Whatever, fuck it. This blog is about gacha games now. This is what I spend like 80% of my video game time on. I don't care anymore. I'm living my truth. I'm being real and honest and shedding the mask for the first time in my life. The long con is over-- I have opinions about gacha games. I have opinions on gacha game music and I am going to share them in the form of a list. I put next to no thought on the order by the way I consider these all "bangers". So fucking strap in. It's about to get delightful. It's about to get frightful.
Anyway.
I'm a really visual person, I have a really vivid visual imagination of stuff. I don't know if there's a term for this but the way I describe my imagination sometimes is I can just have a "movie" of whatever going on in my head where I can "see" the distinct characters, hear their voices, make them do stuff. And I draw a lot of that visual aesthetic from the character designs of the games I play, particularly gacha games. They have a lot of designs and I think they're really pretty. I love those overdesigned Mihoyo characters a lot. So my mental "cast of characters" and such draws really heavily from that-- but a thing I don't talk about a lot is that the mental soundtrack for my life also comes out of these games a lot of the time.
That's not to say I *only* listen to gacha game music. I have an honestly much more varied musical diet than I do for like any other media. My bandcamp addiction honestly might be more of a problem than my gacha addiction (there is no way this is actually true by the way). I don't talk about music a lot though because I do not have an extensive vocabulary to discuss music. My thoughts on fiction are at least partially a product of both my academic background and orbiting critical spaces online. Through those lenses I can describe the stories and characters of any narrative-driven works and talk about what works for me and what doesn't with hopefully novel insights or at least if not novel, then insights which are grounded in something. I can say that "Faces" is the most insanely god awful episode of Star Trek because the idea of being able to split a mixed race person into two "fully racialized" individuals each of which embody the cartoonish stereotypes of their race (in a way that flatters the "half" closest to "whiteness" even!) is like ipso facto just insanely racist even if you intended the ultimate message to be that mixed race people need both of their genetics, equipped as vulgar accessories to an otherwise blank slate, to be a complete person. I can say that kind of stuff about Star Trek.
I can't do that with music. I barely know what a four-on-the-floor beat is. I barely know about the amen break. I can mainly speak about music in kind of vulgar emotional terms. But I'm going to do it anyway. Because I have sinned before and I will inevitably sin again. Eventually I will die and nobody will remember me-- so what does it matter what I do?
10: Absolutio Absoluta Absolutissime
It's a banal observation that a year feels, mentally, like a eternal expanse, within which you cannot identify any given event. Or at least, that is what I thought when I realized that Daddy was released in 2024. Arlecchino, the Knave, is an affably charismatic antagonist in Genshin Impact who took the world of erotic lesbian art of gacha games by storm. In Genshin Impact, battles against the "Harbinger" faction usually have two phases, and the second phase has a bombastic theme suitable for the boss' transformation into their final, strongest form. Absolutio Absoluta Absolutissime, which is a sick ass title, is the theme for the second phase of the Daddy boss fight. It rules. I want to say that it gives a sense of both overwhelming force and a sort of tragedy, which pairs well with the story context in which this fight transpires.
Alternative ranking for this track: 1. It's insanely good. I aspire to give off mean top energy anywhere near as much as Daddy's and I will absolutely fail. I do not have black, be-sigiled claws for fingers. I will never put three abyssal-powered knuckles in that pussy-- I might as well "game end" as the kids say.
9: Wrecking Storm
SHIFT UP has recently been a focal point of internet culture war stuff that makes your brain leak out of your ears if you take it too seriously. While I couldn't care less about Stellar Blade, which looks like a bad game that is also aesthetically displeasing to me, I really like Goddess of Victory:NIKKE. The story was a lot more serious and complex than I imagined, there are many charming characters, and the game is fun to play, particularly on your actual phone using your actual fingers-- it's a game where the mobile experience is immensely novel and it feels tailor-made to be on your phone. The music is *awesome* also: the moment I knew Cosmograph was going to be part of this project I knew I had to listen, and the other frequent contributors to Nikke's soundtrack such NieN bring an incredible variety of auditory textures to the game's battles, cutscenes, and even the fucking menus.
If I had done one of these last year, the whole thing would've gone to Stronghold/Land Eater, a double-feature track I can't stop listening to even to this day. For this year though there is still an immensely strong selection. It was hard not to fill this list exclusively with NIKKE music. Wrecking Storm is so fun to me. It's like a boss track from an old Sonic: The Hedgehog game. The lyrics send me into the stratosphere. Can't block the vision / Obsessed the mission. Come try the focus in my eyes / the force field is not nice. Every so often I will look at myself in the mirror, with the deep dark circles around my eyes and my resting bitch face and I will say a line from this song and crack the fuck up. It's so daring and genuine. Where did this kind of boss theme go? I mean clearly to South Korean and Chinese gacha games.
But what are the rest of you doing?!
8: Hope Is The Thing With Feathers
5: Perfect Maid: You've always got me
This track is a sample overload. It has the think break. It has bed squeaks. It has camera shutter noises. There's a weird "bleh" in there. I'm pretty sure the vocal delivery is itself sampled. It's pure saccharine chaos. I can't help but smile. If thinking about how I'll never be a hellcursed evil top with fire powers made me want to kill myself, Perfect Maid: You've Always Got Me gives me reason to live. No joke when this came out I was so insanely depressed, and after hearing it, I had it on loop so much that I was playing it in the car to my wife. I was and still am obsessed with this track. It buoyed my horrible mood. It still makes me smile. It's always got me. Unrelated but I love the illustration in the youtube video. Privaty is my favorite NIKKE, because I'm addicted to tsundere, and of course, her consternation at becoming a perfect maid is delightful. I want to bully her so so much. And Ade's gentle smile is so charming. Thanks NIKKE-- I *am* having the time of my life.