Year: 2002
Type: Original Soundtrack (OST) / Gamerip
Composer(s): Gustaf Grefberg
Number of tracks: 14 / 19

★★★★★

Gloriously generic

Rarely have I been so sure that nobody knows the game in question as with Enclave. The hack-and-slash game was released in 2002 for the Xbox and the second game by Starbreeze Studios, who would later turn the excellent Riddick-series into a gamer's dream. But before that, they had to earn their bread with their own IPs, and Enclave was one of them. I happened to get my hands on the PC port released in 2003 (probably as a full version again) and of course, I played through it, because what else was there to do?

The story was relatively simple; some super-evil demon wants to subjugate the world, some magician stopped him before, and now the demon is back, and we have to stop him again. What would take a few minutes of screen time in The Lord of the Rings was inflated to 25 hours here. And because, unlike the popular The Lord of the Rings-licensed games, this is an unknown standalone universe, the story around terms like Dreg'Atar and Vatar in the world of Celenheim remains rather uninteresting.

However, the gameplay, despite clunky controls, was quite solid. In slasher fashion, we beat down enemies, watched our health, and collected gold. We invested that gold to unlock or upgrade new classes with different abilities, like the Knight, Hunter, Druid, or Halfling. It was a lot of fun back then, especially because you could replay already completed maps with new heroes. The diverse classes and the option to play the campaign on the evil side as well gave it quite a high replayability – at least back then.

Today, I probably wouldn't touch the game with a ten-foot pole. Years in Cologne and various carnival evenings have taught me that some old chestnuts are best left untouched in the confetti- and beer-flooded streets. Even if you find yourself lying in said street, being swept home by a friendly street sweeper. So, are we dealing with one of those filler reviews again? One of those fun reviews where I either rant about the low scope of the score or its poor quality? Short answer: no! Because the soundtrack to Enclave surprises twice, in that it a) perfectly caters to my musical aesthetic preferences and b) has a more noteworthy gamerip rather than its OST. I'll have to explain both points, so let's dive right into the music review!

Composer Gustaf Grefberg, born in Östersund and thus embodying an unmistakably Swedish appearance, a glorious optical tightrope walk between a nerdy Viking and an actor in a medieval reenactment, does a very good job with the soundtrack. The man with the pseudonym Lizardking, who later composed the consistently solid music for the Riddick-adventures, the Wolfenstein-series and games like The Darkness and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons , delivers quite acceptably for his debut work. If one were to be mean, one could rightly accuse him of missing leitmotifs and themes in his composition. But considering the above-mentioned game concept with changing protagonists and, bluntly put, the absence of a story, the man pulls the orchestral cart out of the pop-cultural abyss.

Actually, the music is conceptually quite simple: For each playable map, there is a track in two variations, one for the good campaign and one for the evil. Now, it doesn't take clairvoyant abilities to prophesy which one I, as an avowed blunt brute, prefer. But seriously, isn't evil almost always cooler – at least in games? Who remembers the elf music from Overlord, instead of the awesome battle music? Who remembers Overlord, at all? Bad example. Anyway, you know what I mean. Or not, I don't care.

The fact for me is, and I'll gladly defend this equation in court: When the music slams, it gets better. What I'm not saying is that there aren't good quiet songs - you are welcomed to take a listen to my Top 15 saddest tracks . And conversely, there are bombastic tracks that can be rubbish... Whatever – what I'm trying to say is: Here, the equation works, and personally, I prefer the action-packed versions throughout.

Overall, the OST lists 14 tracks, while the gamerip has 19. At this point, I'll briefly insert the hinted surprise b), namely, that despite the higher number of tracks, the gamerip comes off better for me than the "director's cut." Because, strangely enough, the two albums do not overlap completely, as would normally be the case, where the OST only features selected tracks while the gamerip represents a comprehensive overview. Instead, both albums contain tracks missing from the other. And because some of the bombastic action tracks from the gamerip didn't make it into the original album, it also doesn't resonate well with me.

E.g. in the OST, instead of the very good instrumental version of the intro, we find the entry cinematic Prologue – A Beginning, in which a narrator babbles the exposition over the good music. Or quite strange creations like the Goblin Parade, where, similar to Overlord (there it is again), the dimwitted minions take over the music-making in a strained humorous way. That wasn't necessary because the actual music stands much better on its own.

Let's move on to the mixed bag of both albums. This consists of six tracks of varying quality. The Beat of a Warrior’s Heart can be taken as an example here for the style of the soundtrack. The drum-focused instrumentation, accompanied by brass and female vocals, creates a back and forth in a polka-like manner before the strings underline the fantasy origin of the composition with the recurring main theme. This is better accomplished in For the Queen, where she takes center stage and transposes the game's main theme into a mix of triumph and defiance. It creates the sound of a dark blend of Pirates of the Caribbean and Diablo, but it feels pleasantly distinct, if repetitive.

This is partly due to the symptomatic length of the tracks, averaging 5 minutes each, as they are looped on their respective maps. This ensures that attempts are made to create variance within the titles themselves. However, it usually only happens through changing instrumentation, which does not achieve a real development of the theme and can be annoying at times.

Other tracks that can be found on both albums include Celenheim, a shortened instrumental of the intro, which sounds overly dramatic, The Dreg’atar Horde, sounding too much like cutscene music, and Battle Anthem (The Invasion Begins) or The Legions of Stormdaal, as it's called in the gamerip. The latter represents one of the highlights of the score, as it brings out this fantasy feeling through its march-like rhythm, but then also holds back and creates epic images with proud fanfares that the actual game doesn't deliver. Now one could accuse Gustaf Grefberg of a certain discrepancy from an audio-visual perspective, but first, nobody knows the game anyway, and second, too epic is always better than too boring, right? At least that's how I feel, which is why this track also ends up in the five-star range.

Together with the last track found in both albums, originally titled Epilogue by me. For the Queen! [Teetow’s Mix] is exactly that, a remix. And it expands the main theme with the addition of the piano, making it more powerful and faster with the beat. The whole thing reminds me a bit of The Matrix , and somehow, I love it. That's why this track even made it onto my Top 100 list , for a game that nobody really has on their radar.

I could go into more detail about the tracklist and compare the two scores, but I've already said too much. There are good tracks, there are bad ones. A review I read about the game called it mediocre, and the music generic. And that's true. The actual game gets some things right, some wrong, and it's similar with the soundtrack. You won't get a masterpiece like Jeremy Soule or Inon Zur here. But you don't have to watch the Champions League to have fun with football. Sometimes it's just as much fun (if not more) to watch the local team play. Because silly mistakes happen, because the rules aren't always followed. Fun is what matters. Enclave delivers on that – at least musically. And at least for me.

Nostalgia warning

The rating of the individual tracks is purely subjective and clearly colored by my own experience with the game. You can find out more in the article About Nostalgia.

Enclave

No.	Title	Artist(s)	Ratings
01	Prologue - A Beginning	Gustaf Grefberg	1
02	Enclave	Gustaf Grefberg	3
03	The Beat of a Warrior's Heart	Gustaf Grefberg	4
04	Battle Anthem (The Invasion Begins)	Gustaf Grefberg	5
05	Celenheim	Gustaf Grefberg	3
06	The Divided City	Gustaf Grefberg	4
07	For the Queen!	Gustaf Grefberg	5
08	In the Name of Peace (Kam-Zara in Ruins)	Gustaf Grefberg	3
09	Mordessa	Gustaf Grefberg	2
10	The Dreg'atar Horde	Gustaf Grefberg	2
11	Vatar - Lord of Darkness	Gustaf Grefberg	2
12	The Battle of Celenheim	Gustaf Grefberg	3
13	Goblin Parade	Gustaf Grefberg	3
14	For the Queen! [Teetow's Mix}	Gustaf Grefberg	5

Enclave [Gamerip]

No.	Title	Artist(s)	Ratings
01	Enlcave 1	Gustaf Grefberg	4
02	The Legions of Stormdaal (Battle Anthem (The Invasion Begins)(Light)	Gustaf Grefberg	4
03	The Legions of Stormdaal (Battle Anthem (The Invasion Begins)(Dark)	Gustaf Grefberg	5
04	For the Queen! (Light)	Gustaf Grefberg	4
05	For the Queen! (Dark)	Gustaf Grefberg	5
06	Outland Wastes (Light)	Gustaf Grefberg	4
07	Outland Wastes (Dark)	Gustaf Grefberg	3
08	Divided City (Light)	Gustaf Grefberg	3
09	Divided City (Dark)	Gustaf Grefberg	4
10	The Beat of a Warrior's Heart (IIellon Outpost (Light))	Gustaf Grefberg	4
11	IIellon Outpost (Dark)	Gustaf Grefberg	5
12	For the Queen! [Teetow's Mix]*	Gustaf Grefberg	5
13	The Dreg'atar Horde (Light)	Gustaf Grefberg	1
14	The Dreg'atar Horde (Dark)	Gustaf Grefberg	2
15	Enlcave 2	Gustaf Grefberg	2
16	Enlcave 3	Gustaf Grefberg	1
17	Celenheim*	Gustaf Grefberg	3
18	Enlcave 4	Gustaf Grefberg	2
19	Prologue - A Beginning [No Voice Over]	Gustaf Grefberg	5

*Track contained in the Original Soundtrack