Not too long after developer ATLUS‘ and publisher SEGA’s hit Persona 5 launch, the company would announce the creation of a new division, Studio Zero, made up of the series’ senior workers, to work on a brand-new project set in a strange new universe. Much like Persona 5’s development time, this “Project Re:Fantasy” more or less disappeared right after its announcement in 2016 and I was partly ready to throw it alongside the likes of Beyond Good and Evil 2. But with its reveal back at the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase, I’ve been patiently waiting for Studio Zero’s new take on fantasy and what also appeared to be reality—‘Metaphor: ReFantazio’ is finally here, a new take on an old formula.
But don’t take this the wrong way—the game is incredibly unique as it is fun and imaginative.
FANTASY IS ALIVE
Metaphor starts us off on the brink of a turning point for the kingdom of Euchronia. The king, a man of great magic and standing, lies in bed as a bag of bones—hardly what you call living. Moments later, a blade is driven right into the chest cavity, putting the old man out of his misery. The perpetrator remains unfazed, a tall blonde young man with horns that goes by the name Louis, no doubt the game wants us to know of our major adversary right off the bat. With the king dead and no available successor to the throne, the kingdom is in turmoil, and amidst that chaos, our pretty boy suggests the unthinkable: the time has come for a new King.
From this point forward, players take on the role of a kind young man with his pixie companion named Gallica. This young Eldan, let’s call him Will, is on his way to the capital to join the army for a specific purpose. But a run-in with bandits sends Will flying off a cliff—and not without some harsh words for the tribe that he comes from. Racism is rampant across the land of Euchronia and besides now having to walk to the capital, it won’t take long for Will to find himself in a literal race for Kingship, raising favour among a people that simply seem to hate his guts.
Politics, is a freaky kind of monster that is curiously our kind of “human”, and struggles to find the power to drive back the darkness of vileness that people are oh-so capable of. Metaphor, much like nearly all of ATLUS’ titles, features themes of humanity and their trials and tribulations. Amongst greed and oppressive conditions, people you meet will have their fates changed and find themselves influenced by you and your thoughtful little heart. And unlike the developer’s last major Persona entry, I thought these themes were pulled far better thanks to interesting cast stories and narrative beats that aren’t entirely superficial.
The kingdom of Euchronia and its surrounding cities are not welcoming places. Clearly evidenced by the game’s strong uses of grey and smoke effects but also by the many poor and sickly that are lying about in the slums of the capital and the like. But even then, a lying drunkard out on the streets is more than happy to tell your Eldan derriere to keep a pole’s distance. Metaphor’s world might be fantastical, but it has its fair share of grounds in our reality. The irony is all the more palpable when Will takes out his prized book for others to read: a “fantasy” land that details the magic and harmony among the people of a world that appears to be quite similar to our own. Oh, and people use magic vape pens.
But I digress. Despite the many races and tribes, its painfully obvious which ones are favoured over the others. On one hand, I appreciate the discussions of intolerance among people and how nearly all but the ruling powers suffer for it. On the other hand, outside of some mean words thrown at Will (who, by the way, is so steeled and oblivious that he doesn’t flinch at all against these remarks), this beat isn’t translated into gameplay very much. Odd as it sounds, I think the player would feel the impact of this aspect of storytelling if they were limited in terms of gameplay options. A missed opportunity, but for what it’s worth, Metaphor sometimes treats this as window dressing to the overarching narrative. Mind that doesn’t brush away the narrative impacts of characters who struggle as the outcasts, and I think Metaphor has overall done a good job in portraying classism and discrimination.
The player character is driven by a few factors over the course of the game, one of them being a way to find out how to cure the dead king’s only son, who has fallen gravely ill from a mysterious magical attack when he was younger. Will’s got agency, but it’s largely driven by the people he meets. There’s no doubt about it—the cast is great. Strohl the lank, Hulkenberg the knightly elf lady, Heismay the flying rat nocturnal bat with a sword and lots of speed, and so much more will join your party over the coming hours. They bounce off each other with jokes, making merry, and admitting their failures when the going gets tough. My favourite character ended up being Heismay as he is not only a courageous man but also one with a very serious inner battle because of what he failed to uphold. And he’s adorable. More join in, but I always held preference for the first four characters.
HEROES OF YORE
Metaphor: ReFantazio is half a social life simulation title as it is a dungeon crawling “action” slash turn-based roleplaying game. Matter of fact, most of its systems are straight borrowed from the Persona games—and there’s a good reason I’ve mentioned that series so many times up to this point. Metaphor’s life sim systems are complimentary to the combat and dungeon crawling, while an overarching calendar system marches players forward into the main story. How players spend their free time is crucial to Will’s inner progression as well as his relationships with his companions and other folks. But also, not managing your time properly can lead to failed subquests or worse: completely failing the main objective.
Let’s start looking at Will’s two key functions when not in a dungeon. The kid’s got five “Royal Virtues” (think social stats from Persona) that desperately need leveling because these stats are what’s going to help you advance relations with your followers and other specific quest prompts. Unlike prior games, the Royal Virtues can be increased in so many ways across the game, often with unique events attached to them. Quests, reading books, completing acts of courage, hearing out people and their stories, so much detail in the overworld are more than just stage props—they actually exist to help build your character, too, and I love how much love ATLUS has poured into this system.
Small tangent, but one of these virtues is “tolerance”. I thought that was funny considering our character’s bleeding heart and all, but I guess even Will’s got issues to work out.
Now increasing those relationships with your followers is uber-important. You have the power of heroes by your side, and these ‘Warframe’ lookalikes are considered your “Archetype”, or more specifically a cast member’s class. When you first build a bond with specific characters, the player will unlock the first variant of said class. This can be a Healer, Monk, Thief, Knight, and the like. Each class has a special set of skills that are learned over the course of their mastery. Once you have unlocked a skill, other Archetypes you’ve unlocked for your character can be inherited up to four slots, depending on the associated bond level. All party members can use an unlocked Archetype that you’ve encountered thus far, but you will have to level those Archetype ranks independently.
In a way, this is a much simpler system than simply fusing Personas or Demons, but the combat system remains engaging thanks to a varied number of enemies and unique encounters as well as the new movement options added during combat sections. One of the things Metaphor has done is yanked one of my favourite quality-of-life features, insta-KOing low-level enemies, and expanded it into a new “action” system of sorts. In dungeons, unlike before where you’d need to approach and strike baddies from behind to gain the upper hand, Metaphor instead has you play a simple hack ‘n slash where you break the enemy’s guard meter and then follow it up with an all-out squad attack into the game’s turn-based combat system.
That is, if you choose to jump into the turn-based combat. You can easily strike an enemy into a stupor and instead dodge roll away into safety or continue to attack the bad guy until it dies. Mind, the game doesn’t want you to do this, because as soon as an enemy strikes you, you’re in for a rough time. This mode of combat offers two things: flexibility in how you approach enemies and to also serve as a reminder of when you’re battling small fry. Because if you strike foes that are significantly weaker than you, they’ll fall in one strike and give you the rewards that you deserve.
Once players jump into turn-based combat, they’ll find a unique combat system with a mishmash of Persona and ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ mechanics accompanied by new tactical options. Both sides moves are indicated by the number of Press Turns they hold. Press Turns are determined by the number of party members (plus one to the baddies if you’re playing on hard!) and these turns are consumed by every action and shuffle to the next party member based on their Speed stat. Press Turns can be elongated by hitting weakness or landing critical hits and the player is encouraged to exploit this system whenever possible. All it takes is for the enemy to get lucky with one turn for your party to get wiped out, after all.
But it doesn’t end there! You have a few new options that can come in handy. For one, cast members can jump between the front and back rows whenever it’s their turn. Sitting in the back row bumps up your defence but caps your attack and vice versa for when you’re in front. If you find a party member taking far too much of a beating, you can send them backward and keep them on weakness-exploiting duty or even have them draw aggro with a class that resists enemy attacks. Speaking of which, if you can outright block or dodge attacks, you’ll clear out the enemy team’s Press Turns in no time flat. There are also Synthesis moves, which are powerful attacks that use more of your press turns but can change the tide of battle. These attacks are only available when certain Archetypes are in use, which encourages the player to switch up classes whenever possible.
But my favourite addition to all this? Every battle can be restarted immediately. If the enemy team decides to dodge every attack you’ve prepped, no need to fret—just restart! Got ambushed and an important party member gets one shot? Restart! Even the auto-battling system has gotten some nice enhancements, where party members will automatically target known enemy weaknesses and exploit them properly instead of just bum-rushing like in prior ATLUS titles.
All these combat systems, in conjunction with new tactic functions and quality of life additions make Metaphor’s dungeon-crawling gameplay a whole lot of fun. This also trickles down to the dungeons themselves, which are varied in environments, unique encounters, and set pieces. My only issue with said set pieces is that the game will hold your hand tight through these moments, which can make them feel more like a chore to run through. It doesn’t help that Metaphor has an obscene amount of dialogue and will flex text bubbles every chance it gets to remind you about mechanics.
And a small note: Studio Zero has balanced dungeons around completion over multiple in-game days. While it’s still totally possible to finish a dungeon before its deadline, you might find yourself starved for magic resources and the like.
UNSCATHED TRIUMPH
I’ve talked about the main aspects of Metaphor’s gameplay, but I can only cover so much. The game is huge and will take you well over 60 hours to complete, much less go for everything. I could talk about the game’s world map and the exquisite giant, fast Gauntlet ship that you’ll call home. As you cross into towns and cities tied to unique quests with beautiful CGs that accompany them. There’s the Akademia and its relations to the Archetypes and Will. The Colosseum and bounties. There are a large number of characters complete with their own motives that frequently clash with your resolve and others (Followers can even show up in other Follower stories!). It’s a slow burn of a game, and you won’t even have a full party until you’re at least 15 hours deep.
But let me touch on Metaphor’s presentation for a moment. Metaphor: ReFantazio is both beautiful as it is ugly. And no, I don’t the latter in a positive way. It is a game that, much like Persona 5, relies heavily on a number of filters, effects, and swaying camera work to hide poor texture resolution, character models with simplistic expressions, flat lighting, and the like. Apparently ambient occlusion is a graphical setting but consider me fooled because I really couldn’t tell you if the option actually works. To make matters slightly worse, I’ve experienced odd frame drops across a number of PC setups and on my Xbox Series X. Considering this game technically looks worse than Persona 3 Reload, which came earlier this year, and yet manages to run worse, I’m not really sure what’s going on here. For PC players, I highly suggest running the game with DXVK. And I can only imagine how it runs on the PlayStation 4.
So, it’s a good thing Metaphor has such incredibly strong art, character, and environment direction. Players will find themselves against the backdrops of beautiful waters, strange rocks and trees, and more as they explore the kingdom and all that it has to offer. Water-coloured menus with direct inspirations to Rennaissance era artworks are littered all over as are transitions between said menus and into the 3D world. There are a lot of character portraits, and character artist Soejima and company have poured a lot of detail into their expressions and into their overall designs. The music is fantastic, a return to familiar beats by Shoji Meguro, where strong bombast with a very good “ye olden” faux chanting rapper shreds wisdom and violence upon his audience. Dungeons carry variations when you’re simply running about or entering combat, the drums taking the stage as that goes down. But the score knows when to settle down, with town themes and conversations carried by soothing violin strings and softer percussions—and the occasional synths that come into play.
But most importantly… I’m glad I don’t have to listen to the Velvet Room’s theme for a few more years.
Metaphor’s world design is almost dreamlike, down to the very storybook of irony that Will carries around with him all the time. The cast bonds together incredibly well and I love how everyone has a part to play in this fantasy land of pixies, a race for the throne, dog and box-headed races, and the like. The artwork is gorgeous, the music is splendid. Mixed in is a simple yet fun combat system, complete with unique overworld encounters in the dungeons and out about in towns. I’ve no metaphors for this—Metaphor: ReFantazio is a fantastic RPG for all. ∎
Fantazio. Fantastico. Fantasia. One of those might give me the pun-high I’m looking for.
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Played on
Windows 11 PC/Xbox Series X
PROS
- Strong visual presentation (even if it hides the bad).
- A fantastic and bombastic score with varied arrangements.
- Combat system that blends a bit of action with great turn-based gameplay.
- An interesting story with a great cast that is paced well.
- Quality-of-life across exploration, leveling, and combat.
CONS
- Not all story aspects land.
- Has a tendency to handhold a lot.
