Been (re/)visiting game OSTs. Figured out they really deserve a separate thread.

System Shock 2 can get MWAH. I forgot the PTSD from Med Sci 1, and how amazing the track is.
System Shock 1 had to regrow on me.
Mechassault 1/2 can get MWAH.
Front Mission Online can get MWAH. I think it gives the biggest "wait a second, are you sure it's not some old Final Fantasy OST?" confusion out of FMs in a very good way.
All Desu Exes' OSTs are mostly or at least half great (even IW and The Fall) except for the Mankind Divided, which, except a few tracks, is like barely above mediocre background modern film/techno score. Sort of the thing that's not bad to have in the background, but not so nice when you actually pay attention to the music. But it's definitely not exactly mediocre.
E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy OST is more muted than I remember. Its ambients re-grew on me.
Spec Ops The Line was "what in the goddamn, I don't quite remember the music being THIS good?"

Front Mission Evolved OST is one big ugly film score example. The main theme is almost passable, though.
And man, I hate film scores/incidental music (IM), because it gets classified as music and thus becomes a nuisance of an obstacle when you're trying to find non-incidental music. People rarely ever do them well, anyway. At this point just reuse classic music or use free no copyright stuff instead of commissioning something as bland and inoffensive as possible.
Film scores tend to be the bad kinds of cases of using music as SFX rather than as music, because you really could do both. Berserk Musou OST is one of the fresh poorly known examples that actually tries to squeeze the most out of film score formula, and it's pretty good at it. That said, I know it's for a gloomy world, but it really could use more glockenspiels and trumpets than it had.
It's also a curse of a genre, as Tatsuya Oe and Hiroyuki Sawano, among others, are guaranteed to produce something bad when they're doing a film score style track, and they commit to this overgenre too often due to popular demand, despite their other genre tracks coming out as usually great.

I've actually noticed I gained some appreciation to ambients, scores, and those "non-expressive" IM tracks since I was listening through each while trying to evaluate what I should add to some specific playlists I have, and whether I should maybe make whole new playlists around what I didn't know I might like to listen to sometimes.
I also ended up confirming that a film score really is rarely felt as something listenable, and it suddenly comes out good if you... just make it listenable (such are not the customs). I'm also reminded that one theorized defining characteristic of VGM is that a track can stand on its own (without some extra media narrative source like visuals or story speech or whatever. There's at least some decoupling if the VGM is good), while still being rather vague and either-sided in interpretation (are you winning, son? Or are you losing?) compared to non-VGM instrumental music, and, unlike IM loops, they can be interrupted by player and nothing bad happens (and some games even double down with music changing by player's gameplay inputs)... ...so it's also weird to see attempts at terminology where VGM is claimed to be incidental music.

Video unrelated to the main text of the post, because I revisit AC OSTs weekly, and this track just resurfaced in my brain.
I love it when one track completely stands out of the rest of the album/OST but in a committed manner that doesn't disrupt the mood. ACs had been having wide subgenre diversity in general. Even AC6 non-disc-3 tracks aren't so bad, but AC6 would've benefitted if it swapped its OST with some cyberpunk game, maybe even one of Deus Exes (those DO sound like they'd fare better in mecha games), because AC6 OST really tries to amplify the poorly defined informational cybernetics narrative and aesthetics, and it goes kinda nowhere, it sounds like generic "cinematic technology" IM when you don't look at it in "so this what cyberpunk is really about..." way.