Metaphor: Refantazio Review

Atlus’ P-Studio were once the creative team behind some of my favourite titles of all time, especially as they were the team within Atlus that were behind Persona 3,4 and 5, and anyone who knows my preferences for games knows just how highly I regard those titles. But in 2016, when it was announced that the core team of Katsura Hashino, Shigenori Soejima and Shoji Meguro would be forming the new Studio Zero and revealed the working title of their next game, Project Re Fantasy, it had myself and many others anticipating what this group could create in a high fantasy setting. 8 long years later, Metaphor: Refantazio is here and it builds upon everything that has made the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series so amazing, setting it all in a deeply rich and complex fantasy world. 

Now, it’s become a bit of an online joke at this point that journalists can’t review a modern JRPG title without comparing it to Persona, I get it. But in this case, I think it’s impossible not to compare the two, and truthfully, given the game’s history and it’s core mechanics, I think they actually should be compared as it is not only the best way to express how many of the systems work, but also highlight the evolution that has taken place from what we got in the previous games from this core creative team compared to now.

With that out of the way. Metaphor: Refantazio has moved on from the current day, city-based settings of Persona and has us playing in the world of Euchronia, a medieval fantasy world filled with wondrous creatures, out of this world races and is fuelled by magic. Following the assassination of the King, the world is left without a ruler, quickly leading to a time of unrest and chaos. The heir to the kingdom, who many believe to be dead has actually been cursed into a deep sleep and you (the player character) have been sent on a quest to travel the world to uncover more about the prince’s curse and what’s needed to lift it. In the meantime, Euchronia is still left without a King, leading to a power struggle across the lands as well as a new tournament for the throne that’s decided by the public perceptions of the candidates. Your quest to save the prince intertwines you into the tournament for the kingdom and you’ll need to travel the world of Euchronia, develop alliances and strengthen your relationships and reputation along the way to earn the vote of the people.

The story of the game is very quick to kickoff, which is something I really appreciated, given the slower start and lengthy character introduction arcs that take place in Persona 5. All of what I just described as the catalyst for the story actually takes place either in the animated cutscene that precedes the game or within the prologue chapter. So those sensitive to spoilers, what I’ve described is just the initial premise, believe me, you haven’t seen anything yet. 

One of the earliest things you’ll notice is that the protagonist now speaks, no longer acting as a silent avatar for the player character like we’ve seen done in so many of the SMT and Persona games, likely given the established character relationships and direct involvement this character along with his race have with the story. It was a nice change up and I liked being able to experience a protagonist that is able to deliver a lot more input into the story, the conversational moments and also convey a lot more emotion with everything he does as it comes through in the voice performance by Caleb Yen. 

If you have happened to have played a modern Persona title, the core gameplay loop and experience of Metaphor will be quite familiar to you, and you shouldn’t have too much of an issue picking up on it’s systems as there are many aspects to Metaphor that have a parallel to a similar system or story beat in how Persona games are structured. After the game’s lengthy yet intriguing prologue chapter things begin to open up a lot more. You’ll typically have a larger overarching plot beat that is directly tied to the main story and has a defined consequence and deadline that it needs to be completed by. But within the time period, you’re often given complete freedom with how you’d like to spend your days which are broken up into stages of the day (morning, afternoon, evening etc). The level of flexibility really does let you have a large amount of freedom in how you’d like to play and beat Metaphor. For example you can choose to wander the city (or zone you’re in), speak to people and collect/complete side quests, seek out npcs that will perform an action to increase one of your Royal Virtues (Courage, Wisdom, Imagination etc) in the return of transitioning the day and taking up time, make progress through the game’s active dungeon/deadline and advance the main story or any of the game’s many social sim activities like hanging out with specific party members and forging your bonds further, side tasks that are related to the area you’re in or basic activities such like reading, cooking or cleaning which all provide a bonus or buff reward. 

Open objectives are able to be tracked in the quests menu and each come with their own notice of whether they have a deadline or not, which was something I loved to see as it really helps you plan out if/when you’ll tackle those sub quests and if you have the time to put towards completing them vs prioritising getting the main quest and dungeon completed before it’s end date, which is something that can be planned around, given the game utilises a day by day calendar system just like the Persona games do. This is the game’s big risk vs reward system as you’ll often be rewarded for completing side objectives and working at levelling up your Royal Virtues but you don’t want to leave yourself short on days/time to be able to complete the dungeon or main objective that you’ll need to overcome to progress the main story. 

When it comes to the combat, Metaphor does utilise Persona’s combat system as a base and then builds upon it in some fresh and interesting ways. When traversing the dungeon’s you’re able to attack and dodge enemies in real time utilising the game’s action based real time combat. This allows you to dispatch weaker enemies in a hit or two. But for larger enemies this allows you to get an upper hand on them, get in a few strikes and then once stunned, you can enter into the full party turn-based combat you may be used to. I loved that this allowed smaller combats to not be cumbersome and repetitive, but then utilise layers of strategy against tougher foes that required going turn based. 

The turn based system is still built upon discovering and exploiting enemy weaknesses, something that changes enemy to enemy but has changed things up by introducing rows. You’re able to not only establish your party members but also their layout on the battlefield. Choosing to position them in the front row allows them to deal more damage with physical based attacks, while positioning them in the back allows them to deal more damage with their magic based skills while taking less melee damage if attacked by physical strikes. You’re able to freely switch row position each turn before that member’s attack and it’s worthwhile being aware of where each is positioned as enemies can also take advantage of where you’ve placed your party and often have attacks that fully target a specific row.

Within combat you’ll be utilising your Archetypes to essentially define the class you’re playing and unleash some devastating and helpful abilities. These act essentially like Personas, but unlike that series which has a defined role for each member of the party and it’s only your player character who has the wildcard ability to utilises any Persona, in Metaphor you get that flexibility with every member of your party, opening up a massive array of possibilities when it comes to party builds and individual load outs. You unlock new Archetypes by forming bonds with various key characters within Euchronia and each Archetype acts as a variation on a traditional class you might be familiar with from other RPGs such as the Warrior, Mage, Machinist etc. Each Archetype has their own level rank that gains experience and levels that’s independent of your character’s overall level and as they continue to grow they learn new abilities, providing you a reason to give the class some time to see what it’s really capable of. You’re also able to change your party character’s Archetypes at just about any time, which does come in handy when your current build is just not able to overcome a key enemy, big boss or Human (this world’s definition for monsters) or when a dungeon you’re coming into is full of enemies that you know are weak to a particular type of damage etc. This offers infinite choices for party loadout, a lot of flexibility for how you want to construct your team and approach encounters, but more-so it is going to keep further playthroughs and new game+ really interesting as you can approach things completely differently to your original run.

But hands down, the key highlight of Metaphor for me was its great cast of characters and it’s worldbuilding. The cast of the game is absolutely stacked with interesting and complex characters that not only look amazing and have animated sprites that pop on-screen, they’re also performed very well which really helps sell the powerful and emotional scenes, of which there are many. But the effort and complexity isn’t limited to just the main cast. There are some side characters and plot lines that end up being right up there with some of the best in the game. But the thing that really sucked me into the game was its world. It’s deep, complex, full of politics and acts as the perfect canvas for the story to take place on. The amount of worldbuilding alone left me wanting to see other games or tie in stories or comics set in this world because it just has so many interesting concepts that could fuel so many other media and I’d be all for it. 

For lore nerds, the Memorandum book is going to become your best friend on this journey. This book contains entries on the creatures, magic system, world history, specific characters and also Euchronia’s cultures and races and can be viewed at just about any time to help you keep track of the world’s characters and concepts. It also helps give context to certain events and during cutscenes too. It’s a feature I also loved being able to quick-switch to when I was playing Final Fantasy 16 last year. I’d love to see this become the norm going forward in games that contain deep and complex worldbuilding elements and rich, fantastical concepts and politics. 

From a presentation standpoint, I think it’s going to surprise no one that this game is stylish as hell. If you’ve seen even a single trailer for the game you already know it. Whenever Shigenori Soejima and Shoji Meguro are involved, you’re already in good hands. The menus continue to be the most stylish in the business, Soejima’s characters continue to be the life of the screen and shows how diverse his designs can be when they don’t all need to be humanoid school kids. His designs also translate really well into the game’s many fully animated anime cutscenes too which all seem to have a very high production value and really enhance many of the game’s key story moments. On the sound side of the presentation, Shoji Meguro is back with another banging score which is engaging, fits the fantasy setting and provides an emotional backdrop to the game’s scenes, whether they be the upbeat combat themes, the slower tranquil themes that play during downtime or the emotional score pieces that are used during the game’s sadder moments. This soundtrack did take a bit longer to grow on me compared to the jazzy beats of Persona 5, likely due to it featuring a lot of new ideas like rhythmic chants and instruments reinforcing the fantasy setting but I came around before long and ended up loving the vast majority of the score by the time I was ending the game. 

Metaphor: Refantazio is a big new step for the Studio Zero team and I came away feeling like it was a massive success for the team. It delivered on everything I wanted from it back when I heard about it as Project Re Fantasy as all I really wanted was Persona in a fantasy setting. Metaphor offers far more than just that, but it continues to be driven again by its interesting characters and its amazingly developed and complex world. It’s built upon the established foundation of the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games, but has expanded upon every aspect to offer an interesting twist on an existing system or a new element that helps Metaphor still feel fresh and enough of its own thing. It’s a long one, but if you’ve got the time to sink into a new RPG and want a party of characters you can see develop and fall in love with so much that you’ll likely want to replay it numerous times throughout the years, this is one for you.

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