This is a comments thread for the following album: https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/castlevania-lords-of-shadow
Castlevania - Lords of Shadow Soundtrack (2010)
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An excellent soundtrack for an excellent game
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One of the best sound tracks. Has epic boss fight music.
AshenSouls
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Lords of Shadow is composed by Oscar Araujo whose entries for this title tend to be dramatic, able to be emotionally driving and fittingly atmospheric. The Bratislawa Symphony Orchestra was recorded for this production resulting in audio quality that is quite nice compared to its earlier predecessors. It quickly becomes evident that Araujo's composition style is notably different than Michiru Yamane's work with the series, resulting in tracks that feel more like a movie's background music than as stand-alone melodies. For example, Castlevania fans can hum Vampire Killer or Bloody Tears easily from memory, but none of Lord of Shadow's songs have this quality in the slightest. Those who have played the game may find the tunes have more punch, reviving sensations they first experienced while exploring LoS's environments and and while struggling with life-and-death boss battles.
Ove rall, it is a quality soundtrack, but lacks the melodic strengths of previous series' entries.
Ove rall, it is a quality soundtrack, but lacks the melodic strengths of previous series' entries.
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There are a lot of songs missing, I really wanted to have the electric maze!
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Best soundtrack I have ever heard in videogames during my whole life. Not only this soundtrack but all of the 3 Lords of Shadow games.
These musics, the characters, the settings, the drama, everything in these games is amazing. They will be forever my best and beloved games ever.
PS: Because everyone says (apparently) that Castlevania Lords of Shadow is a ripp-off of God of War, I can say that it is completely false. One argument that destroy this belief: the soundtrack. 100x better than the one of Gears of War (I heard one of them obviously).
These musics, the characters, the settings, the drama, everything in these games is amazing. They will be forever my best and beloved games ever.
PS: Because everyone says (apparently) that Castlevania Lords of Shadow is a ripp-off of God of War, I can say that it is completely false. One argument that destroy this belief: the soundtrack. 100x better than the one of Gears of War (I heard one of them obviously).
Xanthus2020
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It's been ten years since its release, but even now I cannot possibly emphasize enough how unfitting and out of place the music in this game felt like. Even though in almost every sense Lords of Shadows hardly felt like a Castlevania game to begin with, thus making this soundtrack right up its alley, I was expecting no less than a true Castlevania game; and I was thoroughly let down in my expectations, especially in the music department. Having to put up with Patrick Stewart delivering his overly dramatic rants during load times was unbearable enough, but the way the devs handled the music only served to worsen the overall experience to an unfathomable degree; this was quite likely the biggest blunder they made with this game because the music has always been one of the strongest points of the series.
Not only they dispensed with classic Castlevania themes such as Vampire Killer or Beginning; not a single one of the other less recurring but still memorable tunes we're familiar with since the NES era made the cut either. Instead, they chose a rather obscure composer from out of nowhere to do the job, and this guy made a dastardly spectacular effort to deliver a Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie style score instead of what anyone remotely familiar with Castlevania music would expect. And he succeeded at it.
Right from the start it felt to me like the music here was unlike anything Castlevania has ever done before, except it wasn't in any way for the better. Granted, there were a few tunes reminiscent of Super Castlevania IV's music, but clearly the score wasn't conceived with the goal of keeping up with tradition. The music feels more like a homage to Peter Jackson's films, using a style that was at times too 'heroic', too melodramatic or too borderline religious, unrelated to the franchise's distinctive style as we've known it for years. It makes you wonder if this Oscar Araujo dude or whoever pulled the strings in the audio department ever played a Castlevania game before. What's clear enough, though, is that this individual sported a massive boner for PJ's LoTR trilogy and wanted the whole goddamn world to know about it even if that meant annihilating precisely what has always been a defining feature of the Castlevania franchise.
The combat music was boring and for the most part just as out of place as the rest of the music. This is of course entirely dependable on people's tastes and preferences, but to me it was frequently annoying to listen to, and despite there being a handful of them unlike similar titles like Devil May Cry, it ultimately veered towards repetitiveness just the same. They couldn't even bother to arrange this mess of a soundtrack in a way that every location you visited (or at the very least most of them) featured its distinctive theme music just like in previous entries. In this travesty of a Castlevania game very few areas actually had an exclusive musical theme, so you'd often visit two levels taking place in two entirely dissimilar environments (a swamp and a library, for instance) and you'd still have your eardrums mercilessly battered with the same irritating Praise-the-Lord-like music in the background. This was also the case during boss encounters save for a few exceptions; they simply cluttered every track in a randomized manner here and there and let people suck it down whether they'd like it or not.
The music in this game was, at best, forgettable. It lacked soul, and it came nowhere near to capturing the true essence of Castlevania music, traditional or otherwise. Mercury Steam should be ashamed of themselves for spawning this abomination; and Konami for allowing so.
Not only they dispensed with classic Castlevania themes such as Vampire Killer or Beginning; not a single one of the other less recurring but still memorable tunes we're familiar with since the NES era made the cut either. Instead, they chose a rather obscure composer from out of nowhere to do the job, and this guy made a dastardly spectacular effort to deliver a Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie style score instead of what anyone remotely familiar with Castlevania music would expect. And he succeeded at it.
Right from the start it felt to me like the music here was unlike anything Castlevania has ever done before, except it wasn't in any way for the better. Granted, there were a few tunes reminiscent of Super Castlevania IV's music, but clearly the score wasn't conceived with the goal of keeping up with tradition. The music feels more like a homage to Peter Jackson's films, using a style that was at times too 'heroic', too melodramatic or too borderline religious, unrelated to the franchise's distinctive style as we've known it for years. It makes you wonder if this Oscar Araujo dude or whoever pulled the strings in the audio department ever played a Castlevania game before. What's clear enough, though, is that this individual sported a massive boner for PJ's LoTR trilogy and wanted the whole goddamn world to know about it even if that meant annihilating precisely what has always been a defining feature of the Castlevania franchise.
The combat music was boring and for the most part just as out of place as the rest of the music. This is of course entirely dependable on people's tastes and preferences, but to me it was frequently annoying to listen to, and despite there being a handful of them unlike similar titles like Devil May Cry, it ultimately veered towards repetitiveness just the same. They couldn't even bother to arrange this mess of a soundtrack in a way that every location you visited (or at the very least most of them) featured its distinctive theme music just like in previous entries. In this travesty of a Castlevania game very few areas actually had an exclusive musical theme, so you'd often visit two levels taking place in two entirely dissimilar environments (a swamp and a library, for instance) and you'd still have your eardrums mercilessly battered with the same irritating Praise-the-Lord-like music in the background. This was also the case during boss encounters save for a few exceptions; they simply cluttered every track in a randomized manner here and there and let people suck it down whether they'd like it or not.
The music in this game was, at best, forgettable. It lacked soul, and it came nowhere near to capturing the true essence of Castlevania music, traditional or otherwise. Mercury Steam should be ashamed of themselves for spawning this abomination; and Konami for allowing so.
