Truth be told, a lot of fighting games' soundtracks are really good and Blade Strangers is no exception. But using your own music is definitely something else. Just imagine Rules of Nature (from Metal Gear Rising) blasting in the background in middle of a comeback, or changing a stage's music to "Never Gonna Give You Up" to Rick Roll your local friends (Yes, I actually did that). These changes, while being simple, can actually add more value to the experience you can have in a game. Therefore, it's understandable why many would want to do this. But the question is, how?

Surprisingly, you do not need anything other than possibly an audio converter to change Blade Strangers' music. So, this process is not as difficult as other games where you have to unpack and repack an archive.

With that said, let's start.

Unlike many other games, Blade Strangers' music tracks are not encrypted or packaged. The game just uses .wav files located in a folder to play the soundtracks. Therefore, replacing them is an extremely easy task. But since some users might run into some trouble, I'm going to explain how you can do this in detail.

First, we need a .wav audio file. If you do have your desired soundtrack in this format, well you're in luck! Just go to the next step to finish things.
But if your file is in another format (mp3, m4a, ogg, flac, etc...) then we need to convert it. To do this, I recommend Foobar2000 as it's free and easy to use. You can also use Audacity (another great audio editing program which is also free), but since Foobar2000 is easier to use, especially for those who are less experienced, I will focus on that.

1. Download and install Foobar2000 from the official website: https://www.foobar2000.org/
   
2. Run the program.
   
3. Add your track to the program by either dragging and dropping it in the program's window, or go to "File -> Open..." and then navigate to your file and select it.
   
4. Right click on your track in the program and choose "Convert -> Quick convert"
   
   
   
   
   
5. In the next window, choose "WAV" in the list and press "Convert". Then choose a location for your converted file to be saved there (I recommend choosing the desktop). You don't have to change the file's name yet, so don't bother yourself with it.

Alright, we're done! Now, step 1 is complete and you have a WAV copy of your music track, which the game can easily use.

The only thing that remains is to change the name of your desired track into something the game recognizes and replace it with the original file. Go to this location:

Steam\steamapps\common\Blade Strangers\fsroot\spec_win\bgm

This is the location where the game keeps all the music files that you are going to change. Because some might run into trouble finding out which track means which part of the game, I have gathered all of them in one place to make your work easier.


Here are all the tracks you can find in the folder and what they really are:

• bgm_bossappears
  Story Cutscene Music
  
  
• bgm_chr1
  Character Trailer Theme 1
  
  
• bgm_chr2
  Character Trailer Theme 2
  
  
• bgm_chrsel
  Character Select Theme
  
  
• bgm_cop_ali
  Ancient Tower Interior (Ali's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_cop_lio
  Crumbling Ancient Castle (Lion Heart's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_cop_mas
  Beasts of Legends Temple (Master T's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_cop_sol
  DeLux Castle & Downtown (Solange & Gunvolt's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_fun
  Story Cutscene Music
  
  
• bgm_fun2
  Story Cutscene Music
  
  
• bgm_gameover
  Game Over Theme
  
  
• bgm_healing
  Story Cutscene Music
  
  
• bgm_healing2
  Story Cutscene Music
  
  
• bgm_heatuptime
  Heat Up Activation Theme
  
  
• bgm_mainmenu
  Main Menu Theme
  
  
• bgm_nic_aba
  Ukampa Temple (Aban's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_nic_cul
  Deep Cave (Curly Brace's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_nic_hel
  Athens Under Siege (Helen's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_nic_iss
  The Basement (Isaac's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_nic_quo
  Balcony (Quote's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_normal
  Story Cutscene Music
  
  
• bgm_ori_lin
  VR Room (Lina's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_positive
  Story Cutscene Music
  
  
• bgm_poy_pia
  Cactus Garden (Piaa's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_result
  Result Screen Theme
  
  
• bgm_sad
  Story Cutscene Music
  
  
• bgm_serious
  Story Cutscene Music
  
  
• bgm_stg01
  Training Stage Theme
  
  
• bgm_uhr_bkw
  Public Bath (Summer Kawase's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_uhr_emi
  Riverbed of Memories (Emiko's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_uhr_kws
  Dream Town (Kawase's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_uhr_nok
  Space-Time Transmission Device (Noko's Theme)
  
  
• bgm_unrest
  Story Cutscene Music
  
  
• bgm_vs
  Versus Screen
  
  
• bgm_ycg_sho
  The Lich Yard (Shovel Knight's Theme)

Just change your desired track's name to any track mentioned above, copy it in the game's music folder and confirm the replacement. For example, I want to change Shovel Knight's theme. So, I have to change my desired music's file name to "bgm_ycg_sho.wav" and then replace it with the original file.
After all this, fire up the game and test if your music plays as expected.

I do not recommend this. First, having an audio editing / converting program on your system can help you in the long run. Second, while this rarely happens, WAV files can contain malicious code if downloaded from untrusted sources. Not to mention the sites you are going to use might contain harmful pop-ups or auto download scripts. It doesn't hurt to exercise caution.


That's completely normal. MP3 / OGG / AAC / WMA are lossy audio formats, which means they contain compressed audio. Now if you convert those files to a lossless audio format like WAV or FLAC that have very little to no audio compression, the overall quality will decrease. But usually it's not noticeable unless your REALLY look for it.


Special thanks to Steven for bringing up this possible issue to my attention.
As it appears, usage of some programs to create a looping audio track or to convert it to wav format, can possibly crash the game. It's not clear what causes these crashes, why they happen and which app versions are affected, but for the time being, avoid using the following programs:

• Any of the Sony VEGAS apps

As an alternative, try using Audacity (as mentioned in the guide before) for audio editing. It's open source, is completely free, can be used on 32-bit systems and gives you the choice of getting it with an installer or as a portable zip file.

This is a 2021 update to the guide. At the moment of writing this, Audacity Team has announced that the program will collect your personal data from now on and therefore, it should not be used by people under 13 years old to comply with COPPA in USA. The collected data will be then used by the development team, and also will be disclosed to any law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court, potential buyers or other third party. This will be enforced on version 3.0 onwards. If you want to use this program, get any of the old versions and they will work just fine.


If you have any other questions or want to add something to the guide, feel free to do so.