When I first started writing game reviews I made a self-imposed rule to only write reviews for games I completed and to only be playing one single-player game at a time but these rules seriously failed to consider the length of Atlus's newest IP Metaphor ReFantazio. I knew the game was going to be a huge commitment but gave it a shot since it was nominated for game of the year in 2024 and after 75 hours I'm finally ready to share my thoughts.

The game is set in a fictional world with european fantasy elements where the population is divided into 8 races that don't really get along. The premise of the game is that you're friends with the prince who's basically half-dead from a curse following an assassination attempt. Years later the actual King is killed by a guy called Louis and a post-death spell kick-starts a country wide election where the most popular person is crowned the next leader. The ultimate goal is to beat Louis who's currently number 1, to save your friend and make him the rightful King.

The core game loop shares many similarities to the Persona series like having a calendar based time-limit to complete dungeons and in between you are free to spend your days to improve social stats and progress companion stories.

The Presentation

The strongest aspect of the game is its visuals and presentation. The game has anime-styled graphics which I honestly thought would be hard to improve compared to a more realistic look but I was proven wrong. The art for character and environments are painted with a lot of detail that make them look gorgeous in every frame.

The menus and animation are loaded with style which make simple things like opening a spell menu really cool as you explode into a metal knight, which I'll get into below. It's really fun to wipe out your enemies with stylish attacks while the absolute orchestra of a combat theme goes hard in the background.

Combat

The combat is a very orthodox turn-based system with all the standard attack types and ailments you'd expect. The key system are press points and archetypes.

Press points are the amount of moves you (or the enemy) can do per turn are increased by hitting weaknesses and decreased when your attacks are negated in any way. Smart management of points can result in seriously long turns but enemies have access to the exact same system.

Archetypes are the special power your party awakens and each archetype allow you to cast a certain set of spells. It essentially functions as job system where you can inherit spells and learn archetypes that other characters have unlocked. I thought the fixed spell list was rather simplistic at first but the ability to mix and match spells from higher-tier archetypes opens up interesting combos and strategies as the game goes on. Towards the end you get to feel overpowered as you layer buffs and chain weaknesses to make damage number go beeg.

On normal difficulty there isn't much risk of dying to regular enemies so mana management is the limiting factor in dungeons. However there is a way to cheese mana recovery with a lot of time and patience which feels like a design flaw.

Bosses on the other hand are plagued with typical JRPG design like being health sponges and immune to most status ailments. This means that when you first face a boss, it's very possible to brick the fight until you experiment and discover a strategy that penetrates their gimmick. Since you can't switch archetypes mid-combat, there were several occasions I had to skip turns to intentionally 'give up' the fight so I could go back to edit my party.

It never felt necessary to grind which is really nice, if anything you're encouraged to avoid certain enemies where the mana consumption is higher than the exp gain to be worth killing. I grinded a bit on the last couple of days where I had nothing else to do but I'll mention that this is completely unnecessary since the game provides a farmable area in the very last dungeon if any archetypes aren't maxed.

I also like that there's no random encounters and the fact that there is a simple realtime combat system in the overworld which determine how you start the turn-based combat. Additionally you can straight up kill low level enemies with realtime attacks which streamlines the process of clearing out trivial enemies.

Pacing

By far the biggest problem of this game is the overall pacing. It takes over 10 hours for the world's longest introduction to lay out the premise after which you slog through the first couple of arcs where nothing of significance really happens. For me it took up to 35 hours until the story really starts to get interesting. At around 50 hours the game appears to approach the climax yet in reality there's another 20 hour grind before you can finally reach the ending.

The pacing issues trickle down to the day-to-day actions as well, there are just way too many repetitive interruptions in this game. Go through a door? An animation plays where you can't control your character. Open the map? Animation. A fight ends? Animation.

I said how the presentation was top notch but any sense of awe you experience from seeing a cool transition is gone after being forced to see it hundreds of times. I don't need a transition to tell me the date has changed every single day.

Story

The story is a very mainstream plot where you battle the evil antagonist to save the world country. It contains a lot of interesting revelations about the characters and world which kept my attention past the half-way mark.

The game also handles many interesting themes like race, class, religion and doesn't try to take a controversial position on it. They're packaged in digestible episodes that clearly lays its message out for the player to think about. I really liked some darker tones being explored in the companion storylines some of which were surprising for a CERO rating of C.

Despite the overarching plot being enjoyable all the way to the end, the delivery is kinda lacking. You have a very typical JRPG style delivery where every little detail has to be explained and nothing is left to the player's imagination. Say for example if you discover and read through some person's diary, your party members will very explicitly tell you what you are supposed to infer like you are three years old. I personally would've preferred a more hands-off approach where there were more areas of interpretation for the player.

Conclusion

Metaphor ReFantazio is a long JRPG with fun combat, unparalleled style and a satisfying plot but there are many road bumps and boring portions that make it difficult to recommend to people who aren't fans of Atlus's previous titles.

⭐⭐⭐/5