Since this is now the FF VIII OST debate thread, personally I find VIII to have pretty superb sound direction. The OST never fails at capturing and supporting what's going on perfectly, and in the way whereby when you hear the relevant track on the soundtrack it immediately replays the scene from the game and associated feelings with it in your mind. It helps that VIII has close to zero generic dungeons (except for that smurfing desert prison) so there's always something memorable to associate the tracks with as well. And the style of the tracks works wonderfully to support this. I probably wouldn't like VIII's OST as much on the whole if it wasn't attached to VIII, but together they form a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts and it feeds back into just listening to OST tracks on its own, at least for me. Though I will admit VII for instance has this even better on the Disc 1 OST, VIII has more unique tracks overall.

Also I smurfing love all manner of witch-themed tracks, sue me.