Game info: website
Listening: soundtrack album
Info
The newest entry in the Sakatsuku series is a free-to-play thing. That’s right, it’s time for the first gachapost of the year! An event that we of course all look forward to, nothing more exciting than gacha gaming.
This installment was composed by Hidenori Shoji, a 30-year employee (joined the same year the Sakatsuku series started!) who’s probably best known for his electronic music, contributing DnB, techno, trance, industrial rock, etc. to stuff like F-ZERO GX, the Super Monkey Ball series, the Yakuza series, and so on. So you probably don’t need me to tell you that this soundtrack is super electronic, the most straightforwardly EDM entry in the series that I’ve listened to, because it obviously is!
When they’ve reached for electronic music in earlier games, I’ve mentioned that it’s usually on the chiller side of things, and that’s present here too: a lot of this soundtrack is pretty low-key and slightly jazz vibey, generally of a house persuasion, or maybe tech house would be more accurate. The soundtrack does get a bit more active like all the others do, which means while there’s nothing super energetic we do get some more energetic EDM as well; the most notable addition here is a couple of DnB tracks, which I haven’t encountered in any of the full or partial Sakatsuku soundtrack listens I’ve done up to now, so that’s exciting. Life’s always better with a little DnB in it, as I think you’ll agree.
Overall I thought this one was pretty solid, for sure the Sakatsuku soundtrack I most consistently enjoyed since the early Shiratsu jazz fusion ones. I wouldn’t say I was ever really wowed at any point either though: production’s good and there are some occasionally nice background noises but it’s not exceedingly fancy in the audio design department, and we get some of those fun transposing house chords in multiple spots but the writing is otherwise again not exceedingly fancy. It’s just a solid electronic album.
Recommended tracks:
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“A Scene: Days” is one of a couple of tracks with overt jazz instrumentation in there
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“Match Results” is just a classic little DnB results jingle
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“Transfer Negotiations” has some nice metallic background noises
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“GO CRAZY” is the track that made me decide to amend the house characterization of this soundtrack to tech house
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“Latin Wind” doesn’t really get into Latin jazz as you might expect from its title beyond its percussion, but it’s still fun
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“2nd Abyss” is one of the more calm, ambient-ish tracks in the game
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