Game: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Song: Dracula's Tears
Composer: Michiru Yamane and Masahiko Kimura
Above: Dracula's Tears from Dawn of Sorrow
This week's Lords of Shadow marks a much-needed new beginning for the Castlevania franchise. As much as I love the series, playing 10 of them since 2000 is too much even for me. We needed a shakeup, and Shadow appears to be it. But before we got to this point, say around 2005, Dawn of Sorrow delivered the best vampire-hunting experience since Symphony of the Night, complete with another stunning soundtrack from Michiru Yamane.
I would've preferred posting a Lords of Shadow song today, but seeing as I haven'tplayed ityet, I thought it'd be appropriate to pick one of its many sister titles from years past, and decided on Dawn of Sorrow. Dracula's Tearsis a little friendlier than most Castlevania songs, and even approaches "vampire elevator music" levels of cheese, but it's still super catchy and one of the standout songs from an altogether amazing collection of music.
Above: Subterranean Hell's bass lineand haunting harpsichord-esque melody are classic Castlevania
Above: A Fleeting Respite plays while you chat with your lady friend. So soothing
Above: You know you're near the end of the game when The Pinnacle fires up. Perfect late-in-the-game stuff
Michiru Yamane really knocked it out of the park with Dawn of Sorrow, but it's hardly the first time - she's also behindBloodlinesand Symphony of the Night, plus tons of other Konami works (like Suikoden and Rocket Knight). Alas, Yamane's nowhere near Lords of Shadow, so I'll have to hope Konami picked someone even remotely in the same league.
Growing Wings by Hataya, Sasaki and Kumatani
INSANE 8-bit jams from Tim Follin
Balto by Yasunori Mitsuda
