snappier in River City Girls, which has a wonderful OST by Megan McDuffee.

I watch more playthroughs of games than I play myself. I end up buying the ones I really like, especially when they're bundled with great soundtracks. Even though I probably will never get around to them, I can listen to the music at work.

Groose's Theme from Skyward Sword, because of Saturday Morning Scrublords.

Never played this but its got some bangers.

Ah, River City Girls would've been my pick too!

Never played RR-DDD, but seeing it - and hearing the soundtrack - on UPF was enough for me to buy the album.

Also a game I've only watched being played, but have listened to plenty.

I did play Pyre for maybe 3-4 hours and listened to the soundtrack a lot more. I'm sure there has to be more examples, but that's the one I could think of right now.

This banger:

Not a big rhythm game fan but Um Jammer Lammy music rocks.

Yu-No (PC-98)

Fez

Flower

Overlord/Supremacy (NES & C64)

Rakuga Kids

The Smurfs (NES/SMS/GG/GB)

Pinball Illusions (AMI)

Utopia (AMI)

Thoroughbred Breeder II (SNES)

@facelessvixen: I didn't play much CvS2, so this became the theme of Friday Night Fisticuffs for me. Hearing it in the Get Into Fighting Games Intro always warms my heart.

@personz: I thought that sounded familiar, then saw it was the same person that did the Flintstones game, Dean Evans. There was no need to go all out on those licensed games. But tell that to Monomer, who made the OST for The Mummy Demastered.

@brainwins: Classic.

The entire soundtrack of Eternal Darkness is excellent and I haven't played the game ever, because I never owned a Nintendo Gamecube.

Bastion. I have the game on Steam and I've started it a couple times but despite loving the art style and the voiceover, I didn't like the way the combat felt so I dropped it. The soundtrack, however, is just astoundingly good. It might be in my top 30 or so albums - not just video game soundtracks but of any music. It really feels like a complete work, not a hodge-podge of background tracks, and there's only a couple tracks that I'd want to skip. It's really difficult to pick a favorite but this first track (after the awesome intro voiceover track) always grabs me right away.

Transistor OST is great too but the game was also enjoyable so I'll skip that. I haven't played Pyre but the Hades OST was rather unmemorable to me.

Here's another one, pretty sure i got this soundtrack because the game was shown on UPF, haven't played it, i love long build ups and loud scratchy noise (it was called Zombies. but got renamed).

Came across another while looking, it's for a pretty bad game but i love the music so much, i've always described this guitar sound as "programmed" and i adore how unnatural it is, same as the drums. Programmed drums with real guitar can sound a bit funny (less so these days as drum plugins got better), but when everything is programmed like this i love it, it reminds me of PC midi soundtracks in the 90's for games like Unreal Tournament.

@cikame: Played a fair bit of CLS/Zombies myself, but the soundtrack was definitely the best part of it over the pretty simple gameplay. Glad to be reminded of it, probably gotta listen to it a bunch now.

I'll say "Comodo" from Ragnarok.

Never played Phantasy Star 4 (or any other Phantasy Star), but the soundtrack is something that I put on every now and then. Behind the Circuit always is a standout for me, but the soundtrack is front-to-back killer.