Metaphor ReFantazio Review – Peak Fiction

Metaphor: ReFantazio has come a long way to get where it is today. Initially announced as Project Re:Fantasy, Metaphor was conceived by Katsura Hashino shortly after he departed the Persona team over at ATLUS. Citing a need to explore new ideas untethered from Persona 5’s runaway success, Hashino established his own internal studio within ATLUS named Studio Zero. That all happened almost 10 years ago in 2016. That’s a long time for any game to be in development, but the anticipation for Hashino’s next big creative swing is palpable.

ATLUS is also now in a position where they don’t need to be entertaining creative ideas for new IP. Persona is a worldwide phenomenon that practically prints money, and Shin Megami Tensei is becoming more mainstream as a result. That aspect of Metaphor makes its existence even more impressive, especially when some of ATLUS’ strongest talent is involved in the project. There’s a clear belief in Hashino’s vision to bring something new to ATLUS’ expansive swathe of JRPGs. Though it might not be the gameplay evolution some are looking for, Metaphor is yet another win for ATLUS.

In the dead of night, the United Kingdom of Euchronia’s idealistic and benevolent king is assassinated in his sleep, instigating widespread chaos throughout the land. With his son rendered unconscious by a curse, the throne’s successor has never been more unclear. In his death, the king invokes royal magic, setting the stage for a tournament of kings to to decide who’s fit to take the throne.

You play as a young boy of the Elda tribe, a group of people that’ve been ostracised due to their connections to the old world. The Elda are few and far between in Euchronia for a few reasons, but what’s important is that you’re entering the tournament on behalf of the prince, while also searching for a means to lift the curse placed on him so he can take his place as king. It’s a fantastically unique premise that’s ripe with potential and thematic musings.

While ATLUS games always have more going on under the surface narratively – especially in Hashino’s works – Metaphor feels restrained. It maintains a square focus on the tournament, its many players, the core cast, and how it’s all impacting Euchronia. There’s still plenty of great narrative surprises and the way in which it hones in on that central conflict means that it’s always the same themes, ideas, and characters being explored and developed.

Euchronia is not a nice place. It purposefully mirrors our own world, with its people romanticising their own works of fiction and the idealistic worlds found within them. These seemingly perfect worlds also have these problems, tough. It’s these ideas of fiction and imagination that Metaphor is most fascinated with. Hoping for a better world when the status quo seems so deep-rooted in Euchronia’s history that most people live in complete ignorance of the discrimination around them.

In no way is this better explored than through Metaphor’s core cast of characters. Citizens whisper about the presence of an Elda in the capital of Grand Trad, propaganda and misinformation from bodies of authority result in warped perceptions of people and tribes they’ve never even met, and foreign cultures are often considered lesser or under-developed because of their differences. Even the problems faced by the higher classes are explored to some degree through the likes of Strohl, a noble who joins the army after his hometown is razed by monsters known as Humans.

It does feel like Metaphor doesn’t go far enough in its commentary of these themes and ideas in its main plot, though. They’re often only addressed in a manner that’s surface level, claiming that these things are bad and need to be uprooted, but not the deeper effects it has on the people impacted the most. I think this is likely because Metaphor is largely concerned with touching on the many downfalls of our own world, instead of exploring a select few in more intimate detail. It lends the game an ethereal and, for lack of a better word, meta feel to its central ideas and explorations.

It’s also just too long. ATLUS’ tentpole JRPGs often have this problem and it rears its ugly head once again in Metaphor. It isn’t as offensive as the tail-end of Persona 5, but Metaphor feels one dungeon too long. The final sequence in particular has a drawn-out preparation phase that’s great for wrapping up unfinished side content, but the main narrative comes to a screeching halt as a result. It’s made more obvious by how tightly paced the rest of Metaphor is, with a structure that echoes traditional Shonen anime to remarkable effect.

On the spectrum of Shin Megami Tensei and Persona, Metaphor: ReFantazio falls somewhere in the middle when it comes to gameplay. It leans a little heavy of the Persona side (with a dash of Digital Devil Saga), but combines elements of both to differentiate itself from ATLUS’ titanic franchises. If you’re wanting something that’s different from ATLUS’ traditional offerings, Metaphor isn’t quite that. It does bring some new ideas into the fold, but calling it wholly original in how it plays would be overstepping.

That isn’t to say Metaphor is uninspired or overly iterative. ATLUS continue to show they have a fundamental grasp on the systems and gameplay elements that make modern Persona and SMT so engaging. Once the game gets going proper, it operates on a calendar system with deadlines for each major dungeon as you progress the main story. You can spend your time making progress in said dungeons, deepening your bonds with the people of Euchronia, growing your kingly virtues, and more.

The biggest change in the calendar system comes with the Gauntlet Runner. A bipedal vehicle commonly used to traverse the dangerous no man’s lands between Euchronia’s towns, dungeons, and key points of interest. The catch, is that it takes time to make a trip in the Gauntlet Runner. Maybe you get a side quest that requires you to visit a nearby town or deal with a monster lurking in a small dungeon. Not only does it consume a day to explore said dungeon, but also to actually travel there in the Gauntlet Runner.

There are still things to do to fill the time while travelling, but any trip away from whatever town your party is setup at needs to be considered based on your progress in the main dungeon and its impending deadline. It adds another layer to decision making in this tried and true gameplay loop, imploring you to make the most of your time and optimise your dungeon diving. The Gauntlet Runner itself also just adds so much personality to the game and the whole setup of the tournament. Nowhere is this seen more than in the way you can stop at Euchronia’s many natural wonders on the road, all of which are accompanied by reflective conversation from the party. It lends a real sense of journey and exploration, echoing a grand feeling that isn’t often felt in modern RPGs.

Metaphor: ReFantazio also brings with it some of the best Social Links ATLUS has ever penned. Known as Bonds within Metaphor, these smaller side stories that follow people from different walks of life within Euchronia benefit greatly from the dark fantasy setting and themes of this world. It’d be a shame to spoil any of them here, but these stories often have the deeper explorations of Metaphor’s core themes and ideas that are lacking in the main story. They aren’t afraid to dig into the grungy underbelly of this world and the positions its people are forced into, but also highlight how perspective and understanding of someone who’s different from you can make all the difference.

Bonds also tie nicely into the game’s job system, called Archetypes. Each Archetype pertains to a different class, with advanced and elite Archetypes evolving from the base ones to create a Lineage. Each Lineage is directly linked to one of your Bonds, and levelling that Bond up directly benefits its related Archetype. Whether it be unlocking the aforementioned Advanced and Elite Archetypes, increasing the total number of Skill Inheritance slots, or decreasing costs associated with unlocking Archetypes within that lineage, these rewards always feel meaningful and worthwhile.

Part of the reason this all works so well is because the Archetype system is so, so good. It’s a fairly traditional job system where party members can seamlessly switch between Archetypes to fill different roles as needed. Levelling up these Archetypes unlocks new skills that you can inherit onto other Archetypes, granting you access to skill combinations you usually wouldn’t have. You can also use these slots to combat elemental weaknesses or fill holes in an Archetype’s kit. There’re so many different combinations and Archetypes to experiment with here, and it all fits so well into Metaphor’s combat framework.

It should come as no surprise that this battle system is very similar to Shin Megami Tensei’s. It’s closest to the Press Turn system from those games, where striking weaknesses grants you an extra turn, but the same is also true for your enemies. It’s always been strategically rewarding, and remains so in Metaphor, but there’s a few new ideas thrown into the mix that set Metaphor apart.

The most obvious change is Metaphor’s approach to first strikes, or the preamble that happens before turn-based combat actually starts. It’s become commonplace in RPGs today, but Metaphor goes a few steps further in its own interpretation of this modern staple. You can lock-on to roaming overworld enemies and engage them in a simple yet robust third-person action combat system. You’ll jump on enemies with simple combos while dodging their own attacks to stagger them, giving you a significant advantage on the first turn of combat if successful. The same is true for enemies, though, and starting battle with disadvantage feels like an uphill battle.

Weaker enemies can be immediately dispatched with this combat without transitioning into the turn-based mode, and weaknesses even play a part in how fast you stagger enemies. It’s a fun system that helps with combat pacing and cuts down on a lot of unnecessary battling. It’s very reminiscent of Trails Through Daybreak, and that’s a very good thing.

There’s a couple of things inside of the turn-based combat that give Metaphor it’s own flavour as well. There’s a formation system where you can place party members in the front or back line of the party, trading physical offence for defence and can sometimes be used to avoid entire attacks if you read your enemy properly. There’s also Synergy skills, which use two turn icons for suped up skills that often deal more damage or provide more efficient support to the party. The coolest part of these skills is how they also work with the Press Turn system, netting you two extra turns if you strike a weakness with one of these skills.

All of these inclusions are welcome because Metaphor does offer some challenge if you go looking for it. It’s not an overly difficult game on its base difficulty if you’re familiar with ATLUS’ other titles, but some of the optional bosses are real strategic gauntlets that force you to use every element of the combat system to come out on top. It’s a nice shift given ATLUS’ recent RPGs have lost some of their edge due to excessive player power and over tuned mechanics like Persona 3 Reload’s Theurgy.

Another area where Metaphor yields mixed results is in its dungeons. The main ones are almost all great, offering some really unique locales to explore that employ labyrinthine design that’re satisfying to unravel. The optional side dungeons are less impressive, often recycling the same visual motifs and design spaces that leave them feeling largely indistinguishable from one another, and forgettable as a result. You’ll spend a lot of time in these spaces as well, which only serves to hammer in the monotony. They’re better than the likes of Mementos or Tartarus, but still don’t come close to the quality of the main dungeons.

Now to surprise absolutely no one as I gush about Metaphor’s production values for the rest of this review. It’ll surprise no one that ATLUS have done it again, Metaphor is effortlessly stylish in all aspects of its presentation. It’s also done in a way that’s entirely different from recent Persona entries, fully embracing its dark fantasy setting and lofty musings on philosophy to deliver some incredibly striking user interfaces, imagery, character designs, and architecture.

A special shout out should go out to Shigenori Soejima’s excellent character designs. Each one is instantly charismatic, identifiable, and unique amongst a pantheon of other countless designs Soejima has authored over the years. It would’ve been easy enough for him to replicate his work in Persona with a medieval twist, but Soejima goes above and behind to reinforce the difference in these races and tribes with remarkable effect. It’s some of his most varied and high quality work yet, and that’s no small statement.

Shoji Meguro also makes a fantastic impression with Metaphor’s original soundtrack. An ATLUS game isn’t an ATLUS game without their irreplaceable music, and Meguro delivers a score so different from his previous works that still maintains his signature touches. Battle tracks slowly ramp up towards thunderous choruses, overworld tunes are less subdued than what you’d find in Persona, really selling the idea of this larger than life tournament of kings. It’s no surprise that Meguro delivers here, but that doesn’t undermine how fantastic the whole thing is.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is another home run for a seemingly unstoppable ATLUS. It isn’t without some issues, and ATLUS have yet to escape their third-act woes, but it’s refreshing to see a new IP with a setting that’s such a hard pivot from what’s become so successful for the studio. It might not depart as drastically when it comes to overall gameplay, but that isn’t such a bad thing when what’s been established is of such high quality.

Conclusion

Metaphor: ReFantazio is another banger RPG from ATLUS. It doesn't reinvent the wheel that Shin Megami Tensei and Persona have established as the studios bread and butter, but it iterates on them in unique ways with an undeniably fresh setting. It's hard not to applaud ATLUS for embracing something so tonally different from what they're known for nowadays.

Positives

Focused plot with a novel premise

Some of ATLUS' best characters yet

Excellent combat framework

Fantastic job system in Archetypes

More of ATLUS' top-tier presentation

Negatives

Drawn out third act

Mostly forgettable side dungeons