By Narayan Saimbi
Throughout my current travels in Asia and Oceania, I have taken as many opportunites as I can to submerge myself in the culture and cuisines of every city that I pass through. I’ve dined in hole-in-the-wall ramen joints in Tokyo, watched street performers in the busy streets of Sydney, and spent whole afternoons at the Hiroshima Peace and Music Jazz Festival (which was absolutely brilliant, if I do say so myself).
But throughout every train, bus and streetcar ride that I’ve taken on my journey, I decided to spend these pockets of free time relistening to some of my favourite albums and artists. Arctic Monkeys, Vampire Weekend and Sufjan Stevens all made their rounds, but so did some unconventional choices as well. Notably, the soundtracks to some of my favourite video games.
Now whenever I choose to play a new game, a big factor in my decision-making is how good the soundtrack is. As much as Bach appeals to classical musicians, it’s not exactly my music of choice for an RPG or arcade game. Whilst there are some fantastic songs in games like Jet Set Radio Future, Street Fighter and Final Fantasy, I would like to highlight something a little different. Presenting: the soundtrack of Persona 3– in particular, the harmonic brilliance that lies within it.
What is Persona?
Image Credit: PK_reD21 (Reddit)
The Persona series are a set of role-playing games developed by the company Atlus, and initially acted as a spin-off to the popular Shin Megami Tensei series. The games take place in high schools in Japan, with each one having a different city setting and story arc. The games all contain similar themes : a focus on morality, the importance of friendship and an emphasis on effectively using the precious time that we have. Through a variety of different mechanisms, from visual novel settings to dungeon crawling, each game expertly paints a picture to the player, keeping them hooked throughout the entire story (which can sometimes take over 100 hours).
For games of this length, there truly must be something special about them. And whilst I could talk about the narrative makeup of these games for hours, I just want to focus on the brilliant soundtrack that Persona 3 has, and how it adds to experience and immerses the player fully into the role of the protagonist and the story.
The Soundtrack
A constant theme throughout the soundtrack is the expert interweaving of different genres and motifs. Jazz, RnB and hip hop all make their appearance throughout the game, with the opening track “Burn my Dread” both introducing and cementing these genres into the makeup of the story.
Tracks like “Want to be Close” and “When the Moon’s Reaching Out the Stars” also solidify these musical elements, with groovy percussion, female vocal melismatics and layered synth patterns all featuring throughout. Combined with the design of the protagonist character himself, with the over-ear headphones and sleek Sony Walkman, it’s very easy to be immersed into the role of the protagonist, as you slowly explore all of the different settings that the game takes you through.
The dungeon-crawling themes are also worth mentioning. As a core part of the game, the constant motifs that appear in the “tartarus” tracks distinguish this gameplay mechanic from the rest of the story. The “dungeon” that you explore in this iteration of the Persona franchise is an alternate dimension, only accessible in the twilight hours in the city. The constant repetition of unique motifs helps emphasise this aspect of gameplay, and further immerses the player into the experience. A brilliant aspect of the soundtrack, and one that utilises ear-catching melodies and functional harmonies in an incredibly innovative manner.
In my opinion, the Persona 3 soundtrack does a fantastic job of blending a variety of different genres and melodic ideas to fully immerse the player into the gameplay and overall experience.
Whilst the remastered version of the game, known as Persona 3 Reload, did add some more brilliant tracks to the roster, the original soundtrack has to be commended for laying the musical foundation for which the Reload soundtrack is based on.
If this blend of jazz, hip hop and Japanese RnB sounds like your cup of tea, I would fully recommend you check out Persona 3. For both its brilliant use of ear-catching motifs and functional harmony, I can almost guarantee that it won’t dissapoint.
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