Metaphor: ReFantazio XSX Review

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a superb and thoughtful JRPG that confidently builds on the foundations laid by the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series.

In short, it’s one of this year’s best games and another triumph for Atlus that fans of the genre and the revered studio will not want to miss.

Players are thrust into a fantastical world of political intrigue, class struggle, and racial tensions that despite its outwardly cheery exterior never pulls its punches, and is laced with the kind of top-tier allegory and sly literary references that will make the political philosophy graduate turned game reviewing hack in your lives even more insufferable.

Metaphor opens with the King of a large multicultural nation murdered by the moustache-twirling villain of the piece, Louis, a machiavellian mage trying to remake the country in his own despotic image.

However, unbeknownst to Louis, the heir to the throne he thought he had dispatched years ago with a complex curse, is still alive: Spirited away by a cabal of agents loyal to the Royal family in hopes of one day breaking the curse and seeing him ascend to the throne.

The problem is that the only way to break the curse and remove the twisted thorns binding him is to kill the man who cast it.

You take on the role of an idealistic member of this secret society sent on a mission to aid Louis’ would-be assassin to break the curse and stop Louis from making a play for the throne.

However, when the assassination attempt fails, a battle for succession begins, with every citizen in the kingdom in the running, after a powerful spell is unleashed by the King during his funeral that ensures the next monarch will be chosen by public opinion, for good or ill.

With no clear way forward your ragtag group made up of the usually segregated races of this fantastical world decides to enter the race to get close to Louis by building up their popularity and then declaring for him.

It’s an on-the-nose narrative for an election year. Still, unlike most Western media, which just defaults to yay! Democracy. It’s much more nuanced and reminds the audience that elections don’t necessarily result in the best candidate winning, but will end up with whoever voters deserve, and if you don’t want a fascist despot in charge you need to do something about it.

On the campaign trail your growing band of plucky revolutionaries with their simple mission to “help everyone that needs it” inevitably end up having dust-ups with political rivals, dungeons packed full of vicious beasts, and even the occasional sea creature.

If you’ve ever played Persona or SMT you’ll know exactly what to expect. Seriously refined turn-based combat that sees your party trying to exploit weaknesses in their enemies to get more turns while hopefully stopping them from even throwing a punch.

It’s fast-paced, looks lovely, and even lets you restart battles if the tide has completely turned against you. This is incredibly helpful later in the game when a couple of duff hits can land you six feet under very quickly.

The best part of the combat is that it respects your time. Lower-leveled enemies can be dispatched with a sword swing without having to engage them in a proper fight and you still get all the rewards you would have if you’d engaged them fully.

There was one dungeon packed full of lower-level skeleton warriors which became a great place to grind a few levels simply by thwacking the gits as I went.

What sets your merry band apart from almost everyone else in Metaphor is that they can use magic without using a contraption called an Ignitor. Instead, they derive their magical powers from mysterious entities called Archetypes that they can summon when the muck hits the proverbial. Think Stans from Jojo, by way of Persona and you’re not a million miles away.

Although mechanically it’s the bastard child of Final Fantasy V’s Job system and Persona’s Social Links. As you meet new people and add new members to your party they’ll unlock new archetypes for you to equip and rank up.

These range from basic things like a Mage, Healer, and Knight to more crafty and complicated classes like the Masked Dancer and Merchant. However, if you want access to the top-tier versions of these archetypes and all their powerful abilities you need to spend time with your comrades and complete some good old side quests with them in toe.

It’s a fun and engaging system that allows for lots of customization, some great little synergies between the different classes, and encourages a healthy dose of experimentation.

Eventually, you’ll unlock the ability to inherit skills from other classes you’ve previously gained a few levels in. Very useful for balancing your party, and adding healing spells to your answer without necessarily needing to keep a dedicated healer.

The other SMT/ Persona staple to make its way into Metaphor is the ability to level up your personality, just with a slightly more regal bent.

Most people believe that if you’re going to lead a country you’ll need certain positive traits, and you’ll spend much of your free time reading self-help books and talking to your fellow countrymen to level up five virtues to stop being a shiftless, unimaginative, bigot.

This system is also a stark reminder that Metaphor is a work of fiction because Tony Abbot and Boris Johnson managed to become world leaders while ostensibly being stuck on level one in every trait.

In many ways Metaphor is a refinement of the Persona formula, mostly in the ways that it streamlines or simply cuts out a lot of the busywork present in a lot of Atlus’ previous games, it’s easier to fast travel and find your friends, days pass quicker, there’s less fiddling about in menus and the monster fusing and hunting elements are gone. (I think this is a good thing, others may disagree.)

Dungeons are more expansive and have little twists that make them more enjoyable to explore, there are some great little set pieces and chase sequences, and it always feels like you’re working towards something.

It wouldn’t be an Atlus RPG if the visuals and UI weren’t incredibly slick, and in this regard, Metaphor doesn’t disappoint. Every menu is brimming with colour and character, and the combat menus are an absolute joy to navigate.

The visuals, although too far removed from Atlus’s other anime-tinged properties, have a certain charm that mixes high fashion and high fantasy. Most of the monster designs are mind-blowing, especially the ‘humans’ and some of the major boss creatures that sit somewhere between a Dali painting, a bad trip, and Dali on a bad trip.

Likewise, the audio is top-tier and combines a sweeping orchestral score with some catchy AF tunes during combat and its bigger moments.

The main cast also all put in solid performances and it’s great to see a wide variety of accents in the English dub, gaming needs more Welsh accents (even if they are portrayed as Dragon worshipping savages.)

For the best part, Metaphor got its hooks into me good and proper, however, there was one irksome stealth section you couldn’t avoid topped off with infuriating mini-bosses you had to beat in three turns or less. In fact, All of the ‘timed’ battles can get straight in the bin.

My only other complaint is that the system for showing how difficult a mission is supposed to be is vague at best and two missions with the same rating can vary wildly. This led to at least one time where I wasted several days travelling to optional dungeons I was severely under-leveled for. Just tell us what level the monsters are before we get there.

Ultimately though these are minor grumbles considering what an absolute joy the rest of Metaphor is..

Final Thoughts

Metaphor: ReFantazio is one of this year’s best games and another home run for the Persona team. Though technically a new IP for the studio, Metaphor feels like a refinement of the heady blend of tight turn-based combat, superb world-building, and clever time management systems their spellbinding JRPGs are known for.

Even more important though, it’s a game with heart and something worthwhile to say. Though it may be Fantazio, Metaphor successfully holds a mirror up to our world and all its injustices, while proposing that a better, fairer, kinder one is within reach if only we dared to take hold of it.