Metaphor: ReFantazio hands-on preview – fantasy persona-Steve Boxer-Entertainment – Metro

Metaphor: ReFantazio – Atlus votes for change (Atlus)

JRPG specialist Atlus attempts to outdo Persona, with a new high fantasy adventure that could become the developer’s magnum opus.

Atlus may be one of the best known purveyors of Japanese role-playing games but, like many publishers, most of its biggest franchises, such as Shin Megami Tensei and Persona, are now several decades old. That makes Metaphor: ReFantazio, a source of some excitement, as it’s a game which, while having a clear connection to their other works, in terms of gameplay and graphics, is a completely original IP. And we’ve already played four hours of it.

Metaphor: ReFantazio’s battle system is turn-based although, as we’ll describe later, it does contain some real-time action as well. As you would expect, it adopts anime style visuals, but it’s set in an imaginary, high fantasy world called the United Kingdom of Euchronia; those familiar with the oeuvre of Atlus will be aware that few of their previous games strayed beyond a virtual Tokyo.

According to producer Junichi Yoshizawa, the game represents the culmination of all their years’ experience making the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games, taking elements from those games but working them into an altogether more ambitious whole. The team spoke at length about how creating a whole new game world from scratch – as opposed to working on new game iterations in a well-worn environment – was challenging and enjoyable, requiring a vast amount of lore creation.

Intriguingly, director Katsura Hashino (via a recorded address) said that one of the key moments in the game’s development occurred when the theme of anxiety emerged, in the context of characters overcoming anxieties and realising their inner strengths – a theme that chimes loudly in the 21st century. Hashino also highlighted an unusual aspect of the game that could prove controversial for some (and definitely did for the American press present): your character will participate in an election across the game world, as a candidate to become Euchronia’s next king.

The first hands-on session, lasting two and a half hours, encompassed the very start of Metaphor: ReFantazio. As is inevitable for a Japanese role-player the early stages were composed principally of expositional cut scenes. But they did establish both a promising story arc and an interesting and seductive game world. Story-wise, Euchronia is in a form of limbo: the old, uniting king having just died – at the hand of the evil Louis, a much-lauded knight. Meanwhile, we saw how the king’s heir had been rendered comatose under a curse, also placed by Louis.

Invited to name our character, we learned that he had been the comatose prince’s friend, and was tasked with enlisting as a guardsman in Euchronia’s army, to get a message to one of the prince’s allies. You also learn that your character is the sole survivor of the massacre of his village and that his tribe, the Elda, are associated with powerful magic, and are ostracised and shunned by most others. Discrimination is clearly also a theme that Metaphor: ReFantazio sets out to explore.

Travelling with a fairy called Gallica, we set off for the capital GrandTrad, to fulfil our mission. Gallica, it turns out, is too small to participate in any battles but still has useful traits, such as the ability to sense magla, Metaphor: ReFantazio’s equivalent of mana. Unable to participate in combat until we had enlisted and acquired a device allowing us to wield magic, we had some early conversational encounters with other characters – creating a sense that the world of Euchronia is rich and cleverly populated. On enlisting, we met a character called Strohl, who would become the first member of our battle party.

Things really started to get going when we reached the northern fort, where we were supposed to be garrisoned, only to discover that whatever troops it contained had been slaughtered by a boss monster (slightly disconcertingly dubbed a ‘human’). Working our way up via some easier enemies, at the crucial stage in the boss battle we underwent a transformation into a fighting machine. This meant acquiring our first archetype, enabling us to launch powerful magic attacks and giving us the sort of stats necessary to take on more powerful enemies, along with a large upgrade tree.

After beating the boss, we hooked up with Grius, the soldier we had been sent to contact, who became the newest member of our battle group. Having determined to return to the capital via a shortcut through some mines, more of Metaphor: ReFantazio’s key systems revealed themselves. Soon Strohl also acquired an archetype, and the party was telepathically transported to a laboratory known as Akademia, in which an imprisoned character called the Seeker schooled us in our newfound powers.

Archetypes are similar to the job system from Final Fantasy, being class types that give access to different abilities such as elemental magic attacks, healing powers or massive physical attacks. The more you use them, the more you rank up, acquiring new combat options. We also found that our characters could learn archetypes owned by other party members – essentially buying new archetypes with magla.

Metaphor: ReFantazio – Hieronymus Bosch would be proud (Atlus)

Battling more difficult enemies involved finding what sort of attacks they were susceptible to, so the ability to swap archetypes soon proved handy, and will clearly become crucial later on in the game. The battle system itself is turn-based, but it’s fast and with plenty of depth, without descending into overcomplication. However, we found that when encountering lesser enemies we could often take them out hack ‘n’ slash fashion, without triggering turn-based battles.

The battle system should feel pretty familiar for Persona fans and comes across a perfectly modern, despite its turn-based nature. You can easily tinker with your (up to four strong) battle party by arranging them within rows, those at the front attract more attacks, meaning that it is handy to have someone in the party with a defensive archetype who can draw enemy fire.

Proceeding through the dungeon-like mines we encountered Captain Klinger, the bully of a soldier who had led our group of recruits to the fort, who pleasingly turned out to be a double-dealer in the pay of the evil Louis. Effectively a mini-boss, we dispatched him and he provided a nice taste of the intrigue and treachery that is rife in Euchronia.

The second phase of our hands-on moved us further into the game, to a point where it was really starting to get into its stride. By this stage, we had entered the race to be elected as the new king, adding a mechanism involving acquiring followers – by travelling the country, having fruitful conversations with people, and doing good deeds. Productive interactions with others increased various attributes (such as wisdom) crucial to competing in the race.

We took on one side quest to find a ring at an archaeological site, in the desert a day or so’s journey from our hub area. To reach it, we boarded what the game called a gauntlet runner, essentially a big fortified truck. There was plenty to do on the journey, from bonding with team members (again, bringing about rewards in terms of attributes) to engaging in a full-blown battle with a rival in the election race, who drew alongside in his gauntlet runner. Hilariously, he set out his political agenda, which involved punishing the young and rewarding the old. A good whipping later, he left suitably chastised.

At the archaeological site, we found a classic role-playing dungeon, in which enemies had to be dispatched, keys found, and puzzles solved to gain access to secret rooms. Atlus intimated that, despite the system that sees time passing in the game – which is designed to ensure that people have different playthrough experiences and to increase replayability – it is still likely to be a 60+ hour game.

We still had time to sample the next story mission, which turned out to be another, very elaborate, dungeon in a sewer area, inhabited by a huge and very powerful boss creature (which we had to use stealth to evade) and a group of enemies we were chasing. Catching them involved some quite elaborate puzzling, involving opening and shutting sluice gates, while swiftly dealing with groups of monsters.

Metaphor: ReFantazio – the game’s visuals are wonderful (Atlus)

Playing through four hours of Metaphor: ReFantazio left us feeling that it will more than live up to the legacy of Persona and Atlus’ other work. In fact, it may be their best game yet. It’s clearly an attempt to bring the Japanese role-playing genre more fully into the mainstream, and it felt like it had the depth of gameplay and personality to achieve that aim.

Plus, it looked fantastic, at times occupying Studio Ghibli territory in visual terms. It has real graphical style and great attention to detail; even the transition screens after battles are a joy to behold. We were only able to scratch the surface of the game’s election mechanics, but they seem intriguing, and the battle and archetype system demonstrated the requisite tactical depth demanded by fans.

Some will deride the turn-based battles as an anachronism, but despite its roots being very clear the game still felt more like a Western role-player than anything else Atlus has ever produced. Given the high fantasy setting, and mainstream pretensions, it provoked obvious comparisons with Final Fantasy 16, but Metaphor: ReFantazio’s game world, from the off, felt much more vibrant, alive and imbued with personality than that of Square Enix’s game.

Like the best role-playing games, it puts you in a world that is enticing and compelling to explore – some achievement since it had been crafted from scratch by a team mostly used only to recreating Tokyo. Of course, we couldn’t tell how well it will hang together as a whole, even after four hours of hands-on play, but it clearly has all the ingredients required to satisfy the most demanding of genre aficionados.

Formats: PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: £59.99
Publisher: Sega/Atlus
Developer: Studio Zero
Release Date: 11th October 2024
Age Rating: 16

Metaphor: ReFantazio – now that’s a boss (Atlus)

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