Dragalia Lost is dead, and it means we’ve lost easy access to one of the best video game soundtracks out there. Given the nature of the game, especially in its final years, people might not have noticed this plucky Cygames and Nintendo title. Which means, well, you missed out! The title featured some of the catchiest tunes ever heard in a mobile game. A big part of that is all because of singers attached, especially when you consider Daoko’s big song contributions to Dragalia Lost.
Knowing who Daoko is an important point. She’s a Japanese pop singer and rapper who’s been crafting catchy tunes since 2012. She became famous like many do nowadays, via sharing her creations online. (Though her beginning involved Niconico, rather than sources like YouTube or TikTok.) When Dragalia Lost launched in September 2018, it did so with tracks like Daoko’s “Owaranai Sekai de (In an Unending World)” as the opening theme, “Bokura no Network (Our Network)” as the home screen song, “Ryuusei Toshi (Meteor City)” as a boss fight song, “Cinderella Step” as the results song, and “Bang!” coming up whenever you performed a summon. In short, when you downloaded Dragalia Lost, you weren’t getting an ordinary game soundtrack. You essentially got access to a Daoko album when you downloaded the game.
What was incredible about Dragalia Lost and its music is that this “Daoko album” was constantly growing. New songs continually appeared from the artist. A major event would happen in the campaign? Maybe there’d be a new song from Daoko to go with it! Like “Ichiban Boshi (First Star)” came up in alongside Chapter 11 of the story. What if there was a Raid? “Oni-san Kochira” from Daoko would accompany you. The Fire Emblem crossover came to Dragalia Lost? Daoko’s going to sing the Fire Emblem theme song.
Of course, while Daoko’s contributions are a big part of what made the Dragalia Lost soundtrack so special, her songs weren’t the only one that were great. Certain in-game characters featured special music or songs tied to them, due to the fact that they were performers, which meant singers like Liyuu and Kurokumo also contributed tracks. Nintendo even made a big deal of the Siren (Liyuu) concert and event worldwide, sharing a snippet of the performance. M‧A‧O, Pecorine’s voice actress and established Japanese singer, even contributed the “Rainbow Riders” song for the Princess Connect! Re: Dive Dragalia Lost crossover. It ended up being this massive collection of incredible music. Even in 2022, we were getting new tracks from Kurokumo alongside Chapter 26 and Xenos boss battles, with tracks like “Truth is Calling” and “Words to Give” seeing us out.
Which brings us to the greatest tragedy of all. All of those incredible songs are gone and it is impossible to enjoy this full, amazing soundtrack for free, because Dragalia Lost is dead. Yes, official CD soundtracks exist. People on services like Spotify can hear some tracks. You can get Toy’s Factory’s Daoko x Dragalia Lost or Dragalia Lost Song Collection as permanent reminders, if you’re willing to import and pay the price. But something truly special’s been ripped away from us. Unless we see Cygames pull a Little Noah, we won’t see Dragalia Lost again. At least, in the meantime, we can turn to sites like Spotify and YouTube to bring back these bops.
Dragalia Lost was available for Android and Apple iOS devices from September 2018 until November 2022, but now the game is dead.
Published: Dec 1, 2022 04:00 pm