Metaphor: ReFantazio is a JRPG from the same developers (and team within that developer) as the Persona series. It takes heavy inspiration from that series, particularly Persona 5, but also has its own spin on things. After Persona 5, there’s a certain expectation, and this game fulfils that. The game is super stylish, it’s as stylish as Persona 5, and a little bit more finetuned in certain places. The menu layouts will be familiar.
The graphics themselves may take a little bit of getting used to. Its still anime inspired but has a little bit more grounded western fantasy setting to it. It’s cell-shaded, and it isn’t as stylized as you’d expect, so the graphics can look messy at times. There is an abundance of greys and browns, which doesn’t help with the look.
The game has a turn-based combat system, and it is very similar to Persona 5’s. Encountering an enemy on the map will transition to separate battle screens. All the possible actions are mapped to the face and shoulder buttons. The characters can use a melee attack, a special move that uses HP or MP, use team attacks, pass to the next character, guard or use items.
During each turn, the number of characters in play will determine the amount of turns you have. However, there is a strategy element that originally stemmed from the Shin Megami Tensei series of games. And that is, if you manage to hit an enemy’s weakness or land a critical attack, it will only use half of the turn. So, if you plan carefully, you may be able to squeeze double the number of turns. Passing to another character will also only use a half turn. To prevent too much of an advantage to the player, these rules also apply to the enemy. Missing or using an attack the enemy is immune to will cause you to lose a turn instead.
Instead of Personas, this game has Archetypes. They function similarly in that you equip them with each character, and that dictates the special skills that they have, while also affecting their stats. Archetypes earn experience and can level up, learning new moves. However, new Archetypes are not created via fusing or befriending enemies, rather, they are gained through the bonds with certain NPCs.
Speaking of NPCs, the game has a calendar system, whereby you play through the story day by day. It’s structurally like Persona, but it is not as tight, and the bonds, while still a big part of the game, don’t completely dominate it. The setting has changed to a bigger city (rather than a school or something similar), and each day, there are a lot of different activities available to the player. Still, the player must use their time wisely to raise other non-battle-related stats, to unlock further options. Certain NPCs have their own stories that will be told over the course of the game by spending more time with them.
The game takes place in a fantasy world, and you will get to name the main character (“MC”). The MC is of a “lesser” race. They’re thrown right into the middle of political crisis. The King has died, and a clever by cruel military strategist, Louis, looks to be the most likely candidate. The prince has been cursed, and the MC needs to find a way to lift the curse. After the King died, his magic continued and announced that anyone can become the next king, as long as they have the most support from the population. Along the way, the MC gathers a band of supporters, and joins in the race to become the King, to thwart Louis, and save the prince.
The story has a slow build up, it takes at least 10 to 15 hours for the player to get properly accustomed, and the main story beats to be set up. There are a lot of quality-of-life features, such as auto-battle, restarting a battle at the press of a button, and even clearing enemies without entering the battle screen if you are of a sufficient level above them. Dungeons can be big and confusing, and it becomes a battle of attrition given that MP is hard to come by and recover. There are many cutscenes, and some of which can go on for over 30 mins at a time, which can be frustrating.
Given the daily system where you play the game day by day (and unlike Persona 5, there aren’t many events that take up multiple days at a time), the story’s pacing isn’t as fast as you’d like. It really depends how you tackle the sidequests, and the main story dungeons. There is a constant deadline, although it’s quite generous, and even if you’ve finished the story dungeon for that point, you will have to wait until the deadline before the story can progress again. It’s not a horrible system and it works well, just that it’s quite repetitive at times.
There is an overwhelming number of things that you can do each day once the game opens up. On each particular day, you can build one of the main available relationships, do side activities, tackle dungeons (main or optional) or build your stats. It’s to the point where there is a strong sense of FOMO, and you question yourself whether you should be doing what you did or if you just wasted your time. You must keep multiple saves because of this, given that you can screw yourself and get a game over by not being diligent enough.
The game is not too difficult on normal difficulty, provided that you do fight every single monster that you’ve come across, although grinding a bit extra does help a lot. The difficulty comes from the dungeons, especially if you want to min max your time, and finish them in a day. It’s not too bad until a dungeon during the midpoint, where it is extremely long, and you need to conserve your MP and constantly replenish it. Targeting the weaknesses of monsters become more important. It’s a slight difficulty spike, but more like a check to make sure that you’re up to the level required to continue.
You’ll eventually settle into a routine as you play through the story, as the game’s structure never really changes. The game tries to keep things fresh but still introduces some new things, whether it’s in gameplay mechanics, or plot twists, even late into the game. Notably, you don’t get your final party member until you’re over 30 hours in, which kind of sucks as you would have already settled down on your preferred party members by that point. There’s also little guidance or an easy cheat sheet on finding what events are available on a given day to help you decide what to do.
The game’s story is supposed to hook you in, but at the core of it, it is still a simple story that doesn’t hold as much depth as it claims to be. The characters are naïve and idealistic, basically your typical JRPG protagonists. Despite the political background which has so much potential, it only manages to leverage some of it to good effect. As mentioned earlier, the pacing is decimated due to the calendar system, and the plot progress at specific times, so if you wanted to focus on the story, you would still have to wait until the game decides to progress. Most of the plot twists are predictable if you have had any exposure to JRPGs in the past.
However, a commendable effort with the story is that it doesn’t blow up to be a much grander affair as most JPRGs tend to do. The game started off with the MC wanting to save his prince by entering the competition, and the game follows that through right to the end of the story. The villains that we are introduced to from the beginning of the game remain villains for the rest of the game. There’s no higher being pulling strings from the background and only appearing to serve as the final boss, and this makes the game much more consistent.
The story is a 60 hour affair, although highly dependent on how you approach it. towards the end, it does tend to start to overstay its welcome. Particularly the two final dungeons, both of which are big, tedious and filled with stronger enemies that you must fight over and over again to the point where you’re just going through the motions. Fighting various bosses yet again is also tiresome. This issue is compounded by how samey all the dungeons feel, they’re not very visually interesting. The game ends when the story ends, and you can only either reload an older save (but without really any options to do anything else) or go into New Game+ where you get to carry over certain aspects to make the second playthrough much easier. The New Game+ only introduces a new superboss, as it’s predominantly designed to allow you to see things you may have missed the first time.
Overall, Metaphor: ReFantazio is a Persona game in all but name. It has many many similarities with its gameplay structure while continuing to refine it. What we get is a highly polished game. The addition of many quality-of-life elements such as easily dispatching weaker enemies and the ability to restart a battle at any time allows the player to focus on the elements that are more fun. The turn-based combat is fun, and the return of gaining or losing turns based on weaknesses is fantastic. The story is solid, even if it isn’t the best that we have seen from Atlus (and the same goes for graphics and soundtrack). However, considering all the elements that are packaged together, it is a great game.
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