Board 8 > I rank VGM (2025 edition) [ranking]

(+) Yeah! (+)

Here is my ranking of 305 video game songs, as nominated by you.

Normally I make a big fuss about the process behind the ranking and what it was like to go through everything, but Im going to skip that so we can dive right in. Some general notes:

- Each song will be unveiled from the bottom up with a writeup. I did all the writeups in advance so I was able to spend plenty of time on them! You will also get to see each songs overall placement on my big vgm sheet (out of 7234 songs). Finally, each song also has composer data! Some of this was harder to find, but I tried my best. When you are eliminated, I will also provide your "lucky song," aka the song on my sheet that corresponds to your average placement.

- Here is the spreadsheet for the topic (thank you NFUN!). It will have all kinds of fun stuff as I start plugging in the drops:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QV9HKgx8LKUhyNfl4b3jnNwMWOFf3FSno0IMIAkjdaA/edit?pli=1&gid=0#gid=0

- There is one 10/10 song. Not only that, it nabbed 15th place in my overall sheet. Thats pretty huge

- The average rating of all 305 songs is 7.032786885. This is slightly better than the 2024 rankings average of 7 exactly. Nice work, everyone!

- And a question: What pace would you like me to go at? I would love it if people listened along with the drops, but I dont want to go too slow. I was thinking somewhere between 3 and 5 drops a day. What do you all think?

Thats it! Stick around for our bottom placer

/End of Topic

Taggy tag

I like a lot of drops per day so 5 sounds good to me.

Tag

trying to decide if i should count my mizuno noms under myst-like or action-adventure lol. def a bit rough to not have a regular adventure or vn tag

happy with any pace personally, as long as it's not like... you know, never being finished lol

Gasp

Tag

Tag I guess

Tagging. Excited to see how this turned out. =)

As for pacing, I guess it depends by how soon you want it to be done. 5 posts a day will make this finish by a day after 2 months, and 3 a day will instead make this last about 3 and a half months bare minimum.

I'm fine with either or, but I'm assuming you'll want to wrap up before the new year starts?

Please tag me when my submissions get the boot. Ta.

RPG music >

Selected Rhythm on impulse, but looking at the whole thing Platformer definitely is a candidate for me too. There's more platformers with more consistent hits than any rhythm game, but also a lot of the highest highs most rhythm games can hit with at least a song or two are better than most entire platformer osts, so idk

Also looking very forward to the ranking of course lol. Both 3 and 5 sound good to me, I probably would prefer closer to 5 though cuz im impatient lmao

~ 1.5/10 ~

305/7140
Limbus Company - Canto VIII Boss 2 Battle Theme (Lei Heng)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X70m65dSM7g
Studio EIM
@Pirateking2000

Link has been replaced to something that doesnt sound like its being played through a wall of Styrofoam.

This is an energetic song that screams intense boss battle. There are loud guitars and ominous chanting, the true markers of intense boss battles across all of gaming. It is very loud. All of the instruments are being played at eleven. I like that it mixes up the time signature at parts, thats sort of fun, but this is definitely not a song for me. Honestly I find it kind of unbearable for much of the runtime! This style of music certainly has plenty of fans, but I just zone out when I hear those loud guitars and interchangeable Latin singing.

Tag.

I'm hopeful for at least like 3 of my songs. I did a mix of "songs I think rwlh might like" and "songs I like and let's see what happens", but I'm hopeful for at least the former.

Sorry if I nominated one of my songs for something of yours before. I got this sneaking sense of deja vu after already submitting nominations, but couldn't find any hard evidence that one of mine was a repeat. But obviously I couldn't find every VGM thing that has ever happened in this community to check...

Tag

Feels like 1 or 2 or my songs will drop early!

tag

That's pretty good for a last place! Studio EIM boss themes are good at punching really hard, this ones right out the gate with BAM BAM BAM BAM and that makes me sit up and take notice. Yeah it does kind of turn into mush after a while but at least its epic mush.

Limbus Company - Canto VIII Boss 2 Battle Theme (Lei Heng)

Man this song really does not leave any room to breathe lmao, makes it a bit harder to appreciate what it's doing while it's doing it - but most all of the melodies hit for me and the instrumentation is unique. You can feel the emotion of the struggle taking place, even if you can't quite place the how or why. idk why it ends like that but i think that might be an upload thing honestly.

I wouldn't be surprised if this makes top 10% of the songs for me lol, but i can understand for sure why one may not like it.

tag

I like Lei Heng's boss theme a lot, but it feels like something is missing. I think it's that everything is so even dynamically. Some more contrast both in terms of downtime and in making the fight feel like it has ups and downs would be nice.

it's still like a 7.5 from me though >_>

Two more tonight and that should give everyone time to listen if you want. Thinking doing 5 a day, 2 in the morning and 3 in the evening (for my time zone). Hopefully that works!

~ 2/10 ~

304 / 7056
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Galeem/Dharkon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0CCYTRx82k
Hideki Sakamoto
MegaWentEvil

I think I need to add ominous epic choir to my list of dislikes next time around. I dont always dislike it, but its such a common vgm trope that the songs become largely indistinguishable to me. I dont even really like the SSBU main motif all that much, so hearing a song that revolves around it so much doesnt thrill me. And its got screechy violin on top of that! I like some of the little moments, like the transitions between the different parts, but yeah this isnt for me.

-

~ 2.5/10 ~

303 / 7003
Veritus - Revulan's Wing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI_m5iVNH5g
John Sinclair
Simoun

This song didnt give me a headache, but only because I already had one. Its very LOUD. This is a loud song. I dont mean volume; I mean sound design. Everything is happening all of the time with no variation. This isnt inherently a bad thing, but I dont really like any of the sounds. Its all this synthy epic orchestral-rock, which tends not to be something I really gravitate toward. This would probably play better in a lot of other peoples rankings.

The genre of epic choir is one where when it hits, it hits hard, but when it misses, it's just the most wet fart of a song. I can think of many songs in that genre that work for me and many more that ... just don't.

Galeem/Darkon feels emotionally flat to me. I dunno.

Revulan's Wing, on the other hand, feels really cool to me. I like the combination of sounds a lot :)

rwlh posted...

~ 1.5/10 ~

305/7140
Limbus Company - Canto VIII Boss 2 Battle Theme (Lei Heng)

I don't know what I expected, but I guess I thought it would either be something pretty universally aversive or something ultra-normie, and this was neither of those. I can't imagine too many people would find this song all that offensive. Not saying it's peak content, but it certainly deserved better than a 1.5

rwlh posted...

~ 2/10 ~

304 / 7056
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Galeem/Dharkon

This fits more along the lines of what I meant by ultra-normie. Not something that bothers me, but I know that what it does is very...Fire Emblem. And that this isn't always going to score points in rwlh's book.

rwlh posted...

~ 2.5/10 ~

303 / 7003
Veritus - Revulan's Wing

"This would probably play better in a lot of other peoples rankings." -- it would play just fine in mine. I appreciate the intensity of the sound texture. Oh hey, and these are the people who made Prodigal and Curse Crackers. I thought I recognized the name.

here we go!!!!!!!

Tag.

I vote as many as you can reasonably post per day

survived bottom 3 hellll yeah

Time to talk about my own feelings on all of these songs.

rwlh posted...

~ 1.5/10 ~

305/7140
Limbus Company - Canto VIII Boss 2 Battle Theme (Lei Heng)

Oh hey, my brother's been pushing hard on me about Limbus Company. He even told me I have an ID of the Sinner Mersault who is based on this particular boss. That being said, I'm only up to Canto V, so I have no clue about the context here. That being said, I like the high octane energy of this one with the slight Oriental influence fluttering in the back, which makes sense given this was the Canto dedicated to Hong Lu. I understand why it's at the bottom, but I like this. It's cool.

rwlh posted...

~ 2/10 ~

304 / 7056
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Galeem/Dharkon

Oh hey, someone nominated this, nice. As a song overall, it's solid. I genuinely think the epic choir is utilized well here, and I'm always a sucker for a violin. Plus, as a tributary reprise for Lifelight, the main theme of SSBU, this does the job beautifully, serving as an excellent climax to the story mode. That being said, I'm not usually looking for this on casual listens, as while it's amazing in the moment, I would describe it as good and solid otherwise, certainly a song with great highlights, but I tend to veer towards other Smash songs before this one. I like it, but it's not a favorite.

rwlh posted...

~ 2.5/10 ~

303 / 7003
Veritus - Revulan's Wing

Okay, a synth rock piece with a bit of a Nordic flair in terms of tone and rhythm. Pretty cool track, it feels like a very high energy situation where everyone is fighting for their lives, and I dig it. Not much else to say, I enjoyed it.

Smash 4 OST salesman that I am, I have to say that games 3 final boss themes are all more interesting than this.

Revulan's Wing does get too busy at times, but when the bells arent getting drowned out they work well to contrast the other high-intensity sounds. And I like the call-and-response sections (of course) which also serve as a break to full focus on a few sounds with no distractions. Id probably rank it above average.

i guess i'll listen as we go and post some thoughts

limbus company
we are about 1:30 in and we have had 4 wildly different musical styles so far. there is no consistent theme here. it's just a mashup of different things 'that should be boss music'. this theme then continues. it's just a lot. i don't mind some elements but it just doesn't work for me.

ssbu
i love me some good latin choral chanting but this is pretty generic. and the rest of the song is just... not great. it sounds like overproduced orchestra for the first bit then it just becomes the ssbu theme. which is in and of itself one of the more whelming ssb themes.

veritus
okay this one is actually really cool. it kinda gives nightwish vibes at points melodically and i love the use of bells in it. bells in vgm are so underrated. justice for revulan's wing! it doesn't belong down here at the bottom :(

Oh, I'm so happy some of you are listening along!

Expect the 2 morning songs when more Americans are awake lol

Hello. I am very American fellow. I am awake wide, ready for songs continuing.

I like listening in early morning time. Thanks to you, and have good day ending.

Tag for later

302 / 6989
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach - On The Beach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE85evhwRSE
Caroline Polachek
MaxGalactica

On paper this might seem like something Id enjoy. Maybe? I dont know. It was nominated, so I have to imagine the nominator felt like I would enjoy it on some level. But boy did I not enjoy this. I cant put my finger on why exactly, but I find the whole thing unpleasant. It actually reminds me of last years last placer, Breathing Underwater from Rocket League; even though those songs are worlds apart, On the Beach feels indeed like Im breathing underwater.

Maybe its all the autotune? Im not big into autotune and its dripping off this singer. Ill say this: it didnt make me uncomfortable or angry or a host of other negative emotions I feel from the music at the bottom of my spreadsheet. I disliked it a lot though!

-

~ 3/10 ~

301 / 6887
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards - Taking Battle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z8pNk3BFDY
Jun Ishikawa, Hirokazu Ando
xx521xx

I like a lot from this soundtrack, but not this song. It sounds kind of annoying? Like Im being taunted on a playground by mean little schoolchildren. The melody is too high-pitched for me to really enjoy it, and I also dont like the part around 0:35 where it gets all squelchy; usually I like that stuff but this song does it in a way I find irritating. Sorry, but this ones a miss.

I haven't played ds2 or heard the song yet but I love Caroline Polachek in general

I recognized her name but I'm not familiar with her other work. I don't know a lot of music from the past decade (assuming that's when she's been active).

for some reason i expected On the Beach to have I'M ON A BOAT levels of energy. It was weird, and weird is cool, but I'm not eager to listen to it again.

Taking Battle doesn't do it for me either. Sounds a little generic. I almost said it sounds like normal Kirby music but it really doesn't -- it just sounds like a run-of-the-mill "silly things are happening" RPG theme.

Limbus - I really like all the parts of this song but Im not sure the sum is worth it.

Smash - Its comfort food. Lifelight is nice to listen to but a weak leitmotif. It just doesnt have stickiness to me.

Veritus - Good but forgettable. I like the visuals.

honestly did not expect this but damn i've fallen in love with taking battle immediately LOL. i understand the criticisms but to me it feels like a weird (and very fun) twist on the usual kirby compositional style that i love. pretty much agree with you on most of the other songs so far though

The only Ultimate boss theme I ever return to is Galeem (the solo battle), the rest always felt very forgettable to me.

Tag

I actually like the first three songs lol especially Limbus

300 / 6870
Puzzlejuice - Mojito Punch (Impossible Mode)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxF6HuXBug
Big Giant Circles
@Chaeix

I like Big Giant Circles but man this song does nothing for me. I cant even put my finger on why. On an objective level, the pieces are there for a compelling listen, but nothing gels for me at all. The combination of glitch and symphonic seems like a slam dunk for me, right? Maybe its the feeling that Ive heard tons and tons of songs before that sound like this, so my auditory processors take minimal interest in it. It also feels a bit insubstantial, like theres nothing there for me to grab onto, no neat aspects or hooks. I apologize for the vagueness of this writeup but I find this song baffling. Why does it exist? Who is it for? Not for me, clearly.

-

299 / 6863
Friday Night Funkin': Vs. Rewrite - Trinity Encore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_AEnOGOxUA
Springless
@Kecleon352

Theres a lot going on in this song, wow, even without the video accompaniment, which I didnt even watch the first time around. There are references to classic Sonic songs Green Hill Zone and Stardust Speedway feature prominently but the bulk of it is original, FNF content: a music battle between Boyfriend and another character. In this case, its somebody named Rewrite, who I guess is also Sonic and Sonic.exeI didnt do a deep dive on the lore or anything but I think I got the gist of it (or maybe I didnt). Its over eight minutes of a fight between the two that changes in tempo, intensity, and even style, with a spoken word section near the end, which even features a reference to everyones favorite Sonic song, Can You Feel the Sunshine? Theres even an interesting lyric:

Your world is a mirror
Of yourself
And never the other way around

and after all of that, I still found itkind of dull?

For me, the key to a good FNF mod song is to not rely on the same tricks repeatedly. Trinity Encore makes the crucial mistake of not really changing up too much throughout its run; despite those aforementioned changes, its still largely the same song by the end. If I was more into the main idea to start with, that might not be so bad, but as much as I appreciate some of the bolder artistic choices, at the end of the day I really just wasnt into it. I have nothing against long songs but I dislike coming out from an experience of any kind feeling like my time could have been better spent elsewhere.

It's generally better with the video, so if you like this stuff, Id give it a watch with the video, which helps contextualize some of the musical choices and also features some impressive visualization.

It warms my heart to see all this crazy shit from the next generation of VGM composers cutting their teeth on Friday Night Funkin' and Roblox

rwlh posted...

302 / 6989
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach - On The Beach

Positives, the singing is pretty nice, and the overall beat is pretty solid. However, that's about it for me. It's a very meandering song with a pretty vacuous feeling to it. You know those monochromatic music videos with the vocalist appearing to be falling and drowning in the water for the majority of the runtime? Yeah, it sounds like one of those songs. Not particularly bad, just really not my thing.

rwlh posted...

~ 3/10 ~

301 / 6887
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards - Taking Battle

Huh. This is a Kirby 64 song I have never really heard before. I kinda dig this, it has a fun melody that I really like. The only problem is that it's overall a little plain in the composition department, and it's kinda short. Otherwise, yeah, this is pretty cool, I liked it.

rwlh posted...

300 / 6870
Puzzlejuice - Mojito Punch (Impossible Mode)

Awesome beat with some really cool bits of instrumentation in there. It definitely has a solid style that it commits to, and the futuristic synth sounds is fun to sit back and vibe to. Solid background music, it's a bit dull sitting there focusing on it as it is pretty repetitive, but in the background while focusing on other things is great for it. I enjoyed it enough.

rwlh posted...

299 / 6863
Friday Night Funkin': Vs. Rewrite - Trinity Encore

Oof! Ow! Okay, I understand that taking a swing of doing nothing but FNF was a wild one, and would probably leave some misses, but I genuinely thought this one was one you would vibe with. Darn, but let me throw down some context for your troubles.

So this is a song that blew me away during the first half of the year. It features Rewrite, who is in essence a malicious computer program disguising itself and playing upon the tropes of a classic Sonic.EXE program in order to lure in victims to steal their souls, hence why in the video you see characters like Majin Sonic, Sonic.EXE 2011, and Lord X in rapid succession. That's all him, as is the whole game for the most part.

The thing that appeals most to me about this song is the variety. Every single opponent BF faces brings a different style of the song. Every part feels fresh and makes the really long run time just fly by, in my opinion. And every character is represented really well. But the star of the show, for sure, is Rewrite in the halfway point. After the wild ride that is the first half fighting the three .EXE characters, especially Lord X right at the end, the song seems to reset essentially as you just have a pleasant bit of singing against Rewrite that drives up in intensity until the sudden drop.

And those lyrics are just...truly some of the best I've heard in the FNF space, even going up some of the big hitters I enjoy like Silly Billy from Hit Single Real or TwiddleFingers from...uh, TwiddleFingers. They're fast but very concisely written with the rapid pace they're sung in, and the visual imagery it presents through the words is just awesome. I personally love this song, but I understand that it won't work for everyone. Hence is the nature of these songs, I suppose, but this is definitely a favorite of mine, at the very least.

(Oh, yeah. And anyone wanting to listen to this probably should look for gameplay footage instead. The visualizer is what I sent and is good, but the visuals of the mod itself are some of the most epic things I have ever seen. So...do that instead, please.)

the animation on the sonic fnf thing is off by like a 10th of a second and it is driving me off the wall. it might just be my computer, but i don't want to run proper experiments to check because the camera bops are the worst regardless. But moreover,I don't get what the song is going for. I don't like the heavy beat with the lightness of Green Hill Zone at all, and maybe it's supposed to be an unnerving contrast, but it just feels awkward to me.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Galeem/Dharkon

Y'know, personally I don't think being somewhat generic in terms of the genre a song is going for automatically takes away all its value of being a good song. And I really think Lifelight gets a bad rap, it's one of the more iconic original leitmotifs in Smash imo. That said, this song is still definitely a bit generic lol. I feel like it could sell the "light and dark are fighting" a lot better than it does, there could be a lot more deliberate contrast in the theme but instead it's basically just "final boss theme". This is good, but I still think vs. Galeem alone (heh) outshines it.

Veritus - Revulan's Wing

Not as much to say about this one, it's a solid song all the way through - gives me old Waterflame vibes at points especially with the violin, but not one that leaves a big impression either. I'm glad I listened to it, though its not a super "go back to" track.

I'll try to put the day 2 songs all in one post, lol.

oh hey it's a ranking topic i can nominate tian tian and-

-oh i missed noms this is the actual ranking i can't read-

rwlh posted...

Limbus Company - Canto VIII Boss 2 Battle Theme (Lei Heng)

good night

rwlh posted...

Not for me, clearly.

lmao this was one of the ones i picked solely because i thought you'd like it

Chaeix posted...

lmao this was one of the ones i picked solely because i thought you'd like it

rip

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