ELDEN RING - Romina, Saint of the Bud on Piano 🩷

Composer: Tsukasa Saitoh
Arrangement: Moonlapse

"Once, in the crumbling, burning church, Romina held the bud in speechless silence. That bud would become her blade."

Hi everyone! I'm back with my 3rd Shadow of the Erdtree piano arrangement, this time for Romina. This one has been much requested so I hope it delivers!

The music and visuals for this fight really blew me away. The pink and red scarlet rot storm combined with the butterflies was amazing to witness, it was quite the spectacle. Fights with a unique color palette like this really stand out to me.

Unfortunately, I didn't spend too much time with her as I found her to be unexpectedly easy, so it wasn't my favorite boss from a combat perspective. My favorites typically end up being the ones I spend hours with doing 100+ attempts (and those songs get totally drilled into my head permanently). Her moves were graceful and interesting but quite easy to dodge for me. I really did appreciate those intricate combo attacks between her and the various ends of her centipede though, I like the synergy they had together. Lots of cool mounts/riders in Shadow of the Erdtree, I loved Gaius as well for how well he was bonded with his boar and how they fought so synergistically - and of course the Putrescent Knight and its silver horse.

Even though I only heard this song a handful of times, I knew it might end up turning into a piano cover because of how beautiful and melodic it is. Also, that MELANIA callback at 2:51! I didn't notice this right away, but it's the same melody that plays about halfway through Malenia's phase 2 theme. Thanks to ‪@dyroth‬ for pointing this out to me. I love the reuse of a motif like this to draw a lore connection between the two bosses (scarlet rot). I really would like to hear more of this type of thing in games, I think the best game soundtracks are full of memorable leitmotifs (Hollow Knight looking at you).

The harmony in this track reminds me of Dark Souls quite a lot, and I will dig into that in music theory breakdown. I wasn't planning to cover this song at first because I didn't connect with this boss as much I did for some of the other encounters in the DLC. But, after seeing some requests from you all and relistening to it a bunch of times (and seeing the Malenia callback), I realized it was very well suited to being adapted to piano and that it's definitely a standout song from the OST. It turned out to be very fun to transcribe and arrange! Let me know your thoughts.

I haven't made sheets for this yet, but am planning to in the future. I'll probably go back and make sheets for this and my other SotE covers soon.

As a side note, I finally completed the DLC - just around the 2 month mark since release which I was very happy with, so all spoilers are now welcome. Promised Consort Radahn was extremely hard, it took me about 20 hours and demanded complete excellence. The phase 2 was totally insane, but it felt so good to slowly figure it out and start dodging those attacks. This type of experience is exactly what I'm looking for from my souls games so this definitely solidifies my 10/10 review for the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. It really hammered in that core Dark Souls gameplay tenet of "The more difficult the journey, the sweeter the reward." That was absolutely one of my favorite boss fights of all time, along with Bayle and Rellana.

I know it wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but personally I am very glad Miyazaki upped the challenge to the max in this installment, especially for the final boss. I love the idea that a final boss is the hardest one in the game and the ultimate test of everything the player's learned so far, rather than an optional side one like Malenia was in the base game. Sekiro also did this (though some argue Owl Father is harder than Isshin). Other games that I thought did this well include Tunic and Remnant 2.

As always, a detailed music theory breakdown can be found pinned in the comments below.

We are having lots of fun discussing video game music, composing, and everything From Software in the Moonlapse Piano discord server, come hang out!

Discord:   / discord  
Bandcamp: https://moonlapse.bandcamp.com/
Musescore: https://musescore.com/user/37002291

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