Metaphor: ReFantazio (2024)

December 12, 2024 / stephensopinions / 2 Comments

I usually stay away from massive JRPGs unless I really am hooked by the premise. It’s hard for me to want to sink 80+ hours into any game as an adult with a family, job, other hobbies, and a massive backlog of other games I want to play. But Metaphor: ReFantazio caught my eye. I loved my time with Atlus’ Persona 5 so a similar game set in a more mature fantasy world sounded right up my alley. Metaphor: ReFantazio presents a fantastical world and delivers on a phenomenal turn-based combat system. Unfortunately, as a lengthy story-driven game I was quite let down by the lack of nuance in the plot and the writing in general.

The world of Metaphor: ReFantazio is one filled with discontent. The country is thrown into chaos when the king is assassinated and his successor, the prince, has been missing for a decade. A military general, Louis, admits to killing the king and attempts to seize power for himself but is thwarted when a magical force using the voice of the late king announces that the next king will be chosen via the will of the people. Whoever has the most support after a few months will be king and wielder of the powerful royal scepter.

Racial strife, religious fanaticism, and national security are the most prevalent drivers of this world’s electorate. Louis promises to use his military might to protect the country from monster attacks and proposes a form of social Darwinism such that only strength matters rather than race. Forden, the leader of the church, is the other most prominent candidate. He appeals to people’s religious beliefs and seems to want to uphold the status-quo. The main character joins the royal tournament and is motivated by a fantasy book presenting a utopian society. He wants to join people of all tribes together regardless of class and race and create a utopia.

I quite enjoyed the ideas behind the political themes of Metaphor: ReFantazio. The portrayal of how people are driven to support politicians based on anxiety, fear, and anger felt especially apt as elections are taking place around the world. An objectively evil person such as Louis could become a front-runner because people are afraid for their security and want to overthrow the rotten status-quo no matter what it takes. And Forden uses his position of power in the church to manipulate people, not to mention his involvement in a shadow government that tries to rule the country from behind the scenes. But unfortunately, I think these themes never get explored past surface-level political analysis.

There’s a lack of nuance and thought-provoking questions that makes the world too black-and-white. It is obvious that Louis is a chaotic and evil villain. And Forden, despite appearing orderly, is highly manipulative and power-hungry. On the other hand, the main character is presented as perfectly righteous. It’s never in question if Louis or Forden are correct. The main character never has to answer how they will solve any of the difficult problems in the world. He repeats ad nauseam how everyone must come together. His vision of a utopia is nice, but I wish there was some actual nuance here.

I think the story would have been improved by not having Louis and Forden be so comically evil. Obviously sacrificing the weak so the strong can thrive is bad, but if Louis presented his social Darwinism as a merit-based system that anyone can succeed in it would be more nuanced. Moreover, if Forden leaned more into maintaining the status-quo, despite its faults, to maintain order and peace then we could analyze if that goal is worthwhile. And the main character’s utopian views needed some sort of flaws such as their difficulty to achieve. There should be some actual question to what is best for the country. A chaotic revolution that destroys social norms, the status-quo being upheld no matter what, or an idealistic utopia that struggles to answer hard questions. If I’m going to spend 80 hours engaging in a story, I want that story to make me think. And the lack of nuance in Metaphor: ReFantazio led to it not being very thought-provoking.

The issue with the storytelling is made worse by the repetitive writing. I understand these kinds of games are supposed to be story heavy but there were times I was mentally begging the characters to shut up. It’s rare that anything of substance is said, and most of the time characters are just repeating information that you already know. I can’t imagine counting how many times a character said something along the lines of “we have to stop Louis” or “we need to help everybody”. It’s cheesy, repetitive, and I am utterly exhausted by the power-of-friendship trope.

There are some exciting story sequences that showcased the potential that Metaphor: ReFantazio had. There are plenty of twists and turns that motivated me to see the game through to the end. The plot massively accelerates in the final quarter. The middle chapters of the game in comparison were slow and uninteresting. One of the earlier chapters takes place in the desert town of Martira where children have been going missing. This particular sequence was my favorite in the game as it was excellently paced and was a self-contained story with clever writing. The following couple of chapters were boring, forgettable, and lacked any sort of personality. Ultimately, the game is at its best in the beginning and at the end as it drags massively during the middle sections.

The strongest aspect of Metaphor: ReFantazio is its combat. I know turn-based combat isn’t for everyone, but I personally love a game when a game makes me think and strategize. What stands out to me about the combat in Metaphor: ReFantazio is the versatility. You have four characters on the battlefield, each with their own class and moveset. You get four actions per turn, but if you hit an enemy weakness or pass a character’s action it will only consume half an action. Moreover, there are synthesis skills that require two characters of specific classes that are highly impactful but cost two actions. Between basic attacks, single-target attacks, multi-target attacks, synthesis skills, buffs, debuffs, status effects, support skills, passing, and blocking there are so many potential ways to plan out a single turn. Which is important because battles often only last that long.

I played the game on hard difficulty and I found it to be vital to try to win most basic battles in a single turn. The combat is extremely volatile, meaning it is as easy for the enemies to kill you as it is for you to kill them. I found that letting the enemies have even a single turn could be catastrophic. Every battle became a puzzle of how to defeat all the enemies before they could retaliate, and to do so while using a minimal number of resources such as mana and items. Bosses are the exception to the single-turn combat as they have higher health but tend to telegraph their assaults. They often have multi-turn setup that can be interrupted or dealt with via debuffs and taunts. I enjoyed how every fight felt like it was on a knife’s edge, a single blunder could lead to a party wipe. But the versatility of tools that game gives you makes it so these tense encounters rarely feel unfair.

Part of what makes the combat so enjoyable is the adaptability brought by the class system. It may genuinely be my favorite class system in any game ever. There are over a dozen base classes, each with higher tiers that can be unlocked. Any character can be any class, and you are heavily encouraged to experiment with the different classes. Every character can inherit any skills they’ve unlocked from any class. If you want to inherit some elemental magic on your knight to give them some offensive options, go right ahead. If you want some healing spells on your buffing character, no problem. Every character levels up their class mastery independent from their actual level, making it easy to switch around and make use of the flexibility that the system affords.

There’s a lot of smart quality-of-life features that prevent potential frustration. When you max out a class’s level, any additional experience gained creates an item to be used freely on other classes. This prevents the issue of feeling the need to switch classes the moment you hit max level on a class so experience doesn’t go to waste. You can also switch classes and inherit skills freely, not needing to go somewhere specific. You are only constrained by a resource called Magla, which prevents you from unlocking every class and inheriting every skill but I never came close to running out of Magla. Another major quality-of-life feature is the existence of overworld combat.

When exploring a dungeon, you can strike enemies before engaging them in turn-based combat. If you are significantly higher leveled than the enemy, they will be defeated instantly without having to spend time in turn-based combat. This is a huge time-saver and I’m extremely grateful for its inclusion. If you aren’t a much higher level, hitting enemies enough will trigger an ambush, dealing a big chunk of damage and stunning them to start the battle. Conversely, if an enemy hits you then you will be ambushed instead, letting the enemies have a turn before you. Because of the volatile combat, being ambushed is extremely catastrophic and often leads to just having to reload from the last save. While I appreciate the benefits from overworld combat, I wish getting a hit a single time didn’t effectively lead to a game over. The third-person action isn’t fantastic, and it doesn’t need to be, but a lot of emphasis is placed on it which I find odd.

My other major issue is with some of the late game boss battles. Many of these bosses have ways to give themselves a ton of extra actions per turn, making them extremely dangerous without hyper specific strategies to counter them. They also are effectively immune to most status effects and can clear any debuffs and buffs easily, further pigeonholing what you can do. I found myself relying on setting up a 1-shot (or close to it) to attempt to burst the boss down before they could do any of their ridiculousness. There are also a few late-game abilities that feel almost necessary to counter the wealth of actions that these bosses can have.

Atlus’ style of JRPG is famous for their emphasis on time-management via the calendar. Metaphor: ReFantazio follows this trend and ultimately makes some great improvements. Every major section of the game gives the player a limited number of days to complete the main dungeon before the story continues. Any time not spent doing the main dungeon can be spent doing side quests, conversing with followers to improve your relationship, improving your “royal virtue” character traits, and travelling between locations. I generally enjoy this format as it makes downtime feel valuable rather than a chore. Choosing what to focus on and optimizing your time is a form of gameplay rather than just feeling like a checkbox.

What makes Metaphor: ReFantazio stand out compared to Atlus’ previous titles is the game’s road trip structure. You and your party are a globetrotting crew in your magical legged landship, called a Gauntlet Runner. Traveling from a major hub city to towns and dungeons takes time, so you have to plan your routes and time your departure based on weather and other factors. The Gauntlet Runner also serves as a cozy hub during travels where you can cook, read, and converse with allies. I quite liked the structure opposed to staying in a more static location like Tokyo in Persona 5.

Another improvement that I am happy about is that improving follower relationships no longer relies on choosing the “correct” answers during conversations. You get bonus Magla for doing so, but you don’t feel the need to look up a guide to make sure you don’t mess up and waste time by picking the wrong dialogue choices. Moreover, the game is fairly lenient with time in general, and unless you majorly mess up you should have plenty of time by the end of the game to do every side quest and max out every relationship. The major downside to the calendar system, in every Atlus game, is that there tends to be a lot of downtime. Time between dungeons and story sequences can get tiresome if you have too many days in a row of talking to followers and doing other miscellaneous stuff. I would have appreciated a brisker pace in some sections of the game.

I was a little disappointed by the presentation of Metaphor: ReFantazio. The orchestral soundtrack is solid, and I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of Esperanto chanting. I do prefer the jazzier soundtrack of Persona 5, but I can’t complain about the music in Metaphor: ReFantazio. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about the visuals. I think the character designs are wonderful, and the animated cutscenes are also incredibly well done, but the graphical quality during normal gameplay is awful. Everything just looks muddied and dull. Many dungeons take place in the same environments rather than unique and memorable locations. Which is a shame because the world is conceptually interesting. There are plenty of wondrous places that aren’t conveyed properly through the outdated visuals.

Ultimately, Metaphor: ReFantazio is a lengthy story-driven game. And while the story has some good ideas, it ultimately failed to provoke thought or inspire nuanced political analysis. Luckily, the game does deliver on strategic combat and a wonderfully adaptable class system. It is for these reasons that I give Metaphor: ReFantazio a 7/10. Metaphor: ReFantazio is a great JRPG. The problem is that I don’t think this genre is for me.

Persona 5 (2016)

October 26, 2019October 26, 2019 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

I struggle to explain Persona 5 in a way that gives the game justice. While being incredibly stylish, engaging, and addictive, Persona 5 can easily be perceived as boring through simple explanations. The core of the game is that you are a high-schooler in Tokyo, doing normal teenager things, while also secretly reforming society. By magically entering people’s consciences, you and your band of misfits change the hearts of criminals. But ultimately, that is just one aspect of the game, the real genius of Persona 5 is how every component is woven together.

Persona 5 is part life-simulator and part turn-based RPG. The structure of the game is simple, you attend school, hangout with friends, explore the city, interspersed with moments of taking down a ring of dangerous criminals. The game is split into individual days, each with an afternoon and evening period to devote to different activities. You are given deadlines to take down any target, but any extra time is free time to explore Tokyo. The incredible breadth of the player’s options is staggering. You can study, visit cafes, go fishing, do batting practice, go to a sauna, work a job, go shopping, watch a movie, work out, hangout with friends, and much more. All of these options provide some sort of benefit to the player. Some of these activities involve a mini-game, but many of them are just a resource to spend your free time on.

The life-sim aspect Persona 5 is incredibly addicting. Since every activity provides some sort of benefit, I was inclined to constantly check new locations to see what they would do for me. Things like working a job gives you money, which you can use to buy items for combat purposes. Spending time to work out increases your health for battles. Most activities increased one of your social stats: knowledge, guts, charm, proficiency, and kindness. These stats are crucial to meeting new people and deepening your relationship with them.

Most of my free time in Persona 5 was spent with the different characters, which the game calls confidants. As you spend time with confidants, you will learn more about their personality and backstory, while simultaneous improving your relationship with them. As you spend more time with them, they reward you with unique bonuses. Some of these boons are combat related, for example: giving you a chance to brush off any status ailment, survive a lethal blow, or instantly kill an enemy. Many of the confidant bonuses are helpful in the life-sim aspect of the game. Each one is tailored toward its character, the teacher lets you skip class, the doctor provides a discount on healing items, and the politician gives a bonus during negotiations.

The confidant conversations can be quite entertaining and are a reward in and of themselves. As you get closer to each character, you learn more about their life and personality. You are given a few dialogue options during the conversations, and deducing the correct responses is critical to maximizing the confidant relationships. You also can go to special locations or give gifts to boost your relationships, so paying attention to what the characters enjoy is of great importance. Many of the characters require high social stats to even interact with, for example: the black-market gun dealer requires a high guts stat.

The life-sim aspect of Persona 5 may sound fairly dull and mundane, but trust me, it is addicting. It scratches that itch of strategically maximizing your resources. Free time is limited, so you must pick and choose what you want to do on any given day. Balancing your social stats and various confidant relationships is a fun time management problem. Additionally, the sheer variety of things kept me from getting bored. I always wanted to learn more about the characters and find out what bonuses they would provide. Free time is sprinkled throughout the different sections of the game. Between story-heavy sections and the dungeon-crawling RPG aspect, I always was excited to get some time to explore Tokyo.

The core structure of Persona 5 is that you infiltrate the hearts of wrongdoers and reform their behavior. You lead a band of miscreants known as the Phantom Thieves into the cognitive worlds of criminals. The mind of each target forms a “palace” which is essentially a themed dungeon. Each felon has been corrupted by some cardinal sin, and the Phantom Thieves must search each palace for the source of the deadly desire to steal away their distorted hearts. As thieves, you stealthily navigate through corridors and hallways, taking cover to avoid any unnecessary confrontations. Sneaking up behind enemies and ambushing them gives the player the opportunity to unleash a flurry of attacks before the enemy can even respond, so stealth is always in your best interest. Every palace is a fairly long endeavor and will require multiple treks to make it to the treasure. Making it as far as possible in each attempt will prove crucial to opening up more free time to be used elsewhere.

The actual combat of the game is a straightforward turn-based RPG, but with some interesting twists. Unsurprisingly, the main character recruits a few allies battle alongside him in a 4v4 format, which is similar to every other RPG in existence. What is interesting is the use of “personas”. Each character has a persona within them that can unleash magical abilities. The main character can capture and store personas, switching between them at will. This gave me the vibe of a grown-up version of Pokémon. As you journey through palaces, you will encounter demonic enemies which you can either stealthily avoid or engage head-on. When confronting the demons, some circumstances will lead you to be able to negotiate with them, and if you choose the correct dialogue options, recruit them to your pool of personas.

Every persona has strengths and weaknesses, and with a plethora of elemental abilities, choosing the right persona for the right circumstances is critical. This is mostly because utilizing super-effective elements are extremely powerful. Hitting an enemy with an attack that they are weak to will do bonus damage, give you an additional move, and knockdown the foe. If all enemies are knocked down, you can either preform an all-out-attack, which does massive damage, or you can enter negotiation. Collecting new and powerful personas is a core aspect of the game, which I quite like. In Pokémon, once you decide on your core party, you stick with them until the end of the game. In persona, you are forced to constantly test new and powerful personas. There is an additional layer of experimentation since you can fuse personas together to create new ones. I absolutely loved the variety and experimentation aspect of Persona 5, and it is the highlight of the combat.

On the more negative side, I felt like the combat lacked tactical depth in the vast majority of encounters. Most battles played something like this: ambush enemy, hit them with a super-effective ability to knock them down, perform an all-out-attack to finish the fight. The only deviation to this formula was in boss fights or when fighting opponents that I did not know the weakness of. In the latter case, I was essentially required to just guess what would be effective until I guessed correctly. Bosses were by far the most interesting implementation of combat in the game. With giant health pools, no weaknesses, and special status effects, each boss required a different approach that wasn’t all out aggression. Utilizing party buffs and healing skills is more interesting than just picking the correct elemental attack.

While I felt like most battles were straightforward, there is something to be said for the resource management aspect. Since I wanted to make it through the palaces in as few attempts as possible to conserve free time, I wanted to minimize the resources used in each battle. Magic abilities use SP, a resource which is not easily regenerated. As such, getting through each battle without wasting unnecessary SP became an interesting challenge.

Stylistically, Persona 5 is unbelievably crisp. Sleek menu design, fluid animations, vibrant character design, phenomenal music, and distinguishable aesthetics make Persona 5 and absolute masterclass in presentation. The graphic-novel style makes visuals pop, especially since each placard is detailed and distinct. Many of the personas and monsters are amalgamations of mythological beasts, but plenty seem to be new creations entirely. The jazzy soundtrack is simultaneously great background music as well as tunes that you could listen to outside of the game. As you continue through the game, some of the prevailing tracks will “evolve”, adding more lyrics as you progress. Seriously, every developer should take notes on the style and presentation of Persona 5.

Outside of game mechanics and style, Persona 5 does falter a bit. The overall narrative of Persona 5 is decent, but is paced poorly. There were parts of the story where I was completely engrossed, but there were instances where I just wanted to move onto the next bit. In essence, the beginning and end of the game I found to be excellent as the villains had a direct impact on the main character. The middle chunk of the game however was filled with villains who just didn’t have the requisite gravitas to make me care about them. The story is essentially carried by its memorable cast of characters. Outside of a few interesting twists in the main story, I was far more engaged with the episodic stories of each confidant.

One of the biggest issues I had with the story was its over dependence on its central theme. Look, central ideas and motifs are great, but they don’t need to be bashed over the player’s head. God of War for instance leaned on the core theme of familial strife, nearly every character, quest, and storyline tied back to that issue. But the game was bit more subtle with its presentation of these ideas. Persona 5 on the other hand will relentlessly remind the player of its motif. The central theme of Persona 5 is that people in positions of power will take advantage of those below them. Every single side-quest, main story beat, confidant, and conversation will allude to this theme. It gets obnoxious after the 100^th time that the protagonists tell the villains “Stop abusing people who can’t fight back”.

By far the biggest problem with Persona 5 is its length. While I enjoyed the game, it is a nearly 100-hour experience. This is a massive undertaking, especially since so much of the game feels superfluous. Conversations in particular are constantly repeated, and it feels like the game does not trust the player to remember any information. If an event happens in game you can count on the fact that you are going to have that event recapped to you in 10 different conversations: through cutscenes, dialogue with confidants, and through text messages. Additionally, palaces could probably be shortened a bit without losing anything. Side-quests are particularly egregious, as they force you to delve into Mementos, a randomly generated dungeon which holds monsters that you have previously fought. This is a ridiculous waste of time and provides nothing new. Mementos needs to exist for story reasons and to let players capture personas that they have otherwise missed, but it could have been significantly shortened.

Most of the game’s issues stem from its length. The overused theme wouldn’t be so obnoxious if the game was shorter. The story would be more interesting if it was sped up. The repetitive battles wouldn’t grow annoying if there weren’t so many of them. Even some of the games strong points started to wane after 80 hours. I love the animations, but after watching them thousands of times I just wanted to move on. The music is great, but there are so few tracks in general. Truthfully, a game has to do something very special to reach 100 hours without growing stale. While Persona 5 is great, I think it could’ve easily been cut down to 60-70 hours without losing anything of value.

Overall, Persona 5 is a masterful display of aesthetics, style, and presentation. There is an addictive life-sim component that I could just chill and let time fly by as I explored Tokyo. It’s the perfect game for just relaxing for a few hours and to take your time to take in everything the game has to offer. The dungeon crawling and battle system was serviceable, and its encouragement to experiment made it incredibly enjoyable. It’s unfortunate that the game drags on for too long, as even the best components lost their luster after dozens of hours. It is for these reasons I give Persona 5 a 9/10. Even if you aren’t a fan of traditional JRPGs, give Persona 5 a shot. As someone who doesn’t typically enjoy these kinds of games, it made me into convert.