‘Metaphor: ReFantazio’ is Good, But It’s Missing Something
One of the first video games I remember finishing as an adult is Persona 3: FES, and though it took me about 90 hours – or nearly a year of my life, in terms of actual pacing. Years later, I think that Persona 3 is as definitive as even the Pokemon series for my JRPG history. Considering my later adoration for Persona 5 Royal and enjoyment of Persona 4 Golden, I can say that the Persona series is conclusively an essential gaming series in my personal canon. Atlus, as a developer, furthermore, with beloved titles like 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and Sega more generally with the Yakuza (Like a Dragon) series, is one of the reasons I still play video games so avidly today. It’s no surprise that Metaphor: ReFantazio, coupled with its near-perfect 94 Metacritic score, was a day-one purchase for me. After nearly 50 hours with Metaphor, however, either I am missing something or, as I fear, the game itself is.
Like everyone’s least favorite recommendation style, I suppose Metaphor: ReFantazio is that classic series of television that takes several seasons to finally “get good.” I’m reminded of the recent catastrophe of Final Fantasy XVI, which stormed out of the gate with a volcanic demo that tipped me over the fence between waiting for a sale and buying the game day-one. To that end, Metaphor’s demo was fantastic – and when I ran out of in-game time, I immediately bought the full game. Due to the nature of Metaphor’s and the Persona series’ design, you are still learning basic tutorials within combat nearly a dozen hours into the game. That sort of elongated unlock pathway promises not just dozens of hours of content, but a genuinely challenging and engaging mid-game that progresses in proportion to your desired skill ceiling.
The opening of Metaphor: ReFantazio is as familiar to a Persona fan as a tragic character death is to a Last of Us fan. Metaphor’s opening involves some prolonged stage-setting for magical and geopolitical elements, not to mention the first character your plucky protagonist befriends might as well just be a re-skinned Ryuji from Persona 5. Aside from the dreary music and setting, which we will soon attend to, nothing in Metaphor: ReFantazio feels out of place from the standard opening hours of any other Atlus game – for better or for worse. Consequently, nothing, aside from dismally drab fantasy dressing, stands out from those games as original, either.
Sure, in Metaphor, there is some intrigue regarding the explicitly fantasy-driven politics that challenge the protagonist to grow and assemble supporters. Sure, there is some interesting job-class variation to the standard Persona-combat formula that longtime fans will immediately and intuitively understand. And sure, the writing and the character archetypes are familiar enough to quickly bond with them. But all of this wears thin and results in shallowness. As a result of this shallowness, all of these game features are superficial, predictable, and ultimately uninspiring instead of what I’ve grown used to with my love for the Persona series. None of the specifics of Metaphor make a difference to what ReFantazio ultimately is, and that alone is dread-inducing when evaluating how I feel versus the critical consensus.
Combat is the biggest strength of Metaphor: ReFantazio, and is where the game spends most – or at least half – of its runtime, in the 50 hours I’ve played thus far. While the game presents an interesting spin on job classes, something rather traditional at this point for JRPGs as a genre, one of the highlights of Metaphor is the fresh air it breathes into an otherwise stale-growing Persona series formula. The map navigation and story beats in between bouts of combat are similarly familiar, with side quests and dialogue options gated off behind character relationships and your protagonist’s skill level in traits like eloquence and courage. By the time you reach the game’s final “big bad” – an obvious dupe that serves as a paper tiger for the inevitable god-dethroning acts to come – you will likely be no more skilled in combat and no more sympathetic to the characters than when you began, even though the stakes have been raised.
The synergy between combat and character relationships in the narrative is directly reminiscent of Persona 5 Royal, where advancing up the conversational ladder rewards you with extra stat bonuses and assets in combat. Even if, as I did, you find yourself skimming through generic character dialogue, Metaphor still successfully incentivizes you to beat the clock – the calendar-based system that segments how you spend your intermittent time between main story segments. The more streamlined you are with maximizing your time, the quicker Metaphor opens up to the player. This is not always interesting, but it is always worth it; that is, unless you are a sadomasochist like Colin Moriarty. (Sorry for that reference, it just has to be this way.)
Predictably, my favorite characters in Metaphor: ReFantazio are (almost) all women. One of your first companions, Eiselin Burchelli Meijal Hulkenberg (or “Hulkenberg” for short) is a powerful ally with a fierce sense of courage and loyalty. Her storyline is fraught with internal strife and concerns about honor, but she is lent a sense of soft humanity in comedic scenes like how she always openly drools about food that disgusts the other characters, lending her rugged facade endearing edges. Euphausia “Eupha” Etoreika joins your party towards the very end of the story’s opening act involving a plot to kill Louis. Her mixture of purehearted naivety provides an interesting contrast to the battle-hardened core group of protagonists. Her role as the Devil summoner is also quite unique in that, compared to other igniter-bearing magic users, Eupha can dredge up demonic spirits to engage in combat, something for which I’ve always had a soft spot in video games, going back to my conjuration days in Skyrim.
Continuing the thread of my favorite characters, Gallica, your Morgana/Teddy equivalent for Metaphor, is both a quirky and helpful fairy companion. Though I never found Ocarina of Time’s infamous Navi to be as grating and unbearable as my gaming peers, I’d still say Gallica never gets in the way or prevents your progress in a manner that could be construed as frustrating. Overall, I find Gallica to be a true joy as a companion – and when given the option of which character to spend time with, I always select Gallica if the option is available. And though he is not a woman, or really even a human, Heismay Noctule, an anthropomorphic bat, is a surprising delight to keep in my active party both during battle and in intimate character moments. Unlike the remaining cast of characters, I think Heismay’s arc is by far the best written. His story about the loss of his child and the lifelong guilt he has internally battled in the wake of grief is one of the singular moments in Metaphor that made me feel something, almost bringing me to tears. It may be a stretch, but I see Heismay as the Frog equivalent from Chrono Trigger, one of my favorite JRPGs of all time – he’s just badass to keep around.
Finally, regarding characters, I want to make an honorable mention of the “followers” in the game – side-characters that flesh out your relationships, bonds, and skills in other aspects of the game. I think first and foremost of Maria Alces, a precocious young girl who loses her father near the beginning of Metaphor: ReFantazio. In the same way that Nanako from Persona 4 Golden struck me as an incredibly sweet and wholesome character that, despite my dislike of children, always kept me smiling and “d’aww”-ing against my will, I feel a vicarious maternal protection for Maria and simply beam when she lights up the room with her happiness and determination. Her caregiver and mother figure, Fabienne, is another favorite.
I’d be remiss to avoid the fact that Metaphor: ReFantazio features the species of characters, known as tribes: the Clemar, Roussainte, Rhoag, Ishkia, Nidia, Paripus, Eugief, and the Mustari. Rather than turn this article into a Wiki page that differentiates the various characters, I’ll link this helpful breakdown from Sports Illustrated of all places. I mention the breakdown of species because Metaphor’s characters are not human, per se. In discussing the next two characters, I feel a need to make this disclaimer because some of these non-human characters are hot.
Fabienne, for instance, is introduced in the first playable area of Metaphor: ReFantazio, and immediately becomes useful to your party. In addition to reinforcing and shepherding along some key story beats, her role as Maria’s protector becomes that of an intermediary for your protagonist. Fabienne serves as an instructor for cooking, a mildly essential early-game skill that initially costs time (until you invest in Maria’s relationship). These qualities of empathy and party-usefulness are, despite her jaw-dropping attractiveness, the primary reasons why I instantly latched onto her more than playable party members during my first several hours in Grand Trad. The ears and tail are just a bonus, I suppose.
The final character that I found myself falling in love with over the course of Metaphor: ReFantazio is Brigitta Lycaon. No one who has been reading my work for the past near-decade will be surprised to learn that I am into strong and tough women, but that’s besides the point – Brigitta is the first “follower” in Metaphor that I feel has a true arc to her writing. Brigitta is a battle-hardened woman with a ruthless penchant to distrust until proven otherwise. Call it a tsundere archetype or otherwise, but Brigitta does not lead with welcome and acceptance – it takes repeated and stubborn proof for her to open up, soften, and listen to your character. Nevertheless, I find her to be my favorite character in the game and frankly wish she became a party member at some point. (And since I went out of my way in the previous paragraph, suffice it to say she is the single hottest character in all of Metaphor.)
Having gone out of my way to praise the strongest elements of Metaphor: ReFantazio, namely, the combat and the character design and the occasional burst of refreshing writing, it’s time for the other shoe to drop. Compared to the Persona series, Metaphor: ReFantazio holds but a dwindling candle up to the beaming masterpieces of the series from which it was spun off. Everything, between the individual character relationships and the major villain redemption arcs and the incessant music choices, simply fails to conjure the feelings of closeness and intrinsic motivation that every game between Persona 3 and Royal achieved. I would be understating the case if I said I was underwhelmed; I’m dismayed at how this game so successfully trades in the raw mechanics of my beloved Persona franchise and yet learns virtually no meaningful lessons from what made it feel so nostalgic and special.
If we take the game’s first major finale, the confrontation with Louis, as an example, he is a hollow facsimile of a character who doesn’t even attempt to evolve – to the point where you wonder if that static nature is intentional. From the cutscene that plays every time you launch Metaphor to the 50-hours-in gauntlet throw where he challenges you to a one-on-one duel, the only potentially surprising thing about Louis is how he survives his assassination. But even then, it’s not a surprise, because the game can’t help but drop cryptic hints about some elite Illuminati-level secret counsel of characters who plot, in the final moments before Louis’ demise, to protect themselves.
Innately, I do not think JRPGs are exhausting. I just want them to do more than what is boring and transparently predictable. With such a strong lineage of game design behind it, I see why some reviewers are tempted to describe Metaphor as a masterpiece: the animated menus, the blend between anime cutscene and in-game cutscenes, the snappy and responsive combat with its branching job classes. At other times, and especially in terms of both writing and pacing, the game feels amateur, assuming I will care about the “best friend” archetype or the “noble warrior” archetype. In reality, Metaphor wastes its time more than a Persona game ever did. I find it impossible to divorce my expectations from the critical reception to the game; from that imperfect comparison, I am left with the raw ore of Metaphor, which, devoid of that comparative context, is about as appealing as a character who you forgot to update the equipment of when switching their channelled archetypes.
Before contending with actual review scores, I want to briefly summarize and emphasize why Metaphor does not, to me, feel like the masterpiece it has been claimed as.
As a game, Metaphor: ReFantazio fails to consistently innovate on the well-established writing tropes of the acclaimed Persona series, does little to challenge players mechanically, and flat-out misses the mark with basic aesthetics. Because of reimagined features to Metaphor’s aesthetics, like removing the game from modern life, reducing the musical variety and acid-jazz liveliness to more melancholic refrains, and plodding out an easy-to-anticipate and standard JRPG plot that takes 50 hours to manage anything remotely surprising, Metaphor fails to earn its reputation as one of the best games of 2024. Unlike Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, another relative disappointment from 2024, Metaphor is not a terribly overscoped game, it just never does anything fun or interesting in a way that could be described as meaningful. The best parts of Metaphor consist entirely of things other games have done before, and better.
Obviously, critics are entitled to review games in whatever manner they choose. I take issue, however, with the unanimity with which critics have enshrined Metaphor amongst other game-of-the-year titles like Astro Bot and Shadow of the Erdtree. While both games similarly iterate on previous masterpiece-discussed games, neither is an entirely new IP, so these three games share that iterative lineage in common. With Metaphor, in particular, the question is what this specific game adds to the already-successful Persona formula that injects itself with such gusto. Metaphor pantomimes the basically perfect Persona 5, but when characters and music and plot beats are not simply unsurprising but bland, and the alterations to combat are limited in their inventiveness – that disconnect makes me deeply question the 94 Metacritic score that players tout in discussion of why Metaphor is their game of the year choice.
One word that I notice permeating the top reviews on Opencritic for Metaphor is “beautiful.” That is, whether story, intrigue, art, or political incisiveness, reviewers seem to find great beauty in the game that Metaphor offers. I’m not saying Metaphor fails to be beautiful, I just don’t think raw beauty justifies a 90-something on the scoreboard.
Something I find alienating from popular reviews of Metaphor: ReFantazio is how these reviews discuss politics and religion as though the Persona games have previously been a stranger to such discussions. GameSpot’s Jessica Cogswell writes, “Metaphor: ReFantazio is acutely aware of the role religion and politics play in society, and is more than willing to have conversations some would rather avoid.” Such a claim makes me wonder about this writer’s experience with past Persona entries, for they are little without their deeply entrenched discussions of fanaticism, to bundle the topics together. While I don’t disagree with the entirety of Cogswell’s review, I think discussing any Atlus game in a vacuum absent these dual horns of politics and religion is to miss the point entirely.
Michael Higham, friend of my podcast and editor at IGN, similarly writes of the role video game stories have in our lives and the questions they make us ask, outside of the games themselves: “Metaphor: ReFantazio ponders these questions in both concrete and abstract ways through the lens of a politically charged fantasy RPG, further proving that there’s real power in the stories games can tell.” Like Cogswell, Higham argues that Metaphor’s story is a resounding success in that it takes an empathetic lens to a thoroughly disenfranchised world, offering us respite and hope for the lessons we can learn and apply in our own world. Again, this does not match my experience playing Metaphor: ReFantazio – or really the Persona games in general. Even when handled poorly, like Persona 4 Golden’s awful depictions of trans and queer identities, the games broadly lead with empathy and real-world implications.
Instead, I come closest to agreeing with Rock Paper Shotgun’s Ed Thorn when saying that “there’s a part of me that feels like [Metaphor is] missing something that’ll leave it less ingrained in the memory than Persona 5 once its final chapter has closed.” However well refined the mechanics, however beautifully animated the characters, however interlocking the calendar-system of the game – I didn’t feel the emptiness that I feel while playing Metaphor: ReFantazio when I was playing Persona 5 Royal, or any of the Persona games for that matter. I will, at best, remember some visuals and that one really great music track involving chaotic chanting, but aside from that, Metaphor: ReFantazio leaves less of an impression than games I spent a tenth of the time on this year.
I take no issue with reviewers who have enjoyed Metaphor: ReFantazio more than I have; such glowing praise is obviously what I wished to feel when purchasing the full game. It’s just that, no matter how good Metaphor is in certain parts, the overall package is missing something. I’ve heard from countless friends and, obviously, countless reviewers, about how good Metaphor eventually gets. But dozens of hours into it, I’m still wondering whether Metaphor’s review aggregate has more to do with retroactively crowning Persona 5 Royal instead of speaking to the merits of this sometimes soulless game.
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