Watch On
You can now listen to the entire soundtrack for grand strategy game Europa Universalis 5, as it’s been posted to YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music. Composed by Håkan Glänte, the music spans a lot of history and a lot of Europe in an impressive 26 tracks lasting nearly two hours.
As you might imagine, it’s a suitably grand soundtrack for a game that will encompass nearly 500 years of human history, from the medieval world through the early modern period. It focuses on a lot of orchestral pieces, with recognizable inspirations from medieval, renaissance, and baroque music.
There’s even a fitting bit of Bach in there, with an added vocal track above it—Gloria Patri On Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G major, BWV 1007: I.Prélude. How pleasantly iconic. (Not sarcasm—trust me, you’ll probably recognize the tune if you hear it. It’s at 38:08 in the YouTube video.)
For hardcore fans of grand strategy games there may have been a little apprehension over the upcoming soundtrack. Andreas Waldetoft, the composer behind the brilliant soundtracks of over a decade of Paradox Development Studio releases, left his exclusive arrangement with Paradox in 2023. Waldetoft’s soundtrack for previous Paradox games were much-beloved.
However, like Håkan Glänte’s previous tracks with Paradox for Victoria 3, this one’s pretty dang good. I’ll let you give it a listen before you decide if it lives up to the legacy, fellow strategy meganerds, but for me it’s another good set with a few true standouts that’re going right on my “good game music” playlist. No, I won’t give it a better name, it has been named that since 2005 and I am now completely set in my ways.
In a hands-on preview earlier this year, PC Gamer’s Fraser Brown said that Europa Universalis 5 might well be “the ultimate grand strategy game.” I spent time with the same build of it, and I’m inclined to agree.
You can find the Europa Universalis 5 soundtrack on Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube. Europa Universalis 5 itself, however, doesn’t yet have a release date.
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