GamerEscape

I have a complex love affair with JRPGs. I played and completed many when I was younger, going all the way back to Dragon Warrior on the NES (Better known as the Dragon Quest franchise today), various Final Fantasy titles, and on the the Breath of Fire series on the SNES. Then, for a while, they kind of fell out of favor with me, mostly because I just didn’t have the time to devote to complete them and sometimes things would get repetitive with the various tropes employed and such. Several more recent RPGs I played, despite enjoying them, I never got around to finishing them.

Fast forward to now, and I see Metaphor: ReFantazio amongst our list of reviews to cover. Being from Atlus, publishers of some excellent JRPGs from past to present, as well as being developed by the studio behind the Persona series, I knew it would probably be at least decent on reputation alone. But I had to ask myself: Would this game be the one that breaks my streak of unfinished RPGs? I had to try.

For this review, we played the PC version of Metaphor: ReFantazio via Steam, released on October 11th, 2024. And away we go!

Fantasy, Meet Reality

First and foremost, it bears mentioning that Metaphor is a very story-rich experience. Any discussion of the story itself will contain spoilers, but I will limit it to anything readily apparent at the start of the game. Skip to the next section if you want to avoid any details at all.

The synopsis of the opening moments of the game rests on fairly typical fantasy story tropes. The Kingdom of Euchronia’s prince is attacked and cursed, and the nation’s king is murdered in cold blood by a power Royal Army officer known as Louis Guiabern. The public, believing the prince to be also dead and thus believing there is no heir to the throne, is thrown into panic, as Louis conspires to take power.

The game’s protagonist (named by the player, with no default name), a friend of the prince, is sent to the royal capital of Grand Trad on a mission to lift the prince’s curse and restore the normal order of things. He is accompanied by a small fairy named Gallica (who, for the record, is strongly reminiscent of a certain annoying fairy from a certain popular action-adventure franchise…) who guides them on their mission.

One of the game’s most unique story elements occurs before the game even really begins, as soon as you press Start Game at the title screen. A mysterious voice speaks to the player (specifically, you, the person sitting in front of the monitor or TV), asks you some philisophical questions about fantasy, and subsequently asks what your name is. Not the name of the player character (which happens a short while later), but specifically you, the player. Here the fourth wall is broken calmly and subtly – not for comedic effect, as is often the case with fourth-wall breaking – specifically to make the player part of the story, as if this fantasy world really exists in another reality, and you are observing it from the outside.

I imagine that some players really didn’t think about this. But with this game coming from Atlus’ studio featuring key people who brought us the Persona franchise, it strikes me as very calculated narrative creativity not to be underestimated. The sort of thing I have only seen once before, in Earthbound on the SNES, in which it actually does seem to be more part of the humor of the game at first, but as it turns out, the player themselves is made part of the story in that game and it frankly had a huge effect on my perception of it.

As for everything beyond that, the game doesn’t radically deviate from typical fantasy story tropes, although it has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience for me. It offers plenty of twists and turns that weren’t too predictable (as well as a few that humorously and deliberately were), good character development (in fact, a key game mechanic, not just a literary device), and a lore-rich world that places a lot of emphasis on things like diversity, politics, and discrimination – rather bold in the current climate of video games. Coming from people who worked on the Persona series (which I’m afraid to admit I have had very little exposure to, but I am aware of their reputation), the team behind it clearly strove to meet a very high bar of expectations, and I think they’ve delivered. The story is also epic in other ways, particularly length. 100 hours is a fairly accurate completion estimate.

Fantasy Persona

So the story is pretty damn solid, frankly. But this isn’t just a visual novel (although it probably could have been one), so how does it play? Well, even by my limited knowledge of the series, I can say: It plays as if Final Fantasy did a collaboration with Persona. As far as combat, Metaphor offers a very traditional turn-based battle system, fused together with a dash of real-time combat in the overworld. Particularly if you haven’t played that many RPGs published by Atlus, it is an excellent blend of familiar and fresh. The turn based battles, like in Persona games, strongly reward finding and exploiting weaknesses while punishing hitting enemy resistances, and feature an “Archetype” system nearly identical to the Final Fantasy job system, with many classes to choose from.

As mentioned, alongside the classic-style fantasy RPG battle system, you can also battle enemies in the third-person overworld. Each Archetype has a different weapon and, even in the overworld, these weapons all act differently when used. Depending on how strong the enemy is, dealing enough damage in the overworld will trigger a battle advantage, or defeat the enemies outright if you are higher level than they are. You also have to be mindful of enemy attacks and dodge them to avoid entering a battle with a (usually extremely punishing) free turn for the enemy.

The game follows the same basic gameplay loop as the Persona series, with time management being a key component of your progress through the game. You always have a key mission to accomplish, which has a deadline. Failiure to accomplish the goal before the deadline results in a game over. Even on the easiest “Storyteller” difficulty, where all battles are trivial, you can still game over by missing a deadline. It can be an overly punishing system if you’re not sure how much time you have to commit to the task and how much time you can spend on other activities like exploring a dungeon or developing your protagonist’s noble virtues.

However the developers thought of this and offer an optional network-enabled feature called Traveller’s Voices, where you can press a certain button at any time to see the most popular actions taken by all players on any given day of the game’s calendar, as well as the party compositions that players beat the game’s dungeons with. So if you’re not sure if you can take an extra day to grind a dungeon or not, an in-game resource is available to help if you want it. You can also choose to disable this feature if you want to figure things out on your own…although if you’re like me, you might end up save-scumming a lot to guard against potentially saving yourself into a corner aka soft-locking yourself. Another feature to limit frustration is the ability to retry any battle from the beginning, on your turns, so if you’re not dead yet but you messed up, you can have another go at it.

If I have to be particularly critical of anything, it’s probably game balance. For the most part, you can explore the Archetype system and pick the classes you like most and beat the game without being forced to change your composition much if you don’t want to (though you might have to grind a bit). But there are a few occasions where certain archetypes might be almost, but not quite mandatory to have. There are certain classes and skills that are substantially stronger than others and can significantly lower the difficulty even on the hard or Regicide modes. I can’t get into anything specific here, but game balance could be a little bit better.

Another odd choice is many Archetypes feature passive traits which make that Archetype stronger if multiple of the same Archetype are present in the party. These effects feel like they discourage the class diversity the rest of the game would like to promote, which is quite strange. That said, this is a pretty minor consideration. With a wide range of Archetypes available, you can reasonably approach most battles in any way you see fit.

Hearing Voices

This game honestly speaks to me in many ways, both literally and figuratively. Aside from the game speaking to me, the player, at the start and the game speaking to me in terms of wanting me to play it, the characters in the game feature honestly exceptional English voice acting. There is a segment of the JRPG fan base that might scream heresy for me saying this, but even if you are normally one to use the Japanese voiceovers in any Japanese-made game, give the English voices a try here. It’s some of the best I’ve heard in quite a while. The quality, the sense of emotion you get from the characters, every aspect of it is far beyond what I would normally expect from a Japanese-made game with (great) anime-esque cutscenes where most players would rather sub it than dub it, as is often said.

The rest of the audio experience is also exceptional, with great battle tracks and environment music that offers a classic fantasy vibe, and I really dig it. And if for some bizarre reason you don’t, the “Atlus 35th Anniversary Edition” of the game is available which includes DLC with costumes and battle music from Atlus’ other role-playing IPs. But I’m pretty confident you’ll enjoy Metaphor‘s soundtrack.

The graphics are something I’m a bit torn on. Overall, the aesthetic of the game world itself is great. In no way is it groundbreaking in terms of what games are capable of in 2024, but it has everything you would expect from today’s fantasy games, and the anime-art cutscenes are excellent.

The only thing I somewhat take issue with is the UI experience. The game uses a lot of odd colors (especially white, pink, cyan and black – oddly enough the standard color palette of CGA monitors of the 1980s. Coincidence?) with no outlines and sometimes this results in contrast issues in the game’s menus and UI elements. Also almost everything from the menu screens to dialog boxes is constantly in motion which can be distracting or uncomfortable for some, with no option to reduce or disable the motion. While exploring the game’s towns, chatter from various NPCs constantly pops up on screen, and constant “MUR MURs” and “HEY HEY HEYs” here and there can also be a bit irritating after a while

An Epic Finale

Atlus clearly decided to mark their 35th anniversary with a bang. With Metaphor, they took one of their most fan-favorite formulas and transitioned it to an engaging, top-notch fantasy experience, with only a few, quite minor, stumbles along the way. JRPG fans the world over will delight in this well-crafted experience, even if a few of the most die-hard Persona fans might find issues with the battle system.

I’ll take that a step further and say that this is a great JRPG entry point for Western players who are more used to the RPGs made in the States or Europe. It’s worth a play for almost anyone who can spare the potentially triple-digit hours needed to get through it.

~ Final Score: 9/10 ~

Review copy courtesy of Atlus for PC via Steam. Screenshots taken by reviewer. Featured image courtesy of Atlus.