Motoi Sakuraba

Motoi Sakuraba's work is outstanding, I must say. His compositions surpass many others and he has proven that he can work with different styles and his piano works are superb! I really like the way he mixes both slow and fast tunes in his game music. And also that he uses all sorts of instruments, from piano and violins to drums and techno.
I think that;
Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy etc.),
Motoi Sakuraba (Star Ocean etc.),
Hitoshi Sakimoto (FF Tactics etc.),
Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono-series),
Koichi Sugiyama (Dragon Warrior/Quest),
Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill),
Yoshitaka Hirota (Shadow Hearts),
Michiru Yamane (Castlevania),
Ken Nakagawa (Atelier Iris),
Junichi Nakatsuru (Soul Calibur, Ace Combat),
Keiki Kobayashi (Soul Calibur, Ace Combat),
Miki Higashino (Suikoden) and
Jeremy Soule (Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars) are the best compositors of game music there has ever been!!!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Ah, my bad! Of course there should be room for both of them and many others, but I'm not too familiar with Kikuta's work except for the Seiken Densetsu OST, which is beautiful nevertheless. I haven't listened to Hamauzu at all, I believe (has he worked on the Unlimited Saga soundtrack, I think I saw his name there somewhere. Final Fantasy X as well?).

I MUST add Koji Kondo, Kenji Ito and Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka to the list as well. There is always someone forgotten in the midst of writing, but hey, we all make mistakes =)

Double Post:
Forgive me for this, but I really didn't like Unlimited Saga's soundtrack, it was too quirky, I think that's the word for it =) But some songs were of course great, like the "March in C 2ch Mix Ver.", which is music at it's best. Maybe if I listened to Unlimited Saga's soundtrack outside the game, it would get better.

Bottom line though: Game music rocks!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well, I kinda agree with you, that Motoi Sakuraba can be repetetive some times, but that his style with some rock, jazzy influnences and piano is great. Many tunes may sound the same but I wouldn never take as hard words as "hate" anytime in my mouth against any composer or the likes. You can hate politicians (who use the state's money to fund their own personal lives), war, unfairness, people who've been mean to you, criminals or other scum, but you can't seriously hate someone who composes music, honestly.

Anyway, Mr Sakuraba has absolutely done and hopefully will do more considerable amounts of great music in video games. And if you don't have a knack for Sakuraba music, there are many other composers who may speak to you more than he does. But I myself love Sakuraba's work, it rocks!!!

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.