It always surprises me the extent in which people seem love and adore the Persona games, so much so that Persona 5 actually appears twice in the list of the ten best PS4 games of all time! However, despite the fanfare, popularity and critical-acclaim, long-time Persona director Katsura Hashino decided to step away from the franchise in order to create a brand new role-playing series from scratch. So you can say goodbye to the schools, clubs and shopping malls of modern-day Japan and hello to something far more fantastical, as Metaphor: Refantazio comes to PlayStation, Xbox and PC.
The game takes place in more of a medieval fantasy setting compared to Persona, beginning with our hero and his fairy companion travelling to the capital in order to foil a nefarious plot.
What begins as a straightforward albeit compelling tale of conspiracy and political espionage soon takes an absolutely bats**t turn, leading to a global contest to crown the next king, and a much more personal mission to save the only surviving royal from a deadly curse.
The main story beats are delivered via impressive anime cutscenes that immediately grab your attention and keep you on the hook throughout. Curious players looking to find out more about the world are rewarded with additional information through general dialogue, side quests and even when shopping in towns and villages. With themes that include organised religion, racism and class, there’s more to Metaphor ReFantazio than first meets the eye, and it’s definitely worth delving a little deeper into the lore.
The melodramatic narrative, surreal events and high stakes action is perfectly encapsulated by the game’s incredible soundtrack, including a god-tier battle theme that you’ll never get out of your head.
Unsurprisingly given the developer, but the monsters (particularly the human bosses) are grotesque and unsettling in the best possible way. Towns, cities and dungeons also look good on a whole, although there is some repetition in the bigger dungeons.
As for the action itself, Metaphor ReFantazio is centred around a finely balanced time-management system that works in perfect harmony with all of the different gameplay elements.
Similar to Persona, players are given a set number of days to complete different tasks, whether that’s fetching an item, clearing out a dungeon, or eliminating a specific monster/enemy. You’ll also have to complete a main mission that’s integral to the story.
While you can tackle these quests right away, it’s often more beneficial (and necessary) to break main missions down into smaller chunks, spending time levelling up, finding new gear and unlocking new fast-travel points. The latter is important, because the only way to completely heal magic and health is to use items which cost money, or head back to base which costs time.
You can make things easier by completing side quests, levelling up specific stats, unlocking new Archetypes (the game’s character class system), and by obtaining genuinely useful information about specific dungeons and enemies. Once again, however, this eats into your time.
With challenging combat, the inability to grind the same locations, the lack of time and scarcity of items, a ten day mission will suddenly go down to the wire.
This creates a sense of tension and high stakes that you simply don’t find in other role-playing games. It’s perfect.
While the important stuff like the combat system, gameplay loop, characters, story and music are all excellent, Metaphor ReFantazio could make some quality of life changes to really make things hum.
I’m not totally enamoured with the Equipment and Item menus, which I feel could be a little clearer when it comes to comparing stats, displaying health, showing status effects, and each character’s equipped items.
With each major location made up of multiple different areas, not to mention the amount of back-tracking required for completing quests, map icons could also be more clearly labelled.
Ultimately, however, these flaws are very minor in the overall scheme of things.
The overall balance and blending together of its different gameplay systems makes for an incredibly powerful and ultra-addictive role-playing game that you’ll happily play for 100 hours or more.
VERDICT: 4.5/5
