Game info: Serenes Forest
Listening: soundtrack album (tracks 7.05~19), extracted audio
Info
I kinda forgot that Engage had DLC, so I never listened to the music from it until right now as I relistened to the base game soundtrack and was like “wait what’s all this then” on disc 7. Wave 3 just added three new tracks, 7.05~7, rearranging “Violent Strings” from Fire Emblem Heroes to accompany a character from that game, and then the rest of the new DLC music is from the Wave 4 side campaign, the Fell Xenologue.
They didn’t add new credits for the DLC, but luckily as the soundtrack album has credits, we now know that the music was handled by the two main composers of the base game, Yasuhisa Baba and Kazuki Komai. Now that I’ve listened to the whole thing with attribution, I have an opinion on Komai I can share with the class: he’s pretty good! INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS found another skilled composer, they do this a lot and that’s why I listen to their soundtracks. At times he sounds a bit like Morishita in terms of harmony and rhythm and at times he sounds like Baba in terms of synth design. Which means that once again they’ve made it more difficult to guess who composed what in a Fire Emblem game by hiring someone who writes similarly to their other staff. It’s like they do this on purpose!
The DLC is for the most part just “more Engage music,” so if you like me you were a fan of that, then definitely get in on the extra tracks if you haven’t already. The music is overall a bit more synthy and darker than the base game soundtrack is as a whole, but that’s likely just because the Fell Xenologue all takes place in a ruined setting and so doesn’t have the breadth of environments, characters, and events that the full game does.
Recommended tracks:
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“Dragon’s Journey” (Baba) is an alternate take on the main game’s world map theme for the Fell Xenologue’s world map with more electronic effects and sitar
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“Twin Dragons’ Hope” (Komai) trips me up at 0:55 when the melody comes in because the track is just in 6/4 (or really slow 3) but the main riff is phrased like it’s in 4/4
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“Mirrored Engage” (Baba) is the appropriately intense DLC final battle theme, love the wonky triplet chaos at 2:32
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