Dragon’s Dogma has one of the most incomplete, incoherent, and forgettable soundtracks I’ve ever heard. Within the context of the game, the soundtrack is forgettable at best and inappropriate at worst. Outside that context, there’s even less incentive to listen to 147 minutes of generic, perfunctory fantasy music, some of which falls below the mediocre mark. If you’re anything like me, you’ll forget the soundtrack is even playing about four minutes after you click play.
Most of the music attempts to be hyperambient, but instead creates a confused atmosphere when it’s not being mundane or outright noxious. An odd mix of styles and the juxtaposition of various world music themes in some of the town and exploration themes makes for an awkward and amateur sound. Such an approach isn’t inherently the wrong approach, but the arrangements are haphazard and thoughtless.
Choosing tracks to pick on is difficult since they all seem to run into one another in one interminable serpent of sound. I distinguish about three or four varieties, however, each more beastly than the last! There are the token vocal tracks that haven’t been interesting in years, such as “Opening Movie” (the airy, optimistic female sort) and “Conviction and Dignity” (the bass, ominous male sort). There are also a variety of ordinary tracks for exploration or combat and almost all of them sound like “Encampment” or “Tension Battle.” Some include embarrassingly cheesy electric guitar riffs, such as the aforementioned battle track and “To the End of a Life and Death Struggle,” the final battle theme. Some of the ambient tracks include Asian or African sounds or vocals alongside guitar and typical orchestral instruments for a truly muddled mess. “Blue Moon Tower” is a typical example.
And that’s just disc one. Disc two is even more forgettable. The laziness and apathy behind this soundtrack isn’t quite apparent until the second disc, a collection of unfinished scraps. Even the melodramatic main theme, “Eternal Return,” combines banal lyrics, hackneyed composition, and even a little guitar to ghastly effect.
The Dragon’s Dogma OST is among the worst game soundtracks I’ve ever heard. The instrumentation is boring, the vocals are hackneyed, the arrangements are incoherent, and most tracks feel unfinished, making the soundtrack as a whole something best ignored and forgotten. Fortunately, that shouldn’t be too tough.
