4 out of 5

Label: Spacelab9

Produced by: ?

The first Dark Souls, for those that get bit by its bug, is an absolutely transportive experience, unlike any other. The game benefits from having the template of Demon Souls, but also the freedom of being a new game, making it charmingly rough around the edges in ways that work for the game’s mystique. This kind of explorational confidence is reflected in its music, which captures that vibe, but also feels like just a first step.

The second Dark Souls had a complicated path to completion, and its zig-zaggy gameplay is again reflected in its music; it’s more polished, but also provides a jumble of possible identities as a game and soundtrack.

It follows that Dark Souls III’s music would mirror the game once more: being the most targeted, lush, dense, and directly sad entry in the trilogy – all the games have splashes of dark humor, but DSIII is overwhelmed by its storyline’s sense of decay – the work from our various composers is mature, and fully fleshed out… but also overwhelmed by bleak vibes. This maturity also removes some of the quirk that worked its way into the first two scores via horror movie flourishes and odd asides; that said, this is in the spirit of streamlining the experience somewhat, and it’s incredibly effective, allowing the sound to scale to cinematic heights that push past a kind of solo-person-at-a-keyboard vibe into something more orchestral and grand, with the production especially serving the choral layers – providing enough reverb and resonance to align the vibes to “epic.” Plus, if you dig, that quirk is still slithering around: there is a gothic, minor-key overtone to this whole thing that allows tunes to take some surprising twists and turns, when you might otherwise expect it to go big and bright.

But I do come back to how weighty the whole affair is, and as you proceed through the game – and thus the score – and things get, essentially, bleaker, the soundtrack can logically weigh you down as well, and by the time it’s over… you feel it. The melodies remain, however, and certainly more than a handful will be stuck as haunting earworms in your brain, deserving of another listen. After you’ve had some chance to recover from the previous one.

Spacelab9’s pressing is, again, a little noisy (and the imagery for the packaging can’t help but be oppressive), though the fidelity / power of the music mostly moves one past it.