Expectations were high for Metaphor: ReFantazio, even before release. It was developed by Atlus’s Studio Zero, with prominent staff who have worked on the Persona series behind it. It’s no surprise that people would have high hopes, despite it being a new IP. It’s time to find out if the game lived up to them.
It’s No Utopia
Metaphor: ReFantazio is a fantasy JRPG that takes you across a cruel world on a quest to save your friend. You are battling not just monsters, but discrimination and corruption. It’s a tale of a boy trying to bring hope in an archetypical fantasy world with royalty, knights, and evil lurking below the surface.
It’s made clear almost immediately in the story that there are nine tribes which are seen very differently in society. Each has different physical features, ranging from humanoids with horns or wings to those who appear more animalistic, and each with their own culture. Along with this, some tribes have differences such as longer lifespans or higher intelligence. Unsurprisingly, many have negative thoughts about the other tribes.
We see this often through the eyes of “Will” (the default protagonist name), a member of the dwindling Elda tribe which lacks any outstanding features. The state religion brands them as heretical, and it’s made clear just what everyone thinks of them from the comments surrounding you when you enter the city for the first time and constantly throughout the game.
Discrimination isn’t the only problem in this world. We see bribes being taken and beggars being kicked. One of the first events we see when entering the city is a public hanging. Metaphor: ReFantazio doesn’t hide how harsh a world this is and we soon see that not even innocent children manage to escape murder. Will wants to change this, wishing for a world more like the utopia shown in his fantasy novel.
It’s a rather dismal setting, but an interesting one. The idea of how the tribes interact, the stereotypes around them, and some of the reasoning for these issues is presented with a lot of detail. It’s very direct about the prejudice based on species and how it’s wrong, but I never felt it was preachy about its message. Instead, we see different views and moral ambiguity. One of the villains holds an ideal of meritocracy where anyone strong enough is accepted, regardless of their tribe. Instead of outright dismissing it in favor of Will’s wish to help everyone, some agree and can argue for why, and cases are made for why Will’s vision is unrealistic. Another key idea presented is a utopia with only one tribe, which gets explored slowly throughout the story.
The Mission
While Will wants to create a utopia, his mission is to lift the curse on his friend who instilled those values in him. Thought to be dead by most of the world, the Prince of the kingdom is slowly dying in a hidden village and it seems like killing the one who cast the curse is the only way to lift it.
Will sets out with his fairy companion Gallica guiding the way, at first just to deliver a message, before it eventually spirals into much more. The King is killed and his killer, Louis, tries to proclaim himself as the new ruler of the country. The palace ascends into the sky then the former King’s face appears on it and proclaims that whoever earns the faith of the citizens shall be the new king. This sets up a contest to win over the citizens and become the new king, with the head of the church and Louis as the top runners.
Will eventually needs to join the contest, not intending to become king, but to get close to Louis who is suspected to be the one who cast the curse.
The contest makes for a good impetus to explore the world further and meet new people, with each stage held in a different city. This often involves meeting new friends who eventually join the party, all from different tribes, reinforcing the message of strength in unity.
The other candidates are certainly unique too, ranging from the more serious, from those promising free drinks to those who only entered to promote their business. The discrimination comes into play here too, with some candidates entering to raise the status of their own tribe and plenty of negative commentary about an Elda entering. It’s certainly not a fair contest, with the church running it and manipulation of public opinion from more than one area.
The main plot of Metaphor: ReFantazio is consistently engaging. It does use a lot of existing tropes, some common in JRPGs and anime media in general, and some less common but not particularly novel ideas such as one that felt extremely similar to Persona 5 and another that strongly reminded me of a certain favorite 2002 visual novel of mine. Still, even when it retreads common ground, it adds its own unique twist most of the time.
Despite retreading old ground in many places, several unexpected twists occurred that caught me by surprise. I was shocked when the answer to a certain mystery was revealed, not expecting it to go in that direction at all. Things that seem simple at first are actually surprisingly complex, with plenty of misdirection, while certain other ideas make great use of foreshadowing and subtle hints to build suspicion beforehand. The main villain, his past and worldview, and how it tied to other characters’ experiences was something I particularly enjoyed seeing revealed over time, especially as he seemed to have a somewhat shallow character initially.
It’s difficult to say too much about the plot without going into the area of spoilers, but it’s certainly well worth experiencing. I played for about 80 hours to complete it in under two weeks and never wanted to put it down.
Friends And Allies
As mentioned, unity and eliminating discrimination is one of Will’s key beliefs and his party reflects this. Consisting of members of each tribe, new members join whether due to Will’s mission to save the Prince or due to their personal belief in him.
The party members and other allies have their own storylines told through Follower Bonds, similar to Persona’s Social Links, where you spend time with them and it reveals parts of their story, allowing you to select dialogue answers and level up your bond. These provide access to new classes, new abilities, and other major upgrades.
Each one shows the character having their own journey and overcoming something that challenges them, while still feeling unique. The characters who support Will typically don’t have great pasts, whether it’s a failure that has haunted them, personal tragedy, or other difficulty. Even those from the more privileged tribes have their issues.
While not all of their stories are made equal, there are some particularly heart wrenching ones and those that made me appreciate the characters a lot more than their moments in the main plot. Even the ones that stood out less, I still enjoyed. One extra aspect I liked here was that some involved completing a mission, which added more of a feeling of involvement when I was helping someone defend their town or whatever else the mission called for.
While comparing it to Persona above, one difference is there are no options to enter romantic relationships. That’s not to say there’s no romance in Metaphor: ReFantazio, however. There are several flirty dialogue options, a couple of characters who are vaguely implied to have a romantic interest in Will, and there’s even one where it’s fairly explicitly stated.
Counting Down The Days
After getting past the opening part of the game, Metaphor: ReFantazio uses a calendar system, split into day and night, where you can do one activity for each. The exception is if you go to a dungeon, in which case you need to spend the night resting. Each ‘chapter’ of the story has a main dungeon that you need to clear by the time that the countdown of days has finished.
I found the main dungeons engaging, with plenty of hidden passageways to find, treasure as a reward for venturing off the beaten path, and the occasional puzzle. One minor aspect I particularly liked was that navigation, including secrets, felt logical. I could usually more or less guess where hidden passages would be if I saw something on the other side of the map or compare maps of different levels of the dungeon to see how going up and down would get me to where I need to go.
They are typically fairly long, but I always found them completable within an in-game day. They can take quite a while in real-time, but there are points to take a break in ‘Magla Hollows’, which are safe rooms to have a chat with your party, teleport within the dungeon, and save the game.
The main limitation is MP and the scarcity of MP restorative items, so this makes managing it important. This becomes less of a concern later in the game, with various abilities to help lessen the issue and more party members to switch between.
Along with completing the main dungeon for that chapter, there are mini-boss bounties to hunt and optional missions to discover by talking to people around whichever city is the focus. There are also occasional missions to pick something up from the shop, cook food, and similar. While the main dungeons were typically the most extensive and some optional dungeons were very simple and small, others were quite involved.
On days when you’re not delving into dungeons, there are enough other activities to do that I was impressed. If conditions are fulfilled, you can choose to do bond events with your followers, talk to various people and participate in simple activities to increase your five ‘Royal Virtues’ (which some bond events and dialogue options are locked behind), or fight in the colosseum to work your way toward becoming the champion.
While there is a lot to do, many of the non-dungeon activities are similar. Leveling up Royal Virtues tends to be a short scene, occasionally providing a bit of background lore, but usually not. Cooking or certain other activities are short scenes with party members, but it’s typically casual moments. You can quickly move between cities, but the activities are more or less the same between them in most cases. Still, it’s a much larger world with more to do than the titles that presumably inspired the use of these systems.
Preparing The Beat Down
While turn-based is the primary method of combat, Metaphor: ReFantazio has a feature that speeds things up a lot and works brilliantly. If you’re a certain amount of levels above the enemy, you can attack it in the overworld. Hit it enough and it’ll die, leaving you with the experience and items without the need for a battle. Of course, they can hit you too, and enough weaker enemies hitting you can kill you in the overworld. Dodging helps. If they’re a similar or higher level, you can instead attack them to start the battle with them stunned and missing a chunk of health.
The turn-based system that Metaphor: ReFantazio uses resembles Shin Megami Tensei’s, which as you may know, Persona was a spin-off from. It’s a somewhat challenging system, where using weaknesses and debuffs is essential (perhaps unless you’re playing on storyteller or easy mode). This was made pointedly clear early on by having several enemies in the first dungeon use Will’s default weakness (fire) and a boss that resists his only elemental spell (wind).
This is where archetypes come in. In terms of story, it’s framed as awakening a power, often with a moment of self-development or realization tied to it. This is essentially a class-change system, where you can learn and switch between 14 basic types of character classes like mage or warrior, and even more advanced ones (there are 46 archetypes in total). Each has different skill sets, weaknesses, and resistances.
It’s a rather extensive system, where you need to level up archetypes separately from your character level. While changing archetype normally limits you to the skills from that archetype that you’ve learned, you can also set a limited amount of them that you’ve learned from others. Want to be a warrior but feel the need for a fire spell? Take enough levels in mage to learn it, then assign it to warrior.
Archetypes are a very flexible system, but perhaps not as much as it might sound. You can technically have any or even all of the characters learn to be a Healer or Knight or whatever you like. What’s not made clear though is that each character is intended to essentially remain as their initial class (with one exception) and proceed to become the more advanced versions of it, which requires unlocking a specific set of archetypes along the way. If not, they’ll find themselves missing something important by the end game. So while you could have Strohl abandon the path of the warrior and become a healer, I’d not recommend it. Taking enough levels for some supplementary skills from other classes is certainly a good idea though.
One minor painful point was how whenever I unlocked a new archetype in the early game, it felt quite limiting. Basic and advanced archetypes all start without many skills until they level up. In the early game, setting skills from other archetypes is very limited too. This could mean having to choose between using a more powerful but low-level advanced archetype with a couple of skills, or downgrading to a more flexible basic one. This was particularly the case with summoner, which is an exception that unlocks skills based on items created. Luckily this can be bypassed somewhat as a very helpful feature is when reaching the max level for an archetype, instead of gaining further levels an item that gives archetype experience is provided. Staying as the basic archetype for a while, then using these to level a new one up a little before switching is a good tactic.
That said, it’s a lot of fun experimenting with different skill sets and several dungeons went much easier by both choosing the right party members and building their additional skills specifically for it. It feels like this is particularly useful and intended for bosses, which let you quickly retry whenever you die with a useful point to learn archetypes and skills always nearby.
Generally, learning weaknesses, setting the right skills, and figuring out the little tricks of the system like setting enemies up to sometimes lose their turns through repelling attacks was enough to make it through most battles on normal difficulty. I only found the need to grind levels in the final chapter, which was mostly for a set of difficult optional bosses and to unlock something that only appeared in the late game.
It’s A Magic Of Its Own
From the little touches like the user interface and menus to the backgrounds, sprites, and character models, Metaphor: ReFantazio looks great. The world and its inhabitants have been brought to life in large part due to this.
Anime cutscenes are quite frequent too, which look slightly different compared to the in-game models, but similar enough. The sheer amount of them makes it feel like a high-budget project, along with how large the world is.
Most of the dungeons are visually unique, with a few exceptions around the optional missions. Even many of those are distinct though, if not as much as the main story dungeons.
As a very minor complaint, even on my PlayStation 5, I did come across the occasional performance issue. Primarily in battles, it sometimes experienced a little slowdown.
While I primarily played with the Japanese dub, the voicing is excellent for both the Japanese and the English dub. Notably, the English dub is sometimes very stereotypically British, as is some of the language used in the localization. The music underpins the scenes too, from the moments of tension and battles to strolling around the towns.
Verdict
Metaphor: ReFantazio might just be the best JRPG of 2024. With a great story with more to it than it first seems, characters that have their own journeys worth experiencing, and excellent gameplay from the day-to-day events to the dungeon delving and battles, it’s absolutely worth picking up.
METAPHOR: REFANTAZIO IS A MUST BUY
If you’re looking for another JRPG, you should check out our review of Ys X: Nordics.
Thanks to SEGA for providing a PlayStation 5 review code for Metaphor: ReFantazio.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
