Highly awaited Shogun 2 and Napoleon: Total War at last got own soundtrack releases on iTunes.

Shogun 2’s soundtrack composed by Jeff van Dyck. A long time ago he was big fan of electronic music and wrote techno-soundtracks for Need for Speed series. Then he met Creative Assembly team and began to compose ethnic soundtracks. So, it’s clear for everybody Shogun 2 soundtrack is ethnic one. It has strong East influence and if we go into details we can talk about Japan traditional music recreated for game. Release contains 28 tracks with duration about an hour.

Empire: Total War trio of composers (Richard Beddow, Richard Birdsall and Simon Ravn) worked on Napoleon: Total War with additional help of Ian Livingstone. Considering Empire: Total War had live recorded symphonic soundtrack we suggest Napoleon: Total War have it too. Soundtrack is pure epic symphony, no ethnic. There are 35 tracks with summary duration about 50 minuts.

Once upon a time Canadian Jeff van Dyck wrote the music for the Need for Speed series, then he moved to Australia and became a staff composer of Creative Assembly and gained fame fame through a series of games Total War.

It seems what might be exciting to work on music for a strategy game? For Jeff it was an interesting experience and the opportunity to develop new musical horizons. After techno and electronic for Need for Speed his repertoire became widen due to Japan folk music, Korean motives, medieval rhythms, the music of Rome and the gladiator fights.

It turned that the next Total War games past Jeff over, and their music became more academic and less memorable. With the announcement of Total War: Shogun 2, the sequel to the very first Shogun (brought worldwide fame to Creative Assembly) fans of the series were very active in bombing the official forums asking and pleasing for Jeff’s returning. Either their exhortations helped or Creative Assembly has realized its mistakes, but Shogun 2 really lies in Jeff van Dyck’s hands.

In the new game trailer dedicated to the campaign Shogun 2, you can clearly hear the music. And to be honest, it is wonderful.

The game will be released on PC on March 15.