Metaphor: ReFantazio Original Soundtrack Music Review
When Metaphor: ReFantazio launched in late 2024, I was immediately smitten. However, I was less smitten with the woefully incomplete Special Soundtrack: pay 150 USD for the game’s limited edition, get a two-disc set of music when the full OST is actually five discs. Not exactly a winner in my book. Therefore, I decided to hold my ground until January 2025, when Atlus scheduled their retail publication of the full five-disc OST. And that’s what we’re here to talk about today.
I have organized some key insights from multiple listens to the Metaphor: ReFantazio Original Soundtrack into themes. These are my findings:
1. Atlus Sound Team has range
The composing team for Metaphor consists of three Atlus Sound Team composers plus Shoji Meguro (who is basically synonymous with SMT but has technically gone freelance). In terms of raw output, Meguro and Atsushi Kitajoh handled the majority of the composition and arrangement.
When I think of Shoji Meguro’s music, I tend to lump it into two categories: his Persona sound and his mainline SMT sound. For Persona, Meguro weaves together dance-friendly pop, hip-hop, and jazz for incredibly catchy melodies, whether with vocal or instrumental lead. For mainline SMT, Meguro often uses a more gritty palette: an industrial EDM soundscape with guitar-led rock music for epic battle themes.
Kitajoh, a younger composer who has learned to adapt Meguro’s style from earlier Persona games, tends to lean on piano and strings for his softer compositions but otherwise maintains Meguro’s genre and instrumentation across other Persona titles (Kitajoh’s work on Persona Q2 tells this story well).
Enter Metaphor, and be amazed at how quickly Meguro and Kitajoh redefine their strengths.
This soundtrack is largely orchestral. And, surprisingly, it is often a synthesized orchestral sound. Recordings with the ubiquitous Yu Manabe Strings group are present, but much of the BGM exists in the realm of synths and samples. This gives the soundtrack a semi-retro, PS2/PS3 era vibe. And yet, the sound is rather sophisticated.
For the fully recorded tracks, both vocal and instrumental, there is something special about how Meguro and the crew take the lessons learned from so many past projects and utilize them in an entirely new way. The bombast of some of these symphonic pieces, especially celebrated battle themes like “Warriors in Arms” and “Warriors in Valour,” combine late romantic and early modern orchestra and choir (think Tschaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, and certainly Carl Orff). On top of these, there is an overlay of distinctly Japanese tradition in the solo vocals of one Keisuke Honryo, the Chief priest of the Myojoji temple. Which leads to my next point…
2. The vocalists are the stars
In this way, perhaps more than any other, Metaphor maintains a musical bond with Persona. It struck me as I was listening for the first time that Keisuke Honryo—A Buddhist priest and member of an experimental jazz group—served a role that is functionally similar to Lotus Juice in Persona 3. Both provide rapid-fire, well-enunciated, multi-syllabic vocals in the music. It just so happens that in Persona 3 it’s hip-hop, whereas in Metaphor we find intense chants. The cultural origins may be entirely disparate, but the functional aspect from a musical perspective? I’m telling you, it serves the same purpose. And frankly, it’s genius.
Honryo’s vocal presence is matched by others, though. There are six other solo vocalists to note across the OST. The most notable, one who sometimes sings on tracks with Honryo, is Maiko Katagiri. Katagiri’s drifting melodic tones, unafraid to play with microtonal shifts typical within traditional Asian music, match well with Honryo’s chants. This is especially true in the overworld theme “Traversing the Wastes.”
Finally, this soundtrack wouldn’t be half as grandiose as it is were it not for the presence of a powerful, talented choir. The group in question, “GLORY CHORUS TOKYO,” serves as a defining feature of the Metaphor: ReFantazio Original Soundtrack. The synergy between the chorus and Honryo is absolutely wild. Perhaps more so, given how Meguro and the rest of the music team effectively wielded these performers. Weaving all of these elements together, we have something special, something unexpected, and something less fanciful than Persona. And here I must conclude…
3. This soundtrack (rightly) takes itself seriously
Nothing is worse than a piece of art that attempts to stand on its merits where there are no merits upon which to stand. I think we all know that kind of pretentious art. It exists in every medium, even game music. By playing in the sandbox of the symphony, Metaphor‘s music positions itself as valuable, meaningful, and demanding your attention. Any artist who designs their art in this way is taking a risk. Because, if you demand my attention, you had better make it worthwhile.
The risk/reward dynamic paid off in this case, of course. I love listening to this soundtrack. I love the softer, synthesized orchestra pieces. I adore the vocal work. I admire the composers’ impressive shift from modern pop and rock to epic orchestral works. Thus, when this work demands my attention, I happily tune in. This isn’t easy listening background music. When you listen, you really listen.
If you want to add the impressive, five-disc Metaphor: ReFantazio Original Soundtrack to your collection, importing through retailers like Amazon and CDJapan is the simplest way. Presently, it is also available to stream through multiple platforms, including Spotify and YouTube Music, and it is available to purchase via iTunes. I’d think this is a must-have for fans of the game. And for those who haven’t played it (yet) but appreciate Atlus’ past musical offerings, Metaphor offers a refreshing musical alternative to typical SMT and Persona music!
