The Good: Your opinion of this track will depend somewhat on your opinion of this type of ambient music in general. The track runs for an epic 12+ minutes, but is very repetitive. At the gaming table, I don't consider this a bad thing. The track is spooky enough to build suspense, but non-intrusive enough that it can run comfortably in the background of your gaming session without getting in the way like a more recognizable piece or a song with heavy vocals. I consider this track a solid, useful addition to my RPG soundtrack library.
The Bad: Why can't this publisher encode consistent ID3 tags in these products? To date (September 8, 2008), there are three tracks in the DM series (DM 1: Watch Tower Awaits, DM 2: Persistent Shadows, and DM 3: Wetlands), and every single one of them has a different artist and album encoded in the ID3 tags. This track, which the product information calls "Watch Tower Awaits," is encoded with the title "WatchTowerAwaits" (no spaces), the artist "Sigil," and the album "Watch Tower Awaits." DM 2 is encoded with the title "Persistent_Shadows" (why the annoying and totally unnecessary underscore?), the artist "V Shane" (note the space), and the album "Dark Myth." DM 3, however, is encoded with the title "Wetlands," the artist "VShane" (note the lack of a space between V and S), and the album "Ruins of Dark Myth." These wide variations make it hard to locate the music in a large iTunes library, and they suggest a real sloppiness that's not evident in the music itself. Encoding ID3 tags properly is the easiest thing in the world to do, so publishers who want to sell MP3 download music should do it right, and do it right the first time.
My Rating: If I were just rating the music itself, I'd give it 4 stars; if I were rating the production value of the MP3 as an MP3 file, I would give it 2 stars. So I split the difference.
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