Metaphor: ReFantazio Review – Persona Non Grata

For most casual players of recent years, invoking the name Atlus has typically been synonymous with the Persona series. One of Director Katsura Hashino’s breakout series, this offshoot of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise has grown to be one of the most stylish and compelling Japanese RPGs of recent years. Has the team at Atlus finally broken out of their mold, or is Metaphor: ReFantazio just the same game with a new mask?

Metaphor: ReFantazio opens with a tease of modern-day life and settings before whisking the player away into an isekai, or alternative world, within a book written about conflict and subterfuge. None the wiser of the greater story, players assume the role of a blue-haired young chap whose end goal is to subvert the election process to install a new king and instead bring a young, cursed prince to power whom most assume to be dead. Along this journey, the prince’s proxy competes to determine the rightful heir to the throne through a popular vote. How might one determine their standing in a world without ballot boxes or broad communication? By way of a floating moon in the sky adorned with the king’s visage. One empty eye socket reveals a number of faces representing the twenty or so most qualified candidates; the larger their faces appear, the wider the margin of the vote they’ve captured. Monolithic statues also appear across the various cities in Metaphor: ReFantazio allowing those on the distant reaches of the continent to still be aware of who their next ruler may be.

While the latter Persona titles dealt more with the psyche of human nature and Jung’s theory, Metaphor: ReFantazio presents the problems in the world in a much more overt nature, with racism running rampant in a world filled with various races and castes. The player hero has the unfortunate curse of being born as an Elda, a subrace that’s ostracized for the powerful magic and heretical views they hold. Because of this, the player and main character alike suffer an uphill battle against the inherent racism of nearly every other race and character in the Kingdom of Euchronia. The word human itself is taboo, with those humans being presented as grotesque monsters that draw direct inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings. Inspired by may be too light of a phrasing, as many of the bosses and larger foes are one-for-one copies of one fresco of the Garden of Earthly Delights. Shin Megami Tensei has largely revolved around the various mythologies and religions of the world, so it’s intriguing to see a monster designer draw upon works not often cited in gaming. If you long for the likes of Mothman and other common Shin Megami Tensei beasts, players can research the Summoner class, which can invoke them as combat spells.

The combat to Metaphor: ReFantazio should be instantly familiar to those who have dipped their toes into at least one Shin Megami Tensei title in the past decade. Turns are taking one side at a time, with characters ranked by their Speed stat to determine order. Typically, one character on either side will provide the entire team with a Press Turn icon when it’s their turn to take action, so it’s important to dispatch weaker peons before tackling the main boss. As with Shin Megami Tensei V, the effectiveness of an attack determines how many Press Turn icons are used for a given attack. A basic attack consumes one turn, while striking an enemy’s weakness or inflicting a critical hit will consume half the amount of icons. Likewise, dodging, blocking, or repelling an attack will consume twice as many icons and this goes both ways. If you can predict what an enemy’s main element will be, players can change their given Archetype or equip an accessory that might nullify that particular element. Towards the end of Elda’s journey, players can find a unique hat for the protagonist that yields an additional Press Turn icon or purchase accessories that allow a player to dodge an attack and deplete all of the enemy’s icons at once, but these won’t be in players hands until approaching the finish line.

Social Links have been a core component of the modern Persona series, presenting a physical manifestation of the trust between the main character and a chosen ally, whether they’re actively in the combat party or merely an outside observer. These systems play out identically to their Persona counterparts, with spending time with a given supporter yielding an additional rank and typically some form of passive boon for the Archetype that they provide the player. The system at play here has been largely simplified, with no time spent with a Follower yielding anything less than a rank-up. Gone are the days of having to take someone out for a burger two or three times before their Social Link increases. Instead, players will routinely have to pass a passive skill check based on their Royal Virtues before they can spend time with a given supporter. There is a handy menu that players can bring up at any time to quickly see which supporters are ready to take things to the next level and selecting them will instantly teleport the player into speaking distance. Many of these events will require additional criteria, such as speaking to a party member while traveling to another city or speaking to them in the evening versus the day. At each passing phase of the day, Gallica, the fairy that follows the player around during their journey, will offer a hint and let players telepathically communicate and hear the wishes of one who wishes to confide in the player. 

To my chagrin, Metaphor: ReFantazio still features a limited window to proceed with the adventure through another calendar system. Players only have a limited number of days to seek the crown, and every action they do, whether it’s spending time with a confidant, reading a book, hitting the battle coliseum for fame and glory, and so on, consumes one-half of a given day. Suppose Morgana’s persistent nagging to go to sleep after exploring a Palace in Persona 5 annoyed you. In that case, you’ll have no quarter from Gallica doing the same thing after venturing into a dungeon in the daytime. Because of this, dungeons in Metaphor: ReFantazio are better suited to be tackled in a single day without taking return trips. MP is still a finite resource with very few ways to recover it outside of consumable items or leaving the dungeon to catch some shut-eye, but there are a few ways to exploit the system to the player’s benefit. The easiest is to convert the player back into a Mage Archetype and attack enemies on the open field or pass turns in combat, both provide a minimal (3-8 MP) recovery but enough to push forward if the player spends enough time grinding. 

I touched upon this briefly before, but the Archetype system sets Metaphor: ReFantazio apart from the Shin Megami Tensei counterparts despite both sharing similar DNA. Rather than being locked to a single arcana or Persona, each party member in Metaphor: ReFantazio draws from the same pool of Archetypes and can be equipped with a given class. These Archetypes change everything from the character’s weapon, elemental strengths/weaknesses, and even bonuses to core stats, both positive and negative. If you want to run a team of four Mages or Gunners in the back row, that’s entirely up to you. Each character levels up a given Archetype independently, and it’s almost always worth it to pick up as many levels as possible, as nearly every skill acquired in a given Archetype can be carried forward into another. This feeds into the Follower system, with advanced ranks of each Archetype being unlockable and increasing the number of skills that can be carried forward into a given class.

If there’s one negative aspect to the Archetype system, it’s that it feels largely in line with the same trappings of characters in Final Fantasy VII. By giving every party member the same tools, it homogenizes the party with the only real difference between characters being their innate stats and growth. Given Archetypes dictate what type of weapon a given character can wield, that further reduces how much agency players have in creating distinctly different characters. As such, it comes down to the individual’s proclivity for role-playing and pushing characters into certain roles. If you want to turn the elven knight Hulkenberg into a glass cannon mage or give the main character a massive two-handed axe, that’s entirely your own story to write in Metaphor: ReFantazio. 

No matter how much I engaged with the core fundamentals of Metaphor: ReFantazio, I couldn’t escape the feeling that this was largely Persona 6 by another name rather than some new IP that could stand on its own merits. That isn’t to say that Hashino’s team hasn’t created another stylish JRPG with broad appeal, but the premise that Metaphor: ReFantazio is a brand-new fantasy is dead. If the Persona series left you wanting more, Metaphor: ReFantazio certainly is a tale worth experiencing for yourself.

Reviewed on PS5 (code provided by the publisher).

Metaphor: ReFantazio

Those who harbor an innate distaste for the social systems and time limits of modern Persona titles will find no solace here, but those who are willing to embrace what very well could be the sixth Persona title in all but name alone will experience one of the most stylish Japanese roleplaying games of 2024.

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