One of the great things about the Persona soundtracks is their tonal consistency across all of the tracks. There are a handful of different genres worked in, but there’s still a similar feel across everything (each of Persona 3-5 is associated with a color and mood, P3 is Blue/Sadness) and There are a lot of fantastic songs on the P3 soundtrack, but I picked When The Moon’s Reaching Out to the Stars because of its catchy little lyrical hook. It’s a song that plays when you’re wandering around the city, and so it gets played a lot and burns itself into your brain. It also should be considered with it’s companion piece, Paulownia Mall, which is a variation on the same melody, a trick I’m particularly fond of when it shows up in pop music (see: Quadrophenia).
Not played Persona 3, Descent 2 or FFX but enjoyed the latter two more. I nearly chose Descent 2 (that industrial sound is great) but I love the Zanarkand piece and the latter half of Hell March sealed the deal.
For once, I’ve actually played most of the games here and only had to listen to one new track, but the two JRPGs made the cut in the end. Incredibly strong round altogether, though!
To Make the End of Battle, even though it is just a cutscene’s music, but what a cutscene. It was one of my earlier WTF videogame moments. Now it’d be super standard and unremarkable, I guess. Funnily, Falcom never changed the way they arrange their tracks in over 20 years, stuck in time, prisonners of formulas they are too scared to diverge from — and that’s not affecting only their music. They used to make such novel games.