Game info: Steam
Listening: Bandcamp, Steam
Info
Moving on to a HAGANE solo score, here’s the follow-up to 2020’s One Step From Eden, which is basically a deckbuilder game with the battle system from the Mega Man Battle Network series. While the original is a single-player roguelike campaign, Duelists turns it into a PvP mode where you can battle randos online and show them what for.
One Step From Eden was one of the two HAGANE soundtracks that came out at about the same time (the other was Maiden & Spell) that put him on the radar of a lot of western folks, myself included; it’s generally in HAGANE’s pretty recognizable EDM style that sounds halfway between Phantasy Star Online 2 music and Manabu Namiki’s shmup soundtracks, which obviously I find fairly sick. Duelists’s soundtrack doesn’t stray far from that, sticking to a formula that’s clearly not broken and therefore doesn’t need fixing, though a couple of tracks incorporate elements from other styles like flamenco (“A Stitch in Time”) and funky sampled hip-hop (“Wildstyle”). His chord game is pretty much always on point, which is why I can put on just about any track he’s ever written and vibe to it. Pretty good one! Shame there’s only 12 tracks this time.
Recommended tracks:
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“Main Theme” is the lowest-key track in the soundtrack, showing off a little calmer side at parts that you don’t really hear elsewhere because everything else is energetic battle music apparently (One Step From Eden does have a bit more music in the calmer vein)
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“Battle of Mountain I” was my favorite track harmonically, blasting off in particular at 0:45
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“Starry Night – Dreadwyrm’s Theme” is a faster, dancier remix of “The Shining Crown” from Maiden & Spell, adding a real gnarly violin solo at 0:40
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