Debate: What is the greatest boss theme of all time?
Welcome to Soundtrack Sunday, where a member of the PC Gamer team takes a look at a soundtrack from one of their favourite games—or a broader look at videogame music as a whole—offering their thoughts or asking for yours!
You've collected every coin. Done every side quest. Spoken to every single NPC. S-ranked every level. Now, at last, the ultimate reward: an all-out fight against one final boss complete with an epic song that usually encapsulates your hours of hard work and your character's growth into some freakishly powerful being.
For me, most of my exposure to boss themes growing up came through the endless stream of JRPGs I played. Final Fantasy 7's One Winged Angel will be the one that springs to mind for a lot of people, but I'm an absolute sucker for Final Fantasy 6's Dancing Mad—a whopping 18-minute, four-movement symphony that plays when facing off against Kefka Palazzo.
I'll also forever adore the final battle in Kingdom Hearts 2, where Yoko Shimomura takes a far more stripped-back approach with gentle piano and vocals that almost feel like the antithesis of a big boss battle—eerily calm and unsettling all at once.
Of course, it's not just JRPGs that make full use of epic scores to amp up its big fights. Maybe you're a total sucker for the song that plays during Deus Ex: Human Revolution's final face-off, or Mick Gordon's excellent riffs in Doom Eternal during Final Sin.
Showing up to sing his own boss theme is the most Raphael thing imaginable. I remember the voice actor turning up at the orchestral concert just to do his parts and the crowd went absolutely nuts.
Maybe, like me, Mass Effect 2's Suicide Mission simultaneously activates every anxious bone in your body (even after all these years!) while filling your ears with one of the best tracks in videogames.
Even as someone who doesn't play FromSoftware games, it's hard to ignore just how many bangers the Souls games have attached to its numerous bosses. The third game's Soul of Cinder, and who could forget the classic plin plin plon of the first game's Lord of Cinder.
It'd be remiss of me to hand this off to all of you without giving a shoutout to perhaps the boss song of all time, Toby Fox's Megalovania. It's become one of the most iconic videogame tracks. I'd honestly put it up there with the likes of Star Wars' Imperial March in terms of pure recognisability—heck, it has its own Wikipedia page. It was performed in front of Pope Francis! That's how you know you've made it.
But is Megalovania your all-time favourite boss song, or is it overrated MIDI mush in comparison to your personal pick? Let us know in the comments and be sure to tell us why.