The music for 4X games has to really build character for the game involved, since there's not a huge amount of pre-prepared story a lot of the time. Here are a few of my favourites from the wonderful world of turn-based strategy:-

Shoshone Peace Theme (Civilization V: Brave New World)
This is an emotional piece, recalling the experiences of the Trail Of Tears and the genocide committed against all of America's indigenous civilizations whilst still sounding absolutely majestic. It also makes a great companion piece to...

America Industrial/Modern Theme (Civilization 6)
Civ 6 is unique in 4X games for having music that actually shifts and becomes more complex as you advance through the game. This track is from the midpoint in the game, and is based (as are all the America tracks) on the parlor song "Hard Times Come Again No More". This is a triumphal piece of music, full of hope and optimism and sounding like the OST of the greatest Western you've never seen. For something meant to represent the United States, that's a good indicator that things've gone right.

Across The Drift (Riftborn Theme, Endless Space 2)
It has to be said that the historical 4X games have it quite a lot easier than fantasy or sci-fi ones - there's already a culture and body of work upon which the music can draw, rather than obliging the composer to come up with one or imply one exists. This theme for the transdimensional time-manipulating Riftborn sells their cold, ordered, but compassionate nature really well - the ticking metronomes and clocks in the background is a great touch.

More later, if you want.

I don't think you can go wrong with the ones of the Atlus games.

The musics from the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games are always suited to the scenes they're played in, going from epic to dramatic to sad to fluff to epic godslaying... Rock was never so awesome before. And acid jazz for Persona 5. All of it coming mainly from composer Shoji Meguro (guesss it's no cance they decided to create dancing game spin-offs of Persona 3, 4 and 5.

And to name an individual track, Magus' Battle Theme from Chrono Trigger is juuust what the doctor ordered.

Knuckle Sandwich is an upcoming indie game, which is a sort of RPG kinda thing in the stylings of the Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga games and Earthbound. I, in general, recommend it a lot. Play the demo! It's really funny and fun and also gets really really dark.

But, anyways, one of the central parts of the game, as according to its dev, is the soundtrack - indeed, from what I can tell, of the five or six people working on it, everyone but the lead dev is a musician.

My particular favourite songs from the demo are Back Alley Beat and Ninety Eight. The music uses a lot of kind of sampling of human voices and so on, and, in general, fits the kind of quirky, goofy tone the game goes for.

Also, I'll just recommend Nelward, one of the game's musicians, as a whole. He's what drew me to it. It's kinda hard to describe his music, except as, well, sort of goofy electronic whatever such? Love that guy, anyway.

Let's give 'em a look, shall we?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8P_raHQ4EoWTSH2GMESMQA

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeZLO2VgbZHeDcongKzzfOw

https://www.youtube.com/user/ongakuconcept

-Twistey

Stuart Copeland (the drummer from The Police) did the soundtrack to the Spyro The Dragon PS1 games - aka. The Good Spyro Games. One of my favourite tracks in the whole series is Fireworks Factory, which really sells the level's themes of rocket ninjas without resorting to tired Orientalist leitmotifs. Check it out here:-

Fireworks Factory (Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon)

I'm really looking forward to the Spyro: Reignited trilogy, whenever that comes out, purely because of the music.

Speaking of remasters, the N. Sane Trilogy had some fantastic music of its own that updated the tracks (which were done by one of the blokes from Devo). This, ICYMI, was the Crash Bandicoot original trilogy remaster from last summer that I drooled over. There's some pretty nice music in there, and one of my favourites is the updated Hang Eight theme, with its jungle surf theme. Another choice track from the N. Sane Trilogy is the updated Road Crash theme, which has a brilliant '50s vibe.

Hang Eight/Air Crash/Plant Food (Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, N. Sane Trilogy)
Hog Ride/Road Crash/Orange Asphalt/Area 51 (Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, N. Sane Trilogy)

Hope those are interesting.

I admit I don't know enough about music to really delve into the intricacies of how they're written.

But I will take the opportunity to gush about one of my favorite soundtracks, namely to the musical Hamilton. An obvious pick, yes, but I love the clever lyrics, use of different music styles and the way the story is told. The words flow together smoothly and the music reflects the character and story beats (and being me a history buff doesn't hurt my enjoyment of the musical one bit... even if there are some creative liberties taken).

Sorry for the simplistic terms, I'm not smart enough to understand all the technical details. I could link to someone else who understands it better than I could...

I love id Software. The board ought to know this by now. So let's start there. IMHO, Wolf3D doesn't stand the test of time, so on to the next one.

Enough has been written about the Doom soundtrack. It's great. It's also MIDI, so everyone will probably hear something slightly different. Anyone remember MIDI? Yeah.

Also, it just rips off a ton of metal. All the metal. Still great though.

Quake! Wait, Quake had a soundtrack? Yes. Yes it does. Composed by Nine Inch Nails, no less. You probably haven't noticed it because it's really ambient. Well, except for that title theme. If you have the Steam version, you may never have heard any of that, because Quake had a Redbook soundtrack. Read: the CD was actually an audio CD, and the game won't play the soundtrack unless it's in the drive, because it doesn't exist on disc. So the Steam version doesn't even contain a soundtrack. Thankfully, there are ways to get it working again if you download a modern sourceport.

Quake 2 got hit with the redbook problem too. Which is a shame, because speaking as a metal fan, Quake 2's soundtrack is killer. I mean, listen to this!. Q2's soundtrack is the best part of that game, easy. Which isn't hard, because it's the weakest Quake game, also easy. Throwing out the horror and oppressivenes for sci-fi action and space marines killing borg didn't serve the game well, and neither did the endless brown and grey. The Edge was a bangin' DM level, though.

And finally, Quake 3, the best deathmatch game ever devised by man. I know that's high praise, but I really really really really really like this game. They brought in a few bands on this one, including the Quake 2 guys. Sonic Mayhem 1 and 5 are particularly memorable, but the one that sticks out to me most is probably this one. Because it seems to play whenever I load up Q3DM17, which is probably the most played map in Quake 3 by a mile. It's also not a very good map, but that's another story.

But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Unreal Tournament, Quake 3's competition. Because that game also has a soundtrack, and what a soundtrack it is. Alexander Brandon is widely regarded as brilliant, and this more theatrical soundtrack doesn't disappoint. The song everyone remembers is Foregone Destination, which backed Facing Worlds, the UT99 equivalent of Q3DM17. Well, that and the fantastic Menu theme. That thing is great.

Even better, and by the same guy, is the theme to Deus Ex. Oh jeez. I can listen to that all day.

More to come, probably.

So two things: 1. I don't understand music on the same deep level of notes and such that twistey does, but there's some cleverness to the songs in this game I still want to bring up.

and 2. I realize this is a super tiny, minor fandom no one else here cares about but uh . . . I think this is at least somewhat interesting anyway?

So, for being an ultimately sub-par game, Epic Mickey has an utterly gorgeous and creative soundtrack, composed by James Dooley. The basic mechanic of the game is that you can advance past obstacles either by using paint to create new objects, or to brute force through things by dissolving existing objects with thinner. Most of the game levels (themed around Disney park attractions) have a music theme with five separate variations: the "base" version, a version where you're mostly using paint to get through, a version where you're only using paint to get through, a version where you're mostly using thinner to get through, and a version where you're only using thinner to get through. The paint-oriented versions tend to be focused on high-pitched chimes, and are generally gentler and more light-hearted feeling than the base version. The thinner versions tend to become very slow, with creepy violins and deep baritone notes added.

This feature was also used to hide musical easter eggs in the soundtrack. One level has the Micky Mouse Club March hidden in its music, at 1:02. It's identifiable, but the notes and tone are way off. Using lots of paint restores the tune to a more recognizable form. (Same point in time.) Using lots of thinner, though, appropriately wipes that tune completely out of the song!

—doctorlit hopes this is at least marginally interesting to anyone else . . .