I Can’t Believe it’s Not Persona: Metaphor: ReFantazio First Impressions

Welcome back to another Demo Dive. Today I’ll be taking a look at Metaphor: ReFantazio, which came out during this year’s Broketober.

Now, I already know what some of you are thinking: why on Earth would I check out an Atlus game. I have a documented history of not enjoying this style of game. There is no shortage of Frosty Canucks Podcast episodes where I, or my co-host Jason said as much. Heck, we even turned it into a running joke.

Well, the answer to that question is fairly straightforward: going outside of my comfort zone is how I find new games that I enjoy playing. If I only ever stuck to things I knew I’d like then I never would have played Divinity: Original Sin. And if I hadn’t played Divinity then I wouldn’t have given other RPGs like Disco Elysium, Wildermyth, or Baldur’s Gate 3 a shot. Those games are amongst some of my favorites, and I think it’d have been a shame if I’d never had the opportunity to play any of them because I was too set in my ways.

As such, Metaphor: ReFantazio is the latest trek outside my comfort zone. It’s not like I have no experience with Eastern-style RPGs, but many facets of their design don’t tend to gel too well with me. Or, at the very least, historically that has been the case.

Regardless, I’ve been hearing a lot of great things about Metaphor over the past few months which is what made me curious about it. I also recently read an article by Ian over on Adventure Rules about how multi-classing works in Metaphor. What Ian described sounds very much up my alley, so perhaps a mix of familiar elements will help to bridge the gap with the other facets of the game.

It’s also worth noting that Metaphor: ReFantazio doesn’t have any of the baggage of Persona, nor Persona’s somewhat insufferable fanbase. I don’t feel like I need to elaborate on what I mean by that. If you know then you know.

Either way, let’s get into what I actually thought after spending 10 hours playing through the entirety of Metaphor: ReFantazio’s demo.

When it comes to demos, one of my biggest pain points for me relates to length. Specifically, I find it really frustrating when a demo doesn’t show me what’s unique, or interesting about the game in question within the first 15 to 30 minutes. That’s basically the whole first impression window, so, I’d argue, it’s very important to leave a lasting impression. Preferably a positive one.

With respect to that, Metaphor’s demo opens explosively. Atlus immediately hits you with a fully animated cutscene where you watch the main villain murder the king, and then he tries to convince an entire room of the deceased king’s advisors that he should be the new king. It’s outlandishly melodramatic, but I’m here for it. This scene was exactly what a demo like this needed. The cutscene established a narrative hook that Atlus could use to string me along through the next several hours until the narrative, and mechanical complexity of Metaphor could really start to settle into place. Without that hook, I’m not certain that I’d have made it past the second hour of the demo.

Speaking of animated cutscenes, I was really impressed with the frequency, and quality of the various cutscenes that were included in the demo. They were all done in the style of an Anime, which I wasn’t expecting since many games utilize in-engine cutscenes anymore. Plus they were just really damn good. No corners were cut, and no shots were recycled. Everything had the look of a production team of very talented artists having all of the time they needed to put forward their best work. It added a bit of texture to Metaphor’s narrative delivery that I found surprisingly affecting, and was novel to boot.

I suppose the only other thing I want to mention with regard to narrative is that I enjoyed what I saw of it thus far. Regicide is familiar ground, but that makes it no less valuable as a base from which to tell a story. I’m not sure that I totally understand the villain’s motivation yet, but the demo positions him as being a fairly bad dude. This provides just enough context to inform the player’s actions, and provides motivation for pushing forward to see what’s going to happen next.

With my opinions on the opening, and narrative out of the way, I think the next thing I wanted to touch on were the actual dungeons. This was the meat, and potatoes of Metaphor’s demo, which I honestly wasn’t expecting. I’m sure that’ll get some laughs from long-standing fans of Atlus’ other games though.

Either way, I didn’t think much of the 2 tutorial dungeons. They were fairly straightforward, and not too exciting to actually explore. I’m not going to hold that against the demo though because both were introducing me to different facets of the game. There’s no sense overwhelming the player right out the game as that’d make for a less enjoyable demo.

Now, the third dungeon, which is the Metaphor’s first proper dungeon, is a different story entirely. That was really cool.

First I’d like to focus on the actual layout of the dungeon. It was a sprawling maze with several dead-ends, but I liked how some of those had treasure, or optional harder fights. That felt like it added a bit of risk-reward to exploration, and, regardless of the outcome, I felt some kind of reward for taking the time to thoroughly comb through the dungeon.

The dungeon also circles back around on itself to important areas, which makes exploring frictionless. For example, there is a side-quest that you can do where you talk to a dying priest after “saving him” where your party is awarded with a key to a chest that you passed earlier in the dungeon. You can opt to turn around, and walk back to the chest, but if you continue pressing forward, you’ll simply unlock a shortcut back to that same area. That’s a little video game-y, but I really liked the convenience. Besides, Atlus’ dungeon designers architected the shortcut into the dungeon’s layout in a way that actually made sense given the context of what I was exploring.

Dungeons are also where I got my first proper feel for Metaphor’s combat. It uses a system that I’m going to lazily describe as adult Pokémon. Every character (even the enemies) have an attacking type, and some kind of weakness. Your goal is to figure out what an enemy’s weakness is, and to hit them with the appropriate attacking type. If you do, you’re awarded with bonus damage, and an additional action. This means that every fight is a positive feedback loop where successfully exploiting weaknesses leads to grand victories.

However, you’re subject to the same set of rules while enemies are attacking. As such, it isn’t just important to consider your spread of offensive attacking types – you also need to consider your defensive typing. Nothing is worse than watching a group of baddies score massive damage to your party because they managed to successfully exploit a weakness that you didn’t properly account for.

Much to my surprise, this rather volatile combat system made the act of playing through Metaphor’s turn-based combat a lot more palatable for me. Normally, I’m easily frustrated by bowling over enemy encounters that are little more than a bunch of punching bags. However, the fact that Metaphor’s baddies could just as easily blow through my entire party recontextualized the whole affair. I’m not just mowing through these baddies because they’re low-grade experience pinatas – I’m doing it because they’ll clap back just as hard. It’s a small bit of reframing, but it worked wonders for my overall enjoyment of the demo.

There’s also some light class building aspects on display in the demo, but you’re not given enough to really see the legs of this system. I’ll admit, I was a little disappointed by that. However, I saw a lot of potential from the few pieces that Metaphor’s demo leads with, alongside my existing knowledge from Ian’s article on the subject. As such, I’m optimistic that this facet of Metaphor will be exactly the kind of thing that I can go sicko mode on while playing through the full game.

Thus far I’ve focused almost exclusively on the positives of the demo. I’ll level with you, and say that all of this collectively was enough for me to actually buy the full game. I’ve continued to play Metaphor: ReFantazio, and I’ve continued to be delighted by all of the areas of the game that I’ve already outlined. The demo did a fantastic job of showcasing these elements.

However, there is one major area of the game where I feel Metaphor’s demo is a letdown: side activities. Players only really have access to a small handful of these within the demo, and you’re entirely locked out of the more narrative heavy companion quests that many folks feel define the narrative half of Metaphor’s gameplay loop.

In fairness, the demo only provided 3 in-game days for players to muck around with, and any activity that the player commits to takes up half of a day. This adds a lot of weight to how you decide to spend your time, but I feel the demo doesn’t offer enough for players to really sink their teeth into in this regard. You’re mostly stuck with fetch quests, and lore dumps from characters that aim to add texture and authenticity to Metaphor’s world. Neither of those things are really my cup of tea though.

Part of me gets that this restraint is so new players aren’t inundated with too many options, but I also feel like Atlus failed to put their best foot forward with regard to the side activities in the demo. Heck, even just having a bit of a twist during the one available fetch quest would have been nice, but instead it’s played completely straight.

Speaking of fetch quests, I think they’re made worse by how large Metaphor’s environments are. I understand that the main city, Grand Trad, is so big to sell the scale and size of the city, but I think there is way too much window dressing on display here. Even with faster movement options, it still takes quite a while to travel around to the few areas where the player can actually interact with things (mostly shops). Personally, I’d have preferred something a bit more compact in design.

Having said all of that, the negatives weren’t enough to outweigh the mountain of positives from Metaphor: ReFantazio’s demo. I grabbed the game during the Steam Autumn sale, and have continued playing through it. That first dungeon gets even more wild as you continue exploring it, which has been an absolute joy to play. I also finally unlocked the more meaningful side content, which has done wonders for improving my negative first impression of that side of the game from the demo’s content.

If you’re also on the fence about Metaphor: ReFantazio, the demo is still available to download and play. It takes about 10 hours to finish, and I think it mostly does a good job of showcasing what players can expect from the full game. Plus, progress carries over from the demo into the full game, so none of your time within the demo will be wasted.

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