Now this is a complete Persona soundtrack, unlike the other OST I reviewed. Every track from the game is in this collection, along with a bonus disc with a few preview themes from Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Though the sound quality isn’t quite as good as the first OST, it’s still quite good. The completeness of the soundtrack more than makes up for it.
One thing I like is that some characters have multiple themes, including the villain Takahisa Kandori (Guido “The Rock” Sardenia in the US version.) He has three very distinct themes in Disc 1 entitled Silence, Ambition, and Pathos. These are easily my three favorite tracks in Disc 1, which is mostly tracks from the Kandori/Sebek story branch.
Disc 2 was a great Disc with all the Snow Queen themes and a few that play elsewhere in the game, but still fit the thematic vibe of the disk. The Snow Queen tracks were all new to me since I did not get to experience its glory in the US version of the game. The music is very wintery and cool and is my favorite Disc in the soundtrack. The first track on Disc 2, “School Infirmary (Former Dungeon ~ Saeko-Sensei),” had some very interesting instrumentation. Like with the Kandori Disc preceding it, the Snow Queen herself has multiple themes on Disc 2- Main, Violent, and Sad. All are very nice variations on a common theme.
Disc 3 features songs that can be found in both branches, particularly in the beginning before the storyline splits into the Sebek branch and Snow Queen branch. Granted, there are tracks in all the disks that are common throughout the entire game, but the lion’s share are here. Such themes here are the various character themes for the protagonists, the opening theme, Velvet Room, store theme, and other such staples, including the Satoshi Tadami Pharmacy song in all its glory.
Disc 4 is a preview Disc for some of the music in Persona 2: Innocent Sin. It’s still electronic music, but the flavor is completely different. Having played Innocent Sin, I can definitely say that the themes in that game are more in-your-face than those of Persona 1 and you can definitely feel that in this little preview disk. I quite liked the Innocent Sin soundtrack, though there were clunkers in there. And one of the clunkers is the dungeon theme in this disk. It’s atmospheric, sure, but boring. This is disappointing, given that Persona 1‘s soundtrack manages to be primarily atmospheric without ever being boring, even when listening to it outside the context of the game. Still, Maya’s theme is quite good and the jazzy version of the Satomi Tadashi song is good as well.
What’s amazing is that despite the sheer number of themes in this OST, there was not a single Persona 1 track I didn’t like. The pieces were generally long enough to groove along with, but not too long that they wore on me. There are fast pieces, slow pieces, melodic pieces, ambient pieces, however there aren’t too many happy upbeat pieces in keeping with the gritty nature of the game. Unlike a lot of electronic music out there, the bass generally isn’t in your face, but rather tastefully used. I like that. Even the synthesized slap bass sound I tend to dislike is used sparingly as well. In addition, a few pieces incorporate sound effects in them (i.e. Deva Yuga, City 1 & 2 Shopping District- West Exit) which is pretty cool. What more needs to be said? Persona was one of my favorite RPGs and the King Records Persona OST is one of my favorite soundtracks.
