In the realm of music, the mainline installments in the vast Final Fantasy series have a flawless track record. Countless songs have warmed the hearts of millions through decades of gaming. From the nine soundtracks composed entirely by the genius composer Nobuo Uematsu, to the slow but steady changing of the guard towards Masashi Hamauzu, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Masayoshi Soken, Junya Nakano, and other talented folks, there's something here for everyone.

Ranking something so near and dear to fans is no easy task, and we're making zero claim to the notion that our thoughts are remotely definitive. How could they be? But, if nothing else, we hope you enjoy this whirlwind tour of the franchise.

Concerning Our Exclusions:

The definition of 'mainline' gets rather tricky sometimes. We've decided to add notes for each direct sequel's OSTs, but not full-blown list entries. We'll give Final Fantasy 7 Remake its own slot, but we'll get it if you disagree with that move. And while Final Fantasy 11 and Final Fantasy 14 unequivocally do count as mainline, the sheer number of tracks through the years - each expansion gets enough music for a whole game in its own right - makes including them feel a little unfair to us. Maybe one day we'll rank all their OSTs separately...

16 Final Fantasy 3

How do we even begin with this list? None of these soundtracks are bad. Nobuo Uematsu has a handful of bangers in Final Fantasy 3, our favorite of which being 'Eternal Wind', the Floating Continent's world map theme. Beginning with a slow and steady approach, but always with that faster piece in the background, it eventually blossoms into something grander without ramping up the pace. FF3's Pixel Remaster comes across as a bit more adventurous, but maintains the grandeur.

There's just not much else that stands out to us relative to many of the other Final Fantasy OSTs. 'Crystal Tower' is a great final dungeon theme, and 'This is the Last Battle' includes an interesting, almost bullet-hell-like backdrop, but otherwise this score is outclassed.

15 Final Fantasy 2

Final Fantasy 2 embraces that lovely NES chiptune flavor. Rebel Army' is majestic, arousing in us all the fittingly rebellious drive that permeates through the game's story. The Pixel Remaster's orchestral rendition only heightens the splendor, especially around the midway point when it lets the melody simmer a bit in favor of something more delicate.

'Ancient Castle' was given a serious glow-up with the Pixel Remaster - an intriguing Neoclassical-esque spin. 'The Revived Emperor' has a handful of portions that feel straight out of 'One Winged Angel', er, we suppose it's the other way around. If there were more gems like these, we'd have to re-evaluate our ranking.

14 Final Fantasy

Truly, we do apologize to hardcore fans of the NES Final Fantasy soundtracks. We cannot emphasize enough, we really do enjoy them, and the original Final Fantasy is responsible for the creation of so many timeless recurring motifs. It's just that there is a combination of little issues holding them all back, from the more limited tracklists, to the lower-tech audio capabilities. But enough with the disclaimers.

Final Fantasy's soundtrack is frontloaded - 'Opening Theme' happens about 20 minutes into the game (not at the very beginning, though, as the name might suggest). 'Main Theme', AKA the world map theme, is fortunate it's so catchy given how grind-heavy the first game can be. 'Chaos Shrine' trumps all follow-up dungeon tracks with its haunting atmosphere portending a sinister history, and 'Matoya's Cave' is just plain fun. Many of the songs that play later on are less impressive to us, but memorable nevertheless.

13 Final Fantasy 12

Hitoshi Sakimoto's sole turn at the mainline Final Fantasy soundtrack throne, Final Fantasy 12 has all his trademark flourishes: some songs are sweeping and film-like, others are eerie, and in execution, few of them seem intended to draw the player's utmost attention. Rather, they're carefully created to supplement the scenery - which we reckon can be said to some degree about all soundtracks, but it's especially pronounced here.

That means there are fewer jaw-dropping songs in Final Fantasy 12's score, per se, but they mostly function as intended. (A few of the more jovial tracks don't quite gel.) 'Battle with an Esper' is the rare FF12 battle theme that commands one's attention, especially when the chorus kicks in. 'The Dalmasca Westersand' is the best of Sakimoto's many splendid environment themes; it's grim and foreboding, the opposite of 'Dalmasca Estersand', and it works. 'The Archadian Empire' is downright arresting, so regal, so imperial, so cinematic in tone.

If you dig Final Fantasy 12's OST, and you've not yet checked out Final Fantasy Tactics', amend that! We think it's peak Sakimoto.

12 Final Fantasy 13

Final Fantasy 13 sports a few songs so phenomenal, they very nearly push it higher up the list on their own incredible merits. 'Blinded By Light' is quite possibly the best normal battle theme in Final Fantasy. Heck, it makes a play for best battle theme in an RPG, full stop. The instant that violin kicks in, there's no stopping this song. This thing has over five million listens on Spotify for a reason. Masashi Hamauzu nailed it.

'Final Fantasy XIII - The Promise' is simply a gorgeous song, melancholy and emblematic of Final Fantasy 13's intensely character-focused tale. 'Sunleth Waterscape' is just bonkers fun; the piano is catchy, the lyrics are sensational, and the beat is, as the kids used to say, a mood. The trouble, then, is in many of FF13's other offerings. Don't get us wrong, there are good ones, but it's a touch ironic that we're not big fans of the battle themes beyond 'Blinded By Light'; Hamauzu goes hard for 'epic orchestral' and sometimes it just sort of drowns itself out into pure noise.

And as jazzy and swingy as 'Sazh's Theme' is, it doesn't quite come together as well as it perhaps should.

Sequel Soundtracks

Final Fantasy 13-2's soundtrack is an almost hilariously mixed bag, with highs not quite as up there as its predecessors, but still pretty good... and some serious lows. It's also got a much fuller cast of composers; Naoshi Mizuta, Mitsuto Suzuki, Kokia, and Yoshitaka Suzuki all join in the ride. 'Noel's Theme' is our favorite, and 'Limit Break!' is, uh, we'll call it an acquired taste and leave it at that.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13, whose composers include Masashi Hamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta, Mitsuto Suzuki, and (!) Nobuo Uematsu, fares better in our book. The titular 'Lightning Returns' goes back to the trilogy's roots with Hamauzu in his element again; 'Crimson Blitz' is a waker 'Blinded By Light' - which makes it great, just not legendary - and Mitsuto Suzuki's 'Almighty Bhunivelze' is the so-called Lightning Saga's finest final boss theme.

11 Final Fantasy 4

These next two are damn near interchangeable. Final Fantasy 4 shows serious growth from Nobuo Uematsu as a composer - growth that allows him to tap the then-new SNES sound chip for all it's worth for all three Final Fantasy games of this era. Final Fantasy 4's soundtrack is especially strong with its battle themes; 'Battle 2' is the first totally solid boss battle theme in the series, and 'Battle With the Four Fiends' contains multiple exciting scatter moments in which Uematsu ends the song's current part with unexpected flourish.

'The Red Wings' carries all the conflicted realities which plague protagonist Cecil early on, and 'Main Theme of Final Fantasy IV' is just another of Final Fantasy's lovely world map themes. As for the DS score arranged by Junya Nakano and Kenichiro Fukui, we're not huge fans overall, but some covers do pretty creative stuff with the source material. It's worth a listen.

10 Final Fantasy 5

The song that pushes Final Fantasy 5's score over the edge relative to Final Fantasy 4 is, predictably, 'Battle on the Big Bridge'. It's a bombastic earworm of a song that pumps you up with every listen. It's been given fresh remixes in several subsequent Final Fantasy titles, and for good reason. Square knew this one had a winning reputation.

While nothing else quite matches that one, plenty more are outstanding. 'Main Theme of Final Fantasy V' nails FF5's spirit of high adventure. It foretells a plot filled with fewer twists, but more lightheartedness, than either of its SNES brethren. 'Unknown Lands', the second of three world map themes, does a great job matching the mystery of the newfound world experienced by Bartz, Lenna, and Faris. And 'Dear Friends' gives its guitar such a cozy and gentle ambiance.

9 Final Fantasy 16

We've arrived at the most recent Final Fantasy game to bear the prestigious Roman numeral in its title. And what a soundtrack, right? Final Fantasy 16 tells a darker tale than most of its predecessors, if not all of them. But Masayoshi Soken and his band of co-composers didn't let that darkness permeate every track (which would be impressive, considering there are an astonishing 181 songs on it).

Many of its greatest hits, including 'Find the Flame', 'On the Shoulders of Giants', and 'To Sail Forbidden Seas' move with such fantasy rambunctiousness as to insist that FF16 is about a legendary hero writing his larger-than-life legacy with his every step, and in a way, that's kind of accurate as well. 'Hide, Hideaway', on the other hand, is one of the chillest pieces of music to bear such a medieval pulse that we've ever heard. The ending theme, 'My Star', is as bittersweet as the ending itself probably is.

The one thing holding Final Fantasy 16's soundtrack back is the lack of real orchestral performances in the composers' pieces. They could have been elevated ever higher if their final forms hadn't remained confined to a sequencer!

8 Final Fantasy 7

Final Fantasy 7's soundtrack is the classic example of a game with a fair number of standout songs, but a fair number of merely decent ones. 'Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII' is not only an excellent accompaniment to the cast's travels across the world map, but plays a crucial role in how well Cloud's true past is revealed when Tifa finds him in the Lifestream. 'Aerith's Theme' hardly needs an introduction; it's stunningly sad, and employed heartbreakingly well in context. 'Opening - Bombing Mission' sets the stage for an FF in all the right ways.

'JENOVA' and 'One-Winged Angel' are incredible battle themes, the former with its swift strangeness, the latter with its monumentally powerful take on 'Sephiroth's Theme'. It's just that, barring several exemptions, the rest of the soundtrack - in our minds - works far better in-game than on a soundtrack lesson separated from the game itself. 'Gold Saucer', 'Stolen Materia', 'Mining Town' - Uematsu's integration of FF7's every track is nigh-flawless, but we just don't love them as much on their own merits.

7 Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Goodness gracious, that's a lot of composers.

The Final Fantasy 7 Remake soundtrack manages to inject new life into its largely limited-to-Midgar (though clearly not entirely limited to Midgar) selection of Final Fantasy 7's tracks. Yet many of its best compositions are entirely new. 'Hollow', the vocal ending theme composed jointly by Nobuo Uematsu and Masashi Hamauzu, takes the Sector 5 Slums' 'Hollow Skies' - already an effective track - and elongates it into an incredible composition.

That's not to say the remixes fare notably worse; sacrilegious as it is to say in many fandom circles, we prefer the new stuff more often than not. 'Let The Battles Begin!' is given several separate forms for various big battling moments, all of which rock. 'J-E-N-O-V-A - Quickening' builds on itself numerous times, growing increasingly grandiose. 'One-Winged Angel - Rebirth', at over ten minutes in length, pulls off the same stunt, but even more strongly. All told, Square's assembled mass of musicians exceeded all our expectations.

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5 Final Fantasy 10

Final Fantasy 10 (look, we know everyone calls it 'Final Fantasy X', and for good reason - this is just a formatting tradition here) took the world by storm when it launched on PlayStation 2 in 2001. The graphics were breathtaking for their time, and while opinions are mixed on what 2013's HD Remaster did to certain characters' faces, the vivid color palette has never been clearer. The story, however - for all its lighter moments - is pure melancholy. The soundtrack reflects that.

Masashi Hamauzu's 'Besaid' is one of the grooviest town themes in gaming, but the grooviness is accompanied by a brilliantly understated piano theme. Meanwhile, Nobuo Uematsu's 'Zanarkand', with its pensive and sorrowful piano solo, was an instant classic that's still celebrated with raucous applause at Distant Worlds concerts. 'Suteki Da Ne' might well be Final Fantasy's most beautiful lyrical track, while 'Fight With Seymour' would be as at home on the dance floor as in the last skirmish with Seymour Guado. 'Ending Theme' is the epitome of FF10's aforementioned melancholy, playing pitch-perfectly in accordance with the game's unforgettable closing moments.

Sequel Soundtrack

Final Fantasy 10-2's (okay, that just looks weird) soundtrack is sort of a bop? But also... not? It's one of the weakest in the series overall, but '1000 Words' and especially 'Real Emotion' are both amazing. Love it or hate it, Yuna's newfound career sure did produce some good in-universe content. 'Eternity ~Memories of Light and Waves~' and the new 'Besaid' also stick out in a good way.

4 Final Fantasy 15

We're guessing here, but odds are decent that our fairly high placement of Final Fantasy 15's soundtrack will ruffle more feathers than many of our other rankings. Hear us out. The 'Volume One' soundtrack, on its own, is great. Just... about as great as, say, Final Fantasy 5's. It's the extra content put out in the two years to come, collected in 'Volume Two', that makes FF15's music soar.

We have singled out just two tracks, 'Apocalypsis Magnatus' (which we're thoroughly convinced was originally intended for grander usage than an Ignis and Noctis friendly spar) and 'Insomnia Ablaze', Royal Edition's tune for the much-improved final dungeon. But, as is customary with these OSTs, so many more could have been mentioned. Meanwhile, the base game is hardly bereft of winners, even if we're less enthusiastic about some of the twangy country bits. Opening theme 'Somnus' is quietly splendid, and 'Veiled in Black' is Astral-God-tier fighting fare.

3 Final Fantasy 8

Our three favorite Final Fantasy soundtracks all owe their origins to the discography of Nobuo Uematsu alone. The man is just that good. All three also contain the longest listings in our 'Standout Songs' column. We couldn't bear to leave any of these out. 'Liberi Fatali' is a dark and vengeful track that foreshadows the struggles of Squall, Seifer, and other 'children of fate'. Cleverly constructed as a real song within Final Fantasy 8's own world, 'Eyes on Me' is a sweet and tender love ballad that nevertheless soars into high energy by song's end.

'Force Your Way' is handily the best regular boss battle theme in the series. 'The Landing', which plays as Squall and other SeeD candidates approach the besieged town of Dollet early in the story, further illuminates Uematsu's ambitions to make Final Fantasy 8 a musical blockbuster all-around. 'Waltz for the Moon', an actual waltz, furthers the game's intended feeling of a 1930s Europe-esque setting, while 'The Man with the Machine Gun' is probably half the reason the character of Laguna Loire strikes so many fans as effortlessly cool (in spite of his real nature as sort of a bumbling fellow).

2 Final Fantasy 6

Nobuo Uematsu continued to hone his craft with FF4 and FF5, and by the time Final Fantasy 6 rolled around in 1994, he closed out the series' Super Nintendo days with one of his greatest professional achievements. Not a single song on FF6's OST is anything less than a masterful composition in its own right (OK, maybe 'Spinach Rag' is pushing it). 'Terra's Theme' is, of course, a mystical and wonderful World of Balance theme, though we would argue 'Dark World', the theme for the World of Ruin prior to obtaining the Falcon, is an underappreciated gem.

'Aria di Mezzo Careterre', the first of a trio of songs that play during the cherished opera sequence, got a neat upgrade in FF6's Pixel Remaster; the orchestration and vocals lift it ever higher. 'Searching for Friends' dares to be hopeful as the heroes fly through crimson skies above a planet so desolate and ravaged thanks to Kefka - whose titular 'Kefka' may as well be the theme song of every trollish personality who has ever lived. The last battle with Kefka, 'Dancing Mad', takes his very real madness and turns it into a pipe-organ-fueled adrenaline rush. And 'Balance is Restored' is a 17-minute ending cutscene medley that gives each protagonist in FF6's ensemble cast their moment to shine.

1 Final Fantasy 9

When Square was developing Final Fantasy 9, one of their goals was to create an entry that felt like a throwback to the earlier chapters, imbuing a sense of nostalgia in longtime fans. 23 years later and counting, and replaying Final Fantasy 9 is, for many of its diehard fans, a nostalgic experience entirely on its own merits. How can it not? Right from the jump, the flute in 'A Place to Call Home' feels like it is, indeed, calling us all back home. 'Vamo'alla Flamenco', led in E-minor with an authentic Flamenco guitar, is festive and fiery, and 'Battle 1' has the coolest usage of FF's recurring battle music motif.

'Over the Hill' is another inherently wistful piece, adding to that unmistakable sensation of the whole game as a trip down memory lane for veterans and newcomers alike. In fact, you know what? We hope it doesn't disappoint you, but we're not even going to talk about those other standout songs. We're just going to say it: they're all exquisite, darn it, and Final Fantasy 9 is an utter joy to replay in large part due to Nobuo Uematsu having quite possibly an even stronger fundamental, emotional, understanding of what FF9 was meant to symbolize than Hironobu Sakaguchi himself.

We're going to stop talking about this now. We're getting teary-eyed just thinking about 'Not Alone'.