Soundtrack Saturday: Sekiro - Shadows Die Twice

In this weekly feature, I recommend game soundtracks. I share a few of my favorite tracks, talk about why everyone should listen to the soundtrack, and a little bit about the composer. This week's choice is Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice by FromSoftware.

THE STATS

Name: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Developer: FromSoftware
Publisher: Activision
Release Date: March 22, 2019
Genres: Action-adventure
Composer(s): Yuka Kitamura

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MY FAVORITE TRACKS

(The titles link to YouTube videos... and I highly recommend some good headphones to best enjoy all of the subtle elements of the music!)


Emma the Physician
(Length: 3:30) Disarming, calming, but mysterious. This was the first track to get my attention, and I'd listen to it to relax any day.

The Phantom Lady Butterfly
(Length: 3:24) There's something sinister and beautiful in this piece, and I absolutely love the use of cello and other strings in it.

Folding Screen Monkeys
(Length: 4:16) This one is completely reminiscent of Yuki Kajiura's work for Madoka Magica - Umbra Nigra specifically. And that's praise coming from me! It's a mystical sound with dark intention!

Corrupted Monk
(Length: 3:03) This track just worked for me. It has great building of tension, balance of instruments, identifiable melody throughout most of the track -- and a percussive push to keep it all moving.

Divine Dragon
(Length: 4:55) You wouldn't know this was music for a boss fight without playing the game or seeing the comments on YouTube -- this is a different sort of boss fight, to be sure!

You can listen to the full soundtrack on YouTube: 

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice OST

WHY I RECOMMEND IT

To be honest, I'd never really heard any of this soundtrack before. I went looking on Steam for games tagged with "great soundtrack" and this was one of them. Since I'd watched my husband play a fair bit of it when it first came out last year, and he recently got back into it, I decided to add it to my list of game soundtracks to cover.

Um... I may regret that decision a little bit right now.

I'm not saying this is a bad soundtrack, but it isn't exactly memorable if you haven't played the game. Most of the tracks sound interchangeable or simply variations of the same theme and instrument combination. It works for the sound required for the game's environment and style, but it doesn't make for something necessarily desirable to listen to outside of playing the game.

Despite this feeling, I did do my best to select tracks that I felt were unique or well done. If you like them, then by all means give the rest of the OST a go.

THE COMPOSER: YUKA KITAMURA

This is not my first time having to discuss Yuka Kitamura for a Soundtrack Saturday entry. I have previously discussed Dark Souls, and discovered there wasn't a lot about her for me to find -- at least not in English. This time, I did find a helpful Game Informer video on YouTube where she talks about the creation of the music of Sekiro in comparison to other works she's done for FromSoft, like Bloodborne and Dark Souls.

She definitely takes her craft seriously, and thinks about the emotive elements that have to be portrayed in order to not just sound like generic Japanese period music. While I feel a lot of the tracks do come off as sounding the same, I realize part of that is because I've got a Western-trained ear. Still, she clearly has a passion for her craft and I'd love for there to be more in English for me to read about her composition practices. And good news for the Souls fans who adore her music -- she confirmed a couple days ago on Twitter that she is, in fact, working on the music for Elden Ring (the next big FromSoft title which will be a collaboration between FromSoft's Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin).