The brass synth and choral work is especially awful. No effort was made to flesh this music out beyond the demos with instrument or choral performances. While the last score effectively captured a theme of hopelessness and fleshed it out with a solid performances, this score is just a hopeless MIDI tape. The impression given by this CD is that the sound direction didn’t get much of a budget. Sadly, the quality of the Dark Souls II certainly doesn’t match its predecessors.

My immediate concern was the quality of the endproduct was there still time to match or surpass the quality of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls? Once again, the soundtrack CD was enclosed in the collector’s editions in Japan, North America, and Europe. Sakuraba stayed close to the structure of the predecessor’s score, focusing principally on the waypoint areas and boss themes. The online betas showcased two boss fights thus two samples of the game’s music, but unfortunately featured synthetic music like the Artorias expansion. Yet closer to the release of the online beta, it emerged that Motoi Sakuraba had indeed returned to score this sequel. Early trailers used licensed music and thus gave no hint of who the composer was. Impressions of Dark Souls II have been mostly positive, despite the initial worry about a new set of directors steering the helm. Ma(US Edition) Ma(JP Edition) Ma(EU Edition)

Namco Bandai Games (US / EU Edition) FromSoftware (JP Edition)

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