Final Fantasy is one of gaming's longest-running franchises. It's known for many things, including its memorable characters and wondrous settings, but if there's one thing that transcends everything else, it's the music. Legendary composers like Nobuo Uematsu have lent their talents to the series over the years, creating beautiful pieces of music to accompany every scene in the games.

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The music that Final Fantasy fans tend to hear most often, however, are the battle themes, which play every time enemies are encountered. Considering that the earlier Final Fantasy titles featured random encounters, these songs popped up fairly frequently. These are the best standard battle themes from Final Fantasy's 30-year history, not including boss battle themes or other special encounters.

10 Final Fantasy IV

Being one of the earlier Final Fantasy titles, Final Fantasy IV's battle theme is a very simple loop. Thanks to the sound chip of the Super Nintendo, though, the repeating loop sounds excellent, especially combined with Nobuo Uematsu's legendary composition skills.

You'll hear this battle theme hundreds of times as you make your way through Final Fantasy IV, and it won't ever start to sound grating. It takes a lot of talent to keep a roughly 50-second loop from getting old over the course of a 30-hour game, but Nobuo Uematsu thankfully has talent to spare.

9 Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy III 3D version protagonists looking at crystal

Final Fantasy III laid the groundwork for a lot of Final Fantasy tropes, like the job change system that allowed for enhanced party customization, and its battle theme screams classic Final Fantasy.

Much like the battle theme for Final Fantasy IV, it's a short loop that repeats itself fairly often, but it never gets old throughout the entirety of the roughly 30-hour RPG. It also sounds more heroic and adventurous than Final Fantasy IV's upbeat battle theme, making it fit in better with the questing and dungeon crawling that the franchise is known for.

8 Final Fantasy VIII

Final Fantasy VIII is often overshadowed by the other Final Fantasy games on the original PlayStation, but its music stands shoulder to shoulder with some of the best songs in the entire series. The battle theme is no exception to this, and it has an incredibly unique sound compared to other standard Final Fantasy battle themes.

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Like other modern Final Fantasy games, the battle theme doesn't have the iconic introductory bassline that the classic games have, but the intro to Final Fantasy VIII's normal battle theme is just as iconic and instantly recognizable to anyone who's played it.

7 Final Fantasy XIII

Final Fantasy XIII has a lot of faults, but the music is not one of them. Final Fantasy XIII was the first Final Fantasy game to release on an HD console, and the orchestral score was given just as much attention as the pretty new graphics.

The string-heavy main battle theme, like the rest of the soundtrack, is one of the only good things to come out of the mediocre Final Fantasy XIII. After leaving Square Enix in 2004, Nobuo Uematsu still contributed his talents to a few songs for Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XII, but he didn't return to do any work for Final Fantasy XIII, making XIII the first mainline Final Fantasy game to feature absolutely no involvement from the legendary composer outside of Final Fantasy X-2.

6 Final Fantasy VI

One of the best Final Fantasy games of all-time just so happens to have one of the best main battle themes in the series. The main battle theme in Final Fantasy VI is an instant favorite, and it has a noticeably different vibe than some of the other mainline Final Fantasy battle themes.

On top of the normal battle theme, Final Fantasy VI is also packed with some of the best music of any RPG ever created. It's not exactly fair to compare a standard battle theme to a work of art like the 18-minute long Dancing Mad, but the battle theme is still able to hold its own against Final Fantasy VI's other memorable tracks.

5 Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy X was the first Final Fantasy game in which Nobuo Uematsu was not the sole composer. There were a total of three composers working on the project including Uematsu, and Final Fantasy X has an incredibly diverse soundtrack as a result. The battle theme is one of the most iconic that the series has to offer.

Final Fantasy X was the first game in the series to be released on PlayStation 2, the first next-generation Final Fantasy game after the franchise skyrocketed in popularity following Final Fantasy VIIVIII, and IX, so the music had to be as innovative as the graphics and gameplay. Final Fantasy X's compositions are noticeably more complex than those that came before it, and the battle theme is no exception.

4 Final Fantasy IX

Final Fantasy IX was a return to roots for the franchise. Following the massive success of Final Fantasy VII, the series shifted away from its traditional fantasy setting in favor of more modern and futuristic settings. Before the series would shift to the PlayStation 2 with Final Fantasy X, the developers wanted to make a game that celebrated classic Final Fantasy, and that game was Final Fantasy IX.

Final Fantasy IX's battle theme is heavily inspired by classic Final Fantasy battle themes, even bringing back the iconic bassline intro that the series had ditched with Final Fantasy VII. It's so good that Nobuo Uematsu has gone on record stating that his work on Final Fantasy IX is his favorite as well as the work he is most proud of.

3 Final Fantasy XV

Final Fantasy XV's music is one of the game's many highlights, and each of its many battle themes is worthy of being on this list. That's right, Final Fantasy XV has several battle themes that play in the various regions of the game's world. For the sake of fairness though, this list refers to only one of XV's many songs, "Up For the Challenge," which plays in the game's later areas.

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Final Fantasy XV's beautiful orchestral score was composed primarily by Yoko Shimomura, who also works as a composer on the Kingdom Hearts series, and all of XV's music has a tinge of Kingdom Hearts in it as a result.

2 Final Fantasy V

final fantasy 5 remake

Criminally underrated and underplayed, Final Fantasy V has one of the best battle themes in the entire series. Much like Final Fantasy VIII, it tends to be ignored in favor of the games that came directly before it and after it, in this case, Final Fantasy IV and VI.

It's a good thing the battle theme is as good as it is, because Final Fantasy V has an abnormally high encounter rate in the original version of the game. Later ports corrected this issue somewhat, but you'll still be hearing this battle theme quite often if you decide to give Final Fantasy V a shot.

1 Final Fantasy VII

Final fantasy VII

Not only is Final Fantasy VII's battle theme the best battle theme in any Final Fantasy game, but it's also one of the most recognizable pieces of music in all of gaming. It's just as iconic as any song from Mario or Zelda, and simply seeing a screenshot of Final Fantasy VII will trigger the song to start playing in people's minds.

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It was the first Final Fantasy battle theme to ditch most of the musical conventions that the battle themes of Final Fantasy I-VI included, like the introductory bassline. In doing so, however, the intro to the Final Fantasy VII battle theme has become just as recognizable, if not more. Final Fantasy VII is an all-time classic, and this battle theme will be remembered forever by those who have played it and even those who haven't.

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