I have a confession to make: I never actually finished Metaphor: ReFantazio. If I’m being perfectly honest with myself, I’m not sure that I ever will. I thought I’d hit my stride with the game when I started playing through bits of it every day, which I wrote about last January. However, I completely fell off the wagon by April, and haven’t touched it since.

Well, okay that’s not entirely true. I booted the game up in December for a screenshot, and didn’t bother saving any of the progress I’d made before closing it.

You want to know the truly wild thing about all of this? I’ve almost finished Metaphor. According to a friend of mine, I’m less than 3 (in-game) weeks away from the game’s final conclusion. There’s something like a single mandatory dungeon, and maybe 2 boss fights before I can roll credits on my save file. That’s about 10 hours of gameplay? Maybe less? It’s certainly less time than I spend playing Guilty Gear Strive every week.

Despite all of this, I can’t bring myself to finish Metaphor. The thought of going back just…it makes my stomach turn. I just don’t want to do it.

However, that raises an interesting question: how did I get here? The last time I wrote about Metaphor, I noted that I was having fun with it by taking it at a languid pace. Obviously, something must’ve changed between then, and now if I’m refusing to even boot the game up.

Well, I can tell you exactly what changed, but I need to get into story spoilers to do that. There’s a very specific moment where Metaphor’s story becomes so profoundly stupid that my interest in seeing the remainder of said story was catapulted into another solar system. It’s the sort of thing where if I was reading a book, I’d have closed the book up tight, and returned it to the shelf.

What could possibly be so stupid?

The “death” of the main antagonist.

As a bit of background information, your party of would-be kingmakers spends most of Metaphor’s second act trying to figure out a way to kill Louis, the game’s primary antagonist. He, like all of the other participants in the Royal Tournament, are protected by a magical barrier that prevents any of them from being assassinated. Ergo, killing him presents quite a conundrum for our party to overcome.

Eventually, we learn that a legendary magical spear can pierce the barrier during our quest to retrieve said spear. Then our party lays the groundwork to lure Louis into a direct confrontation with the intention of using the legendary artifact to end his life.

So far, no issues. 

I’m perfectly okay with the story using a magical macguffin to overcome another magical macguffin. The whole detour to retrieve the spear ends up fleshing out an entire segment of the game world’s culture, while providing context for several of the events that we previously witnessed. I think that’s a great value add that more than justifies a somewhat contrived plot point. Doubly so, since the developers also dole out another party member during our spear retrieving escapades. 

Either way, spear in hand, we challenge Louis. It doesn’t go exactly to plan, but we ultimately prove victorious when we stab him through the chest. Huzzah!

Metaphor isn’t satisfied with a simple stabbing however, so Louis also falls through the glass ceiling of an opera house. He drops 2 stories, maybe 3, before landing flat, dead as a rock, before an understandably shocked audience.

Except he doesn’t actually die, and I’m a big dumb idiot for thinking that he did. In a few cutscenes, Louis will reappear, totally unharmed, and he’ll stab another contestant to death using the same magic spear that failed to kill him. Then he’ll challenge the player, and their party, to a final duel before swooping off in a menacing fashion.

I hate this shit. 

I could accept divine protection magic coming from what was basically a God, and the solution to counter said magic was some other form of divine magic. I’m totally okay with that.

My issue is that this man survived both being stabbed through the left side of his body, which is presumably where his heart is located, and a 30 foot fall. He died. Twice. There is no amount of disbelief that I can suspend to support anyone surviving that kind of treatment without divine intervention. Perhaps if he was magically suspended before crashing into the stage I could believe that he lived through the fall, but Louis crashes like a sack of potatoes. He’s clearly dead.

However, that’s not the case. Allegedly, he’s magically revived off-screen, and returns totally unmolested in a few cutscenes.

Exasperated raspberry noises

Look – I get it. There is no one else in Metaphor’s cast that can fill Louis’ shoes as the main antagonist. The writers spend the entire game trying to build up the corrupt church and its leader Forden as some kind of secondary antagonist, but they can’t hold a candle to Louis. He’s so obviously the central focus of the plot, and throwing him away in the second act would be…bold. Foolish even.

But let’s not pretend like this isn’t just a Shonen style fake-out. I have read this sequence of events across several manga. In fact, in some it happens multiple times. The villain pretends to die until they magically return in the following volume. It’s a trope as old as time.

While I won’t fault writers for relying on tropes, I do think that this one in particular does a massive disservice to Metaphor’s story. The whole sequence works as a grand bit of spectacle, but it feels a little bit silly. We’ve spent over 50 hours to this point examining discrimination, and systemic oppression before Louis returns from the grave like he’s some kind of Saturday morning cartoon villain. I’m sorry, but I can’t take this game seriously anymore after something like that.

Even just having to think about this again has left me totally exasperated. I had to watch both sets of cutscenes on Youtube to refresh my memory of the exact sequence of events, and I swear that gave me an aneurysm. The whole thing is so insipidly stupid.

Regardless, that is why I won’t finish Metaphor: ReFantazio. After the events of the second act, I am unconvinced that I will enjoy the story’s conclusion. As such, I’m not willing to slog through what will likely be the game’s most challenging dungeon, nor the final boss fight against Louis. I don’t find Metaphor that fun to play, and my trust has completely evaporated at this point.

Though, I do have to say there is something very freeing about admitting all of this. I’d originally intended to publish this back in February before I got sick. Obviously that didn’t happen. 

As such, I’ve had a month to sit on my feelings, and reflect. Honestly, I feel so much better not having this game hanging over me. There’s a palpable feeling of relief now that I no longer see it sitting in my Steam library, staring into the depths of my soul, waiting to be finished. 

Good bye, Metaphor! I enjoyed parts of you, but I have seldom felt such extreme whiplash while otherwise enjoying the story in a piece of media.

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