Metaphor: ReFantazio review: like a brilliant fantasy Persona, only with one major catch

Graham asked me if I'd discovered what the metaphor in Metaphor: ReFantazio might be, and I replied, "I don't know haha", or something along those lines. Having given it more thought, I think there are two metaphors: 1) It plays quite like Persona. 2) Its story is like a commentary on our society… or something to that effect.

Metaphors aside, though, the game is a gigantic fantasy RPG that's technically better than Persona 5 in a lot of ways. Structurally, it feels less repetitive. It has more animated cutscenes that elevate those key story moments. You can brush aside weaker enemies in real-time combat, rather than face them in tiresome turn-based tangoes. And overall, I think it's the best game Persona or Persona-like Atlus have put out - it really is brilliant. But there's a part of me that feels like it's missing something that'll leave it less ingrained in the memory than Persona 5 once its final chapter has closed.

In Metaphor you play as an anime lad, whose top dialogue options are almost always nice and inoffensive. However, you are an Elda, a rare race who's looked down upon by the masses, the masses also being a hodgepodge of other races: those with cat ears, or ram horns, or wings, or cages over their heads. It's quickly drilled into you, via overt conversations between stuck up townspeople ("What's an Elda doing here?!") or scenes of persecution (a cat-eared boy being hanged) that the world is horrible and unfair.

And the universe itself is in turmoil, as its prince and heir to the throne has been cursed. Cursed by his older brother Louis who, it turns out, also butchered his father, the most recent king. Long story short, what ensues is a power struggle, as it turns out the dead king had Call Of Duty's Last Stand perk equipped. This means his death initiates a magical gambit that sets forth one final competition for the throne. The contender who wins over the public over the course of three trials will become the next king. You, the Elda lad, are to enter. With the pretence of winning, naturally, but also to save the prince from his brother's curse.

If you're an anime-liker, you'll get on with Metaphor's earnestness and its overarching lesson: Racism is bad! Be nice to each other! Democracy rules! If you're someone who doesn't get on with obvious messaging, you'll wrinkle your nose at it constantly, like someone trapped in a realm where they're forced to cut their nose hair regularly. But I will say that the story, while sometimes predictable, chucks in enough twists and a sense of discovery to keep things from ever falling flat.

Much like the Persona games, your political campaign is governed by deadlines. You're to beat this Big Important Dungeon before the 16th, for instance, so between now and then you use each day to up your power. You could hang with a pal to deepen a bond (more on this in a sec), using up your morning in the process. Then you could spend the night listening to gramps chat about the time he bumped into some fairies, upping your Imagination stat (one of a few virtues that open up special/rare dialogue options, exactly like Persona). Feeling somewhat ready to throw down? Then you could tackle the dungeon in manageable chunks, returning to it over multiple days to rest up and recoup as needed. So long as you beat it before the deadline, you're all good.

But where Persona feels rigid in its rhythm, as major story dungeons are sandwiched between long periods of chilling with the gang or grinding multistorey Mementos, Metaphor has a more natural flow. Yes you're still bound by deadlines, but your kingly campaign is driven by your Gauntlet Runner. Or more accurately, scuttled, since it's a ship with legs. Yes, it has magnificent thighs, and yes, it has a lovely interior that acts as your base. Unlike Persona which had the Leblanc cafe, Metaphor shifts your headquarters - teleportation lets you move instantly between cities later on - between its big cities depending on the story sitch.

You might hang around the port city of Brilehaven, where swirling ocean orbs hover over a colosseum and its nearby salty streets. There's Grand Trad, the glossy capital, or Martira, its malnourished people stricken by a deadly secret. All of them home to the usual, if perhaps static, series of shops: the armour one, the weapon one, the folks who up your Courage or whatever.

But it's the added layer, which is perhaps the most important to giving Metaphor its identity. And that's your ability, between those major deadlines, to take the Gauntlet Runner for a spin (the game makes it very obvious when you should do so). No, you can't drive it about freely and swing its arse out like you're drifting around San Andreas, drivebying imps with throwing knives. What you can do is accept quests around town and then visit the Recruitment Centre. The former hits you with fetch quests ("I lost my wife's goblet lol") and the latter, bounties (go kill the fucking massive worm in the desert). These then get marked on your map with a delicious pencil scribble noise, with routes between them outlining campsites and even rival Gauntlet Runners.

Conveniently, a lot of fetch quests have you collect stuff from towns that are enroute to dungeons, which are natural endpoints. All you need to do is select the route you want, take into account how many days it'll take to travel, then hit the "let's go" button.

It's these excursions that make up the bulk of your adventures then, as you must portion time to conquer these dungeons. And as you travel between them, you'll have further opportunities to chat to your pals, sink into a hot tub, cook dishes, and occasionally fight invaders. Again, all of it lends the game a greater sense of dynamism and adventure than Persona.

Metaphor does retain one key thing from its forebear, though, and that's each major character awakening to their own magical Archetype: a class that lets them do spells that consume MP as opposed to thwacks with their swords or maces that don't consume anything. As the generic anime lad, you awaken to the Seeker first, a do-it-all hybrid swordfighter who can wield magic and, largely, exists as a sort of vessel for inheriting skills from other classes. Your main squeeze Strohl awakens to the Warrior. The red-haired glutton Hulkenberg, the Knight. Make friends with characters who look entirely different to every other civilian asset in the game and you'll unlock new classes (the Brawler being one of the earliest, and in my opinion, one of the best). Further these bonds and you'll unlock benefits for them, like extra skills and slots, or even benefits outside of combat like better bounty rewards.

Where Metaphor differs from Persona, is in its cultivation of Archetypes. In Persona you collect and mash together cock demons, evolving them and transferring abilities across bloodlines. In Metaphor, you cultivate Archetypes by building bonds with your pals, which unlocks better versions of them. But to actually unlock them for use, you'll need to meet their requirements. For instance, Hulkenberg's first advanced class unlock - if you take her down the Knight route - is the Magic Knight. To actually use it, you'll need to earn enough MAG (a currency you accrue after battles, for choosing appropriate dialogue options, and other things) to purchase it, and also level up the Mage class to 10.

To get levelling, you'll spend a lot of your spare time in dungeons. Many of these are a sight better than Persona's, as they're the beneficiary of some strong quality of life updates, including more convenient save points and enemies not respawning when you rest. They offer more variety, too, like getting to fight through a creature's insides as a timer ticks down and slippery fish enemies rob you of precious seconds. Some dungeons are "Infiltration" missions, where you have to defeat enemies in a certain number of turns. Others feature stealth sequences, where you knock out guards Metal Gear-style.

Still, though, fighting through these dungeons demonstrates that many of Persona's failings remain. Some dungeons are just annoying corridor mazes with multiple, samey floors. Restricting turns adds urgency and strategy, sure, but also makes RNG a colossal fanny when you miss on a final spell that would've killed them.

And yes, even your new ability to battle in real-time is a bit of a 'mare. Your fairy companion Gallica can scan the environment, revealing the levels of enemies. If they're a sight lower than you, they can be killed without going into turn-based combat - delightful! But if you're roughly the same level as most mobs - and you will be, 90% of the time - then you'll stun them, and won't be able to finish them off without hopping into a turn-based battle. If you get hit, your enemy starts that turn-based battle with an advantage. In the end, real-time scraps don't save you from samey fights unless you're vastly overleveled, such as when you're mopping up a side quest from several hours ago.

On a more positive note, the Archetype system grants your party a lot of freedom as it's easy to switch between them and experiment with different compositions. But from another standpoint, you're perpetually stressed in ensuring the one or two Archetypes that work well in a specific dungeon are, or will be, up to scratch. That's thanks to informants who can let you in on a bounty's weaknesses before you tackle them. Instead of flitting between multiple Archetypes on the fly then, you cycle between the most appropriate for the job, sometimes rinsing the same two spells for hours. You might imagine yourself as a spectral Simone Biles doing a back handspring into a splits, but Metaphor gives you more of an illusion of greater flexibility than it delivers.

That's not to say I don't enjoy chasing new Archetypes and battling monsters, I just think Metaphor's combat focus can grate just as much as it pleases. For newcomers and Persona fans who want a bit more variety, I think it'll do the job. For real strategy buffs? I don't think it allows enough freedom. For me, I'm happy enough with it.

In other matters, I don't think Metaphor quite has... The Juice.

What do I mean by this cringeworthy word I've added into my lexicon? What is The Juice? It's that your pals, Strohl and Hulkenberg and Gallica (and later people I won't spoil) are all lovely and fine, but they're quite serious. I want more goofballs and weirdos and cuties. Persona has this jazzy vibe and boppy presentation, whereas Metaphor leans more into the familiar Fire Emblem-style soundtrack of strings and plinks. It's beautiful, don't get me wrong! But Persona is aspirational: it offers the fantasy of living that double life through some virtual school pals, and of those lives intertwining in a cosy cafe or out in the streets of Japan. Metaphor's chats and stories are shorter in general and while still relatable in some respects, in others, I felt a bit disconnected, given the larger scope of a world I couldn't fully comprehend.

Despite my whining here at the end, I do genuinely believe Metaphor is a very good RPG and a grand adventure absolutely worth undertaking. It's slick in its presentation, in its storytelling, and especially in its combat. Everyone, no matter if you're a strategy god or a story hound will be served a good slice of both, perhaps spurring on more of an interest in the one side you hadn't explored before. And it's a better game than Persona, particularly Persona 5. But I think its focus skews more towards combat and less towards its characters, which makes it more of a thing that you'll put down and go, "that was really great", and not, "I want to exist here forever with my pals".

This article is based on a review build of the game provided by the publisher.