The Good: Your opinion of this track will depend somewhat on your opinion of this type of ambient music in general. There's a lot of repetition in this 8:33 track, but at the gaming table, that's okay, even useful, because it can set a tone without drawing a lot of attention to itself. This particular track, however, features a kind of "bouncy" loop that I actually find annoying instead of spooky, suspenseful, or enigmatic. Then, almost without warning, the "bouncy" loop gives way to something completely different and decidedly down-tempo. But then the bounce comes back after about a minute and a half. I've purchased all of the V Shane MP3s available through DTRPG/RPGNow, and I must admit that this is my least favorite of the entire menu. (My most favorite, if you're wondering, is Rumors Inn from the Enigmatic Quest "album.")

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.

Oh, and how about spelling the word "persistent" correctly in the product artwork, as it is in the product description? This is just another sloppy mistake that should have been avoided.

My Rating: If I were just rating the music itself, I'd give it 2-3 stars; if I were rating the production value of the MP3 as an MP3 file, I would give it 2 stars. So my 2-star rating is a combination of not liking the track very much and being annoyed by the ID3 issue.