Metaphor: ReFantazio preview – four hours fighting for freedom

After four hours, I felt I had barely scratched the surface of the game’s complex systems.

Metaphor: ReFantazio / Atlus

The gaming industry often feels very secretive about the process of development, which makes it difficult for players to know how good a game really is. You’ll see the occasional preview after a journalist has played 20-30 minutes, but those brief moments are specifically chosen to show off the best parts of the game. When Atlus invited me to try out the upcoming Metaphor: ReFantazio from the Persona team, I was in shock to find that I would have four hours with the game: two and a half hours from the start to play as much as I could manage, and a further one and a half hours to spend in its open world to do whatever I wanted. Even before I sat down to play, this showed huge amounts of confidence from the developers.

Metaphor: ReFantazio opens up with a gorgeous Ghibli-style animation with excellent English voice acting that introduces the inciting action for the plot. Louis, a high-ranking member of the army, murders the reigning King in order to make a play for the throne. Outside of the obvious treason, Louis has shown himself to be a reliable soldier and has earned the citizen’s popularity. If his plot isn’t uncovered then he could easily swing the vote in his favor.

Metaphor: ReFantazio / Atlus

This is where our protagonist comes in. Metaphor takes place in a world where three nations are inhabited by eight tribes, and our boy is one of the last Elda, a tribe that was apparently wiped out in a genocidal war. He journeys with his pixie partner Gallica – the brains of the operation – to Euchronia, with the aim of infiltrating the army and meeting up with one of Gallica’s contacts there. Members of the team are allies of the King’s only son, who has been inflicted with a curse so terrible he is unable to take the throne. The team has a mission: unmask Louis’ plot, heal the Prince, and win the ensuing election in his name.

From gameplay trailers, people have been expecting Metaphor to play exactly like the Persona games, but the fantastical semi-medieval setting isn’t the only thing different from the high school simulation series. Dungeon-crawling and social links make up a large part of Metaphor, but it is not a clear-cut day/night cycle like you might expect. It can take days to arrive at certain dungeons, and during this time you can build your stats and strategize with your teammates, or you might even get ambushed by a political opponent.

Metaphor: ReFantazio / Atlus

Overall, time is far less structured. There are time limits by which you have to complete important plot points, but days may fly by in an instant or stretch out by meeting new characters, forging bonds with your followers, or accepting missions from different citizens. The Persona series makes each activity take up a single time slot, no matter how long this would take in real life, whereas Metaphor includes activities that will take up more or less than one. You can also combine activities such as learning new skills and forging relationships.

Dungeons and battles also have major differences from the Persona games. Rather than recruiting monsters to battle with, you instead learn different fighting styles – known as archetypes – from the people you befriend. One might show you how to use your brute strength, while another can teach you the art of pickpocketing. Our nameless protagonist isn’t the only one who is able to change archetypes, and changing up characters’ archetypes will give you more skills and combos you can use in battles. Metaphor’s world is vast, and filled with dungeons and combat. Despite this each dungeon is hand-crafted – a far cry from the 200+ procedurally generated floors in Persona 3’s Tartarus – meaning each has different puzzles, pitfalls, and treasures to find.

Metaphor: ReFantazio / Atlus

Allowing journalists to spend four hours playing a game with very few restrictions two months before its release shows huge amounts of confidence, and from playing it I can tell you that this confidence is not misplaced. Despite spending such a long time with Metaphor: ReFantazio, I felt that I had barely scratched the surface of the game’s complex interwoven systems. Four hours flew by, and I can already see myself being completely obsessed with yet another Atlus RPG.