Metaphor: ReFantazio is everything I ever wanted

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I first heard about Metaphor: ReFantazio on a podcast a week before its release. I must admit that I never played an ATLUS game before. Of course, I am aware of the Persona franchise, of Shin Megami Tensei, but I sort of avoided playing them because one, it's very hard for me to find a spare hundred hours to invest into a JRPG even if it's a really good one (it's just a big commitment), and two, the setting never really appealed to me. Particularly when it comes to Persona. I already went to school and finished it, and I'd rather not repeat the experience, even in a videogame. I grew up reading fantasy books like the Lord of the Rings, and Dragonlance, and the Dark Elf, and others, and even though with age I've come to appreciate realistic settings too, there is still this thought lurking in my mind, "wouldn't it get better with dragons?"

On that podcast (it was Geekenders) Metaphor was described a little bit chaotically based on its demo but it was enough to hook me instantly. It was described as a fantasy story about a kingdom thrown into chaos after the king is murdered. There is magic, fairies, knights, princes, maybe even dragons! — and, somewhere in there, is modern day Japan that fits in who knows how. The final selling point for me was that apparently, if your level was higher than the level of your enemies, you could just go around and one-hit smack them in the overworld without initiating a proper battle. And there is absolutely nothing I dislike more than filler fights in JRPGs where I have to fight the same group of enemies 20 times during a dungeon and there's no way around that.

I got this game as a generous gift from one of my friends, and for the first time in more than 20 years I was completely lost in a game. You know, it's such a long forgotten nostalgic feeling that I think you can only experience as a kid when presented with a wonder so overwhelming it leaves a mark on you.

I am 100% a type of gamer that plays for the story. Sure, I love good gameplay too, ideally these things go together, but I only ever care about videogames as a unique medium for telling stories. This specific love for videogames took root in me in the early 2000s when I played Neverwinter Nights for the first time. It was enthralling; I replayed it countless times, I knew every single NPC and my imagination was running absolutely wild. Ever since then I've been in love not only with storytelling in videogames, but with the RPG genre in particular. Since Neverwinter Nights I've played countless great games as well, but as I came to realize when I was playing Metaphor, none of them hit that particular string in my heart that Neverwinter Nights hit back then.

I will keep it as spoiler-free as possible. Metaphor is a 100-hour game so I will only touch on the events from the first chapter, which is about 12 hours of playtime. The demo is 8 hours, if you can believe that.

The game takes place in the United Kingdom of Euchronia where 9 tribes try to co-exist together. The kingdom is plagued by racism and nepotism where the more respected tribes, such as clemars who have historically been kings, or roussainte who comprise the bulk of Euchronia's military, get to enjoy overall much better lives than any other tribe. Nidia are frowned upon and called useless liars and pretenders because the rumor has it, they are all ugly and use some sort of magic to make themselves beautiful. Paripus are basically destined to live and die in poverty: no one hires them, they have no access to education or basic necessities and are usually ostracized and ignored by the other tribes. There are also mustari — the weirdo pagans with three eyes holding onto their heretic beliefs in a kingdom ruled by the Sanctist church. And there are also the elda — probably the most hated tribe of all. They say that the elda wield powerful magic and bring only misfortunes and curses upon other people.

One fateful night the Royal Palace was raided by an unknown group and the king's little son, His Highness the Prince was put under a terrible death curse. He was presumed dead, and the king heirless, however, in fact, the curse did not kill the Prince but put him into eternal sleep. The Prince was hidden away in hopes that one day the curse might be lifted.

The game's opening cinematic shows the antagonist of the story, Rui, murdering the king of Euchronia in his own bed. Rui is a young prodigy, who has been displaying both magical and tactical prowess far surpassing his age since he was a child. He was predicted to be the youngest general the country has ever seen, as well as its youngest archmage — and both predictions came true.

The death of the king triggers Royal Magic — a mystical power that only the king can wield — and the last wish of the king is made knows across the nation: whoever gathers the most support from the people of Euchronia by the Day of the Hero, will be crowned the new king.

You play as an elda, the cursed Prince's best childhood friend and also a part of the Resistance movement that seeks to restore the Prince to his rightful throne. You and your guide, Gallica the fairy, head for the capital to enter the race for the throne, investigate the nature of the Prince's curse and restore him to power.

This is the basic premise; you get all of this information from the opening cinematic and a couple of cutscenes. As you make your way into Grand Trad, the capital of Euchronia, and start unraveling the mystery surrounding the cursing of the Prince, participating in the tournament and learning all sorts of things about Rui, who is of course in the center of this whole thing, and, surprisingly (or not) has massive support of the people, you meet all sorts of folks and learn how the world works.

What surprised me the most about Metaphor, and I am even more shocked that this never changed until the credits — everything you do in this game is pure content. When I play games, I am mentally prepared for there to be some aspects I won't really enjoy. It's normal for games to have that. Maybe it's inventory management that sometimes takes too long, or a lot of fighting the same enemies, or going back and forth and being on the road longer that you'd like to... something trivial but arguably necessary that stands between you and the juicy bits. Metaphor is one big juicy bit. It's shocking how much of the annoying time wasting stuff is either cut out completely or managed by the game itself so you don't have to. Inventory management is not really necessary. When you channel another Archetype, which is a special battle form, much like a Persona, the game automatically selects the best gear you have for that Archetype and puts it on you. You don't have to do it yourself because it is meaningless. Why force the player to go and equip their most powerful sword if you can do it for them and just make the experience so much smoother? If I had to equip my characters every time I switched their Archetype, it would've driven me insane in the mid-end game because you're switching Archetypes quite often the more the game goes on.

Traversal is also taken care of; without spoiling anything, I'll say that it never bothered me, whether it was world travel, walking the city or exploring the dungeons. You can sprint really fast, and it costs nothing, and in the cities and towns you can hover on your sword AND speed up with the sprint button which makes you zip-zap around really fast. If you're not in the mood for sword-riding, you can just fast-travel to any place within the city that you've been to. It's very convenient. If you just enjoy walking around breathing in the city vibes, you're free to do so in a number of ways. If you'd rather pop into a store, buy something and then be on your way to more adventuring: it will take less than a minute.

It's important to mention that Metaphor is not an open world game. In recent years I've come to appreciate constructed gaming experiences where everything happens according to the developers' design. I still love playing open world games, but now I also love being taken on a carefully curated adventure. Metaphor doesn't have multiple endings, or any story-significant choices that are up to you. And I am fine with that. Frankly, while playing Baldur's Gate 3 where every little thing has consequences, I over exhausted myself to the point of not wanting to choose anything in a game for the next three years :D

Metaphor is my first ATLUS game, so some concepts familiar to more experienced players were completely new to me, and one of them was deadlines. Every chapter there will be a series of quests and deadlines, after which the game's central plot will move on. For example, you need to clear a dungeon by a certain date, or we know that Rui will make his next move on this particular day, and we need to make preparations. Deadlines usually give me anxiety, but here they gave me structure and a to-do list for every day.

Another new thing that I had difficulty getting used to is that you're not supposed to finish a dungeon — especially a big one, or a quest one — in one go. The game encourages you to go in, clear a portion, find a checkpoint and go back to town to have a good dinner and unwind with your friends. For me, the concept was honestly pretty wild, but it turned out to be so immersive that it only added to the experience. You go into a dungeon, fight monsters, put yourself in mortal danger, but at any time you can just turn back and go get some delicious roast with your friends. I love it. However, I managed to shoot myself in the foot anyway somewhere closer to the end of the game: something possessed me to wait until the very last possible day before going into a story event which turned out to be an enormous dungeon. I couldn't get back home to have some soup for dinner because, well, it was the last day, and if you miss a deadline, it's game over. I didn't feel like loading an earlier save so it makes a great story now, I guess.

When not braving the dungeons and spying on Rui, you can work on your Royal Virtues and try to become a candidate people would want to root for. Through various activities such as publicly debating against other candidates, listening to the history of other tribes, or cooking food for other people, you can raise your Tolerance, Eloquence, Imagination, Courage and Wisdom that will be indispensable in your perilous adventure. Without them, you can't establish true friendship with many of your followers because some of them won't trust you enough. Honestly? I sucked at public debating SO BAD :D Usually, another candidate would make their point, and sometimes it would be extraordinarily dumb, like Milo, who proposed all ugly people be thrown out of the kingdom. And I need to make a counterpoint that will appeal to the crowd. And I almost never could! I guess I am just exceptionally bad at reading the room. Fortunately, if you lose a debate, you still get some Eloquence, and there are also multiple ways to raise a certain Royal Virtue, so you're not stuck with only debates for Eloquence.

Surprisingly, grinding, that I always warily expect from a JRPG, is really minimal and was bearable even for me. Well, I was constantly underlevelled for a big portion of the late game, because I just kept running up to a chest, stealing the loot, and then running from monsters, so that's on me. For the most part, I enjoyed being weaker than expected because I had to use all my creative thinking to figure out boss battles, and I am very proud of the insane strategies I came up with. I am a fairly conservative person when it comes to assembling a party in a party-based game: I usually make the best friends with whoever joined me first and won't switch them for anyone who comes later. In Metaphor I used every single one of my buddies in battle because it's easy and makes for one hell of a spectacle. Changing party formation costs just a little bit of your turn, and if you feel like your current setup doesn't do all that well against these particular enemies, you can just swap your characters for others, one at a time. Here I must say that Metaphor has an abundance of Archetypes the characters can learn, and the wildest thing is that they can inherit abilities from any Archetype they know. I guess the same goes for Persona, but I don't know, I haven't played a Persona game :D For example, Hulkenberg is a Knight. It is her natural Archetype that she awakens in herself. However, she can study any other Archetype, just like everyone else can. In my playthrough she was also a Merchant, who has a "Gold Throw" ability that comes in handy in many fights. I set up Hulkenburg as a Knight, inherited the Gold Throw from her Merchant, and she was endlessly taunting some pretty tough enemies by armoring up and then throwing gold at them. It was hilarious. I loved inheriting passive abilities the most because those are very strong, but the potential for Archetype-building is endless. You can do whatever you want. Synthesis skills are also the highlight of the combat system: many Archetypes synergize with one another to provide a powerful attack, or an incredible buff, and even though you spend more turns on synthesis skills, often they will turn the tide of battle in your favor.

Special mention goes to Rui, one of the best videogame antagonists I've ever seen. I absolutely adore his character and the way he holds himself. The thing about him is that he is not just a cardboard villain that you see at the beginning of the game and then in the final battle. Rui is present throughout the whole game: not only because he is a big part of your investigation, but also because he is the number one candidate for the throne and your rival. You don't watch him from the side: for the bulk of the game, you have many opportunities to talk to him and to discover his motives. To be completely honest with you, for the first half of the game I didn't really see why we were supposed to be enemies: his policies seemed solid to me, and I was falling for him just as countless citizens of Euchronia that were hoping to see him as the new king. The realization came later, as I observed more of him: how he treats those close to him, what ideas he shares and what he thinks about the events unfolding in the kingdom. I loved the dynamic between us! Also, he is voiced by Yuichi Nakamura, and I don't think I need to say more.

I play games for stories, but I play party-based RPGs specifically for companionship. I love getting to know my companions, I invest heavily into their personal questlines and I won't rest until they reach their goals or find their peace. There is nothing I value more in this type of games than good companion characters and their respective questlines.

And Metaphor was an absolute treat in this regard. Here companions are called "followers" because they support you in your endeavor, and this term includes both your recruitable friends who can join you in battle, and those who can't fight but help you in other ways.

Every follower's questline is extremely personal and reflects their core beliefs. Some start off hyper focused on some sort of failure, completely stuck in the past, unable to move forward. Whatever conversation you have with them, it ultimately comes down to them regretting something that happened to them in the past; they are stifled by guilt and pain. Throughout their questline you slowly help them break free from this loop, and the operative word here is SLOWLY. Just like it would happen in real life. I remember the moment when I first realized this: I was finishing Hulkenberg's quest, we talked for a while, and she told me that she changed a lot while travelling with me. At first, I brushed it off — that's what all companions in games say when you finish their quests — but then I paused and looked back at our whole adventure...

She did change! And she changed CONSIDERABLY. When we met, Hulkenberg defined herself through what she perceived as her greatest failure. It was her whole identity. The unbearable weight of guilt didn't allow her to grow up, she was so stuck in her past. She had quite a grim outlook on life, barely talked to anyone and was just absorbed in herself. Now, she was like an entirely different person, a woman of great courage and confidence with firm values that defined her now unbreakable character. Hulkenberg evolved throughout the game in the most amazing way, and I can't even remember seeing so much of a character growth and development in a videogame in recent years. And I swear, it happens to all of your friends. Some are overcoming their fears and failures, some are faced with new responsibilities and need to learn to navigate them, others have their core values overturned and need to find new ones to hold onto. This is by far my favorite part about Metaphor: character writing, incredibly nuanced, with good kind humor sprinkled in, which is unfortunately becoming more and more rare for some reason. My heart was aching for every single one of them and helping them out in whatever way they needed was my top priority throughout the entire game.

Metaphor has no romance, which unfortunately turned some of my friends away from it. I am completely fine with my games having no romance option, even those where it would seem appropriate, like a party-based RPG. Metaphor is about the power of friendship, something you're more likely to encounter in a classic shounen, but it's written in a very adult way. The main message of the game is about anxiety, which hit a chord with me because I am a very anxious person, and I've been like this since I was a very young kid. I always tried to fight my anxiety, to find a way to eradicate it, to kick its ass, and it's been a struggle. After playing Metaphor, I reflected on some of its ideas and thoughts about the nature of anxiety — it's a status ailment in the game, by the way — and what we can do about it. Strangely, I feel better now, on a day to day basis, and I am grateful for that.

Another major idea permeating the entire game is that truly grand things cannot be achieved by one person. Of course, there are numerous things you can do on your own, but to do something truly big, like saving the world, or changing the world, you need help of others, of friends and allies who are ready to fight for your cause and will have your back.

Something that I will never shut up about is Metaphor's soundtrack that just slaps. Special mention goes to the battle theme that you're going to be listening to for the majority of the game, and it's INTENSE. It's the head priest of the Myojoji Temple chanting in Esperanto, if you can believe that at all, and the choir. It's absolutely insane. I never got tired of it, because every time I hear it play, I feel like I can just take on the whole world. It's beyond words, so here it is.

It usually takes me months to complete a big JRPG, but I was done with Metaphor in about 3 or 4 weeks. All I wanted to do was just play more Metaphor. Never once did I get tired of it, and usually even games I genuinely love exhaust me. Never this one. It is one of the best games I've ever played, my best game of 2024 and I cannot recommend it enough. Metaphor is everything I ever wanted a videogame to be. It ponders some big questions like the possibility of true equality — or meritocracy — but ultimately it is about hope, and the ability to dream even when the future is uncertain, and it always is.

Please do play it with the Japanese voiceover: Metaphor's cast is nothing short of legendary, you won't regret it. Let me know your thoughts, and I am off to play Persona now.

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Thank you very much for your time. Take care.