Before it was known as Drakengard in the West, Drag-on Dragoon was already one of the most unsettling action games on PS2, and the soundtrack is a huge reason why. Takayuki Aihara and sanodg built something genuinely disturbing here -- these aren't traditional orchestral fantasy pieces.
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The music is constructed from samples of classical recordings chopped, looped, and layered into dissonant, grinding collages. "First Chapter - Sky" has this manic, stuttering energy during dragon combat, and "First Chapter - Ground" shifts into something more brutal and percussive for the infantry slaughter below.
Every chapter splits between Sky and Ground themes, and the contrast is the whole point. The aerial sections feel vast and chaotic while the ground battles are claustrophobic and punishing. By the time you hit "Fourth Chapter" with sanodg's contributions, the sound design has fully abandoned any pretense of comfort.
"Fifth Chapter" tracks pile on as the story spirals into Yoko Taro's signature brand of existential horror. The Mission Select and Weapon Select screens by sanodg provide the only real moments of calm, and even those feel uneasy.
This is the soundtrack that established the template Yoko Taro's games would follow through NieR and beyond -- beauty and ugliness smashed together until you can't tell them apart. Not easy listening by any stretch, but absolutely essential if you want to understand where NieR: Automata's musical DNA comes from.