Monday, December 2, 2024

Metaphor: ReFantazio

  • Genre: RPG
  • Spoiler Free Review: No story spoilers, mechanical spoilers and minor spoilery screenshots.
  • Time Played: 133 Hours
  • Too Short/Long: It's not too long necessarily, it just took me way too long. It can probably be wrapped up dozens of hours quicker, but I did everything and fretted over everything I did.
  • Soundtrack: For a game in which the universe roots itself in music, the music is just good. It really fits the mood, and style of the game, but I won't be listening to it regularly besides a track or two.
  • Pleased/Disappointed: I'm very pleased with this, while I'm not sure it makes the favorite games list, it comes close, and was thoroughly enjoyable.
  • Why I played: I liked most of Atlus' games, but I'm tired of the school setting and calendars, which is why I liked Soul Hackers 2 so much. This dropped one of them at least. I wasn't too interested in "generic fantasy" at first, but it seemed to ooze style.
  • Did I cry: Choked up a few times here and there a little bit, but it got watery eyed toward the end.
  • Recommend to others: I really would recommend Metaphor to everyone, but especially those who like "modern"(as in the past twenty years) Atlus games at all. This is the best of them, by far.
First to address the new sections above. I meant to add them to the template during either FFXV or Visions of Mana and forgot both times. It wasn't as important for the others. But I figured the spoiler note is important, because occasionally more than just my wife reads these and I have as many as 4 whole unique visitors. Soundtrack is more of a reference for, is it worth listening to outside of the game? I think to a degree all soundtracks are, but some have some real bangers and are worth going out of the way for. Did I cry? I can get pretty emotional during a good story. Or just a really well set up moment in an otherwise bad one. I just thought it would be fun to keep track of. Most long story games will at least choke me up. But I probably didn't cry for Flamefrit or Metal Slug. Now on to the main course.

There is so much to say about this game. It was really great, and exceeded my expectations. The story has it's ups and downs, but when it's down its only in the sense of "I get it, I'm along for the ride" rather than downright bad, and when it's up, it's really up.


There is a lot of combat in the game, so it's a good thing the game is very fun. The standard combat or "squad battles" is tactical and engaging. Especially later on as your options open up and they throw more specific scenarios at you. They really do their best to try and present you with every possible situation, and while you can level up, get better equipment, increase your stats, you're unlikely to so out level everything that you won't still need to enter major encounters with a tactical mindset. Just hitting hard or just attacking isn't going to do it.

There is also a sort of overworld combat, and it's a bit more in depth than Atlus' prior attempts. All enemies can be engaged in the overworld, and a successful combo on an even-leveled or higher-leveled enemy will provide you with a (sometimes very necessary) bonus attack prior to the real battle. Under-leveled enemies will be killed with just a few overworld attacks - but you may always choose to engage them, should you have a reason to do so, which there are a few of.


I always found this dance fun. Early on there is little repercussion to engaging in overworld battles, but later on they throw more enemies, stronger attacks, and more unpredictable situations at you, which could kill you in the overworld, or send you to battle with a disadvantage, the enemy team all going first. While it's generally pretty simple, it's faced paced and pretty engaging on it's own. It should be noted because of the action economy, it's always MUCH better to go first, it's not just a matter of back and forth. All boss battles start you off first to give you some prep time, for example. Those early turns can be very crucial to how the battle will play out. Thankfully this game provides you with a... instant restart the battle.


I didn't use it much early in the game, I kind of thought it might be cheating? You don't really see it much in other rpgs. This was until I lost a couple battles, had to backtrack, replay cutscenes, etc. And before the battles started becoming much more complicated. Like I said, how those first moves play out can be very important, so if you realize you dug yourself in a hole you can't get out of, you just really can't turn the tides, or you just "mis-click" so to speak, and do a move accidently, that "restart battle" button becomes very important. I would say with how tight this game is balanced, that feature made this game 100% more enjoyable. I don't think it's needed for every RPG, but every RPG doesn't have combat exactly like Metaphor.


I expected this game to have twists and turns, and it does, and it very much delivers. I'm not gonna say much about that, but I was very satisfied with it in that regard. The character are largely pretty cool. I think your first few allies really outshine the rest, but they also happen to be archetypes(!) I really like. There is one playable character who really fell flat for me, didn't like the design, and felt very one note. There are a couple other character who I wish made the cut for playable in the stead. But you can't win em all. Almost an entire playable cast of winners, which is more than can be said for a lot of RPGs.


Speaking of Archetypes, and circling back around to combat, that's another really cool thing. This games versions of "Personas". Overall I really like the archetype system, but I do have one complain and that's mostly tied to game progression. Some of the last versions of archetypes are tied to story progression(well they all are, to a degree), but you don't get them until certain "ascended" archetypes become available, and by time you have access to the "ascended" ones, there doesn't seem to be much reason to use the "last forms" which are available at the same time, besides maybe for very specific strategies.

And speaking of progression I have to address what is for me the elephant in the room. The calendar. This probably isn't as big of a deal for most people, but damn I hate a calendar. I don't think it was poorly implemented, in fact, it probably does a good job of preventing you from having certain aspects maxed out too soon in the story progression. What gets me though, is the fact that everything is on a time limit, and there is no going back. Something a lot of modern games do, that I appreciate, is warning you about a "point of no return". Generally this is usually referred to as something that happens in the final moment of the game, but it could also be a big story beat that changes everything, or locks you into the story or a certain area for awhile. 


A calendar basically means everything you do is "the point of no return". You don't have the freedom to do what you want, when you want, whenever you want. Eventually you're going to be locked in to your actions. So I fret over the calendar a lot. But, I did everything in the game, and had time to spare. But it was a stress point for me, to the degree where even though this is an excellent game I would recommend to everyone, I can't consider it one of my "absolute favorites". If they worked out nearly the same game, sans calendar, maybe a couple dozen hours shorter, I probably could have locked it in. And on the point of of the time it took. It's because of the minutia of additional subsystems to make use of the calendar, it took so much longer. Not that I ever really felt like the game wasted my time, but I feel like we could trim the fat here, if the game progressed a little differently.


Mainly though, the third form archetypes should have all been available before the final versions of archetypes.

One more thing I wanted to point out, and that is they absolutely 100% timed when this game would be released. It released a couple weeks before Japanese general elections, and a couple weeks before U.S. primaries. The in-game date of when the king is elected, is literally the Japanese general election day. The game wears it's name on it's sleeve so bold and brightly that it's not really even a Metaphor anymore.


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