2 out of 5

Label: Digital Download (available through bandcamp)

Producer: Afshin Toufighian

This isn’t a fair criticism, because it does mean more bang for your (free) buck, but this album is… TOO LONG.  It gathers the DD soundtrack plus all of its add-ons soundtrack work, though, so that might account for it, but it feels long, which it can’t account for.  It feels long by track 10 of the 41 tracks, and as far as I can tell that’s still the first game’s music, so that’s not good.  If I can listen to some albums on repeat for hours, I should be able to listen to one full album from start to finish with minimal “is this over yet?” feelings.  Which, okay, is another unfair criticism, perhaps, but having not played DD, there’s not clear markings in the track names or on the album to let me know which games these tracks are coming from.  It would seem to go in some kind of chronological order or the releases, but beyond some tracks being called “End Credits Theme” or “Halloween Special Theme,” I really have no indication of where in the game I might hear these songs.  It’s tough to say where/how to take a statement like that, because video game soundtracks aren’t often albums, per se, so I can’t say that the composer should be mindful of how the package is presented, but I suppose that I should note that it certainly affected this one listener’s experience for whatever reason, which inadvertently affected my review.

Because there are some truly awesome, powerful and original tracks sprinkled throughout this album – but they lean toward the latter half.  If the beginning 12 tracks or whatever are all from the first game (which maybe was mobile initially, so not too much need to go bananas with the score, maybe?), they are pretty much as generic as you can imagine for something dealing with dungeons.  Take the imagery of trumpets blaring when a hero approaches a castle and add some digital drums to that, and you’ve pretty much got the sound of those first dozen tracks.  They are not inoffensive to the ears, and get a little bit o’ dander up on some of the battle tracks, but otherwise Afshin just finds a theme and plays around with it for a couple minutes, then fades out.  Completely serviceable, and I have no doubt it works in game, but nothing too special to the ears.

With 30 something tracks to go, there’s plenty of room left to impress, and things do pick up noticeably after the fun “Hail to the Defender!” romp, Toufighian perhaps reinvigorated by returning to the series for an add-on (AGAIN WHO CAN TELL BY THESE TRACK NAMES) and the music just gets an extra boost into something a bit more original.  But past these couple sparks, it dips too much into the familiar score bin for the overwhelming majority of the rest of the songs.

Toufighian obviously has the creativity to deliver something pretty rockin’ and exciting as a score, or even some fascinating ambient work, as a couple of tracks in that latter half explore.  But unfortunately all of the padding drags this listen down – simply by its inclusion as the majority out of the tracks – into genericism.