Atlus's latest led by a longtime director of SMT and Persona games builds on Persona’s beloved formula of calendars and social links, transposing it into an interesting fantasy setting while making many smart improvements. Compared to this year's great Persona 3 Reload, it shows the power of years of experience and care being put into refinement and tweaking of familiar concepts. I think you’ll struggle to find many more all-around solid RPGs released so far this decade.

Most notably, the game largely sidesteps my main issue with Personas 3-5, the pacing and repetitiveness. A lot of that extra momentum comes from the fact that you keep literally moving around a much larger map, with five major hub towns and a bunch of additional smaller locations. There’s also a really fun dynamic in the form of an election that your party is trying to disrupt, giving you a sense of exponential progress as you work your way to the top of the standings and run into a colorful set of rivals.

The final chapter does stretch things out too much and get more... grandiose in a way I don't think it needed to. It just won't end at a certain point, packing in about a million bosses and several fakeouts, and the story somewhat loses focus on what it's good at in favor of a more apocalyptic and scaled-up climax. Luckily, it sticks the landing with a nice epilogue, and even though there's a bit too much from a pacing perspective, it remained fun other than a somewhat tedious final boss fight.

Characters' side stories do a good job adding emotional weight to this story, which otherwise is defined by big ideas like democracy, power, and discrimination. It can be a bit heavy-handed with some of its real-life political themes, but that's not a bad thing given the storybook feel and the need for unsubtle reflection on tolerance in the “gamer” community. The game has not only an appealing party of allies, but also a genuinely excellent villain that it fits into a surprising amount of scenes.

Combat here is generally familiar, centered around exploiting enemy weaknesses and mitigating your own, managing buffs and debuffs, etc. Moving characters between the front and back row is a pretty interesting strategic element that maybe enemies should have exploited more, and pre-emptive attacks outside battle are maybe a bit too impactful in both directions—otherwise there’s really nothing I’d change about this snappy, challenging, and addictive combat.

Party management comes in the form of the Archetype job system. I love what this does for the game—easy to engage with, super flexible, and linked to other systems and the storytelling in smart ways. Jobs are not a new idea in the JRPG world, but they’re a reason why I want “Metaphor” or something similar to be a major focus for Atlus going forward. Equipment also adds just the right amount of extra complexity as rarer items let you equip a single spell or round out your team's attributes.

I expect a special extra layer of style from this considering its relation to the Persona series, and I think it delivers the right amount of that. The UI looks great, character designs and other art range from good to amazing, and the background music is also pretty good. It's less in-your-face about styyyle than Persona, but it makes sense for this game's vibe. Side dungeons repeat visual theming, but the actual towns and main dungeons feel pretty distinct, even if they aren't quite as memorable as I’d like.

Even if this is always going to be tied to a formula and outline of SMT and Persona, it does succeed at having its own flavor and ambitions beyond just combining existing formula + new setting. Really the key thing separating it in terms of quality is just consistency, fewer lulls and more forward momentum I guess. Its strong fundamentals executed with a high ceiling and floor of quality are enough to make it one of my favorite JRPGs of all time and a likely GOTY.

Metaphor: Refantazio is a pretty good game from Atlus, and if you've played Persona 5, P3 Reload, or some of the SMT games, you'll likely find this one to be very familiar. It's very difficult to talk about Metaphor without comparing it directly to Persona 5, because frankly, it does almost exactly the same things that Persona 5 does - in fact, maybe an uncomfortable amount.

TL;DR - Metaphor's story is far less profound than it leads on, and the gameplay ends up being more of the same of Persona 5, but it's still ultimately enjoyable for the most part, and can generally recommend it. My review is quite critical of the game, but I want to emphasize that it's built on a fairly strong foundation to start with.

Story

The story to Metaphor starts off extremely strong, with the former king's palace rising into the air, and declaring that the next king will be chosen by what's essentially popular vote across the kingdom. Your character, the protagonist, is working to stop the villain from winning the race and taking the throne, as well as finding a way to lift the curse on the rightful heir, the prince.

By laying out these mysteries and political intrigue, the story has hooks to pull you in immediately, unlike the slow pace of Persona 5. Getting a taste of this terrific villain from so early on makes the pacing much better. It settles into a similar pattern to P5 - new arc villain, new party member joins in the course of stopping them, move on to the next arc and do it again - but in Metaphor, you venture to a new village or city each time, and the change of scenery actually makes a large difference in keeping interest.

Metaphor has a similar system to Social Links, although they're much easier to manage in this game. I actually finished every single one before the end of the game - you not only get more time to finish links, but there's fewer and they're a little shorter than the Persona games many side characters you can befriend.

One thing I hope they eventually change is giving more of the side characters more time together. Early in the game, your first two party members will interact a fair amount, but by the time you have most of the party members, the game's dialogue devolves into each character saying one line of dialogue in every conversation. Every conversation sounds like:

A: "I think we should be careful going in." B: "Agreed, they could have an ambush setup for us." C: "But what if there isn't one? We can't afford to waste time." D: "That's a good point. Maybe we can scout ahead". (imagine this continuing on further)

I really would love more of the group interacting with one another, but the game ultimately revolves around the main character.

Spoilers following: However, ultimately, the story ends on a much weaker note. One trope in many SMT & Persona games is a chaotic villain that wants to plunge the world into a primordial, natural order, where the strong rule and the weak are killed, free of societal laws and rules. It turns into "we're stopping the villain" into "there's a worldwide apocalypse about to happen" in an identical way to the other games. The villain they set up throughout the rest of the game feels so much more intriguing and badass, and at the end, he's just a super evil guy.

The themes of the game are just beat over your head over and over, and I get the feeling that Metaphor really wanted to feel epic and inspiring, and instead came across to me as shallow. The amount of times the characters say "change is really possible!" and "don't give up on your dreams" is just a little too much. It also kind of stings where the game initially sets up this drama where anyone can be king, and then wow, it just magically ends up being the king's son. Who would've thought?

I really think if the game told a more character-based story, it would've ended up with a much stronger final product, because the villain, Count Louis, is so terrific, that it's a shame to see him reduced to just being a generic end-the-world guy.

Gameplay

Again, if you've played Persona 5, you'll be right at home. The gameplay is nearly identical, with a few small changes, the most notable being the Archetype system. Archetypes are like Personas, except once unlocked, anyone in your party can equip them. Initially, this is a really cool idea - in the first dungeon, you can make multiple members of your team Brawlers in order to exploit the right weaknesses of the enemies. So initially, it seems like you'll have this cool party building and experimentation and flexibility and---

None of it pans out. You see, as the characters level, their specialization in their stats becomes more exaggerated. By mid-game, running Hulkenberg, the tanky character with high endurance but low strength and agility stats, is useless as a Warrior or Brawler, so you'll almost always just be keeping characters in one or two lines of archetypes. Additionally, some of the archetypes have mind-boggling poor design that render them nearly useless. Why does the final Gunner archetype have only magic elemental attacks when it gives strength and agility??

Ultimately, the Archetype system just ends up being a skill tree. Want to get the strongest Knight class for Hulkenberg? You need to level the prior knight classes, and some of them have Mage classes as prerequisites, but Hulkenberg barely deals any damage anyway. Thankfully, the "social links" unlock a passive that gives EXP to party members you aren't using, and you get items that give XP to your archetypes so you don't need to grind as much, but some of the late game classes still take an absurd amount of XP.

I did all of the side content, did all of the main content, did a little extra grinding, and made an effort to kill every enemy in every area to ensure I was getting as much XP as I could, and even then it wasn't enough for some of the late game archetypes. I found it frustrating, to say the least. What you really want to do is look up the requirements for each character's late game archetypes so you don't waste time leveling stuff you don't need, though you'll still need a ton more XP.

Additionally, some late game fights really fall apart as bosses get 4-8 actions per round, and buffs and debuffs begin to turn into a joke. Many late game bosses can remove all of their debuffs, remove all of your buffs, buff themselves up, and then attack you with multiple AOE attacks in one round. It's very frustrating and tedious to fight through.

Anyways, this is a lot of complaining, but ultimately this doesn't ruin the game. The combat system works fine for the most part, but I'm disappointed that it doesn't do more.

Art, Graphics

Okay, now where I have much more praise is the strong art direction of Metaphor. Metaphor is incredibly colorful, and the different parts of the land that you travel to all have their distinctive style. The different cities all have similar activities and shops, but unique layouts and scenery that emphasize their own cultures within the world. There's also landmarks that you'll discover that also add to the sense of wonder that actually added a lot to the game - sometimes, they're crazy magical anomalies, and sometimes they're just really pretty pieces of scenery.

Much of the menus and artwork reference Da Vinci and Renaissance-era aesthetics that combine with a more fantastical perspective that end up hitting just right. If anything, Metaphor's aesthetics are truly distinct in a way that serves it very well.

Also, the models for this game are all totally new! All of the monsters and Archetypes are fresh, as opposed to how the SMT & Persona series reuse the same demons and monsters frequently, which is an incredibly welcome change. Many of the mutant monsters really hit this perfect tone of fantastical horror that suits the game perfectly.

The graphics on a technical level are mostly good. Environments look much less flat than Persona 3 Reload, which was on the same engine, but there are some other choices I didn't love. Thankfully you can now turn off motion blur, and there are PC mods to disable the somewhat ugly character outlines. The support for 144FPS and high-def resolutions are also appreciated! At times though, you will notice how poor the background environmental details are. Many of the pretty scenes in the game are just 2D images with 3D characters composited on them, and in modern games, that can sometimes really stand out as being low-fidelity.

Voice Acting, Music, Sound

The voice acting in this game is really terrific. Like, really goddamn good. The actors for Strohl and Louis in particular stand out in their performances, and many of the lines that they read just hit really well.

Shoji Meguro continues to demonstrate that he can make music of any style, ever, for any Atlus game he wants. The battle theme of this game is incredibly catchy and awesome sounding - Meguro always understands the assignment and this game is no exception. I will say, I found there were slightly fewer tracks that I found especially catchy, but I think it's because the game's music is generally less poppy and more epic sounding (and, much of it is in Esperanto). The sweeping choirs and full orchestra set the tone perfectly for what Metaphor is going for.

Conclusion

In retrospect, I know a lot of this review is really critical of Metaphor. I did enjoy the game, but as a simple matter-of-fact, if you played Persona 5 or P3R, this game is more of that without a lot of meaningful evolution, and a story that I've found to be somewhat clumsy at times. I would really like to see Atlus try to mix things up a little more in the future, as Metaphor just feels like a different coat of paint - albeit, the paint is awfully pretty.

80/100

Main takeaways for me from this:

Cons:

• Writing is extremely tedious and on the nose, bashes you over the head with the words like a child with a squeaky hammer
• Anything 3D looks like absolute ass (and I'm not just saying technically, I'm saying artistic direction wise)
• The calendar + daily routine system makes a ton of sense for Persona's "teenagers pretending while fighting monsters" settings, it makes no sense at all here. Extremely annoying to shuffle around places and use the runner within these constraints.
• Combat gets extremely repetitive and slow, with difficulty spikes at very few occasions that just makes it feel unbalanced.
• Having real-time combat as a preamble is atrocious, the difference between a fight being 1 turn, no thoughts, piss easy and a full wipe is getting lucky with the sword swinging and dodging. THIS ISN'T DARK SOULS ATLUS!
• Social links are extremely formulaic and disconnected from anything else in the story, making them forgettable filler with the same issues as the rest of the writing.
• You're just such a great little boy, yes you are, every character is gonna love you because look at you!!!
• If you are not gonna make the main character have a personality, Atlus, let them change gender ffs it's 2025. Why do people support this Director still.

Pros:

• Anything 2D is incredibly gorgeous, UI, 2d backgrounds, some textures... WHY NOT MAKE THE GAME FIXED CAMERA ANGLES SO IT CAN ALL LOOK LIKE THAT!?
• The asymmetrical benefits unlocking from social links are interesting and exciting, even if the context is forgettable.
• Music rules
• Some human designs are very fun
• I like Eupha and her summoner side mechanic getting items, wish it had a bit more fanfare

Major issues:

The game makes you think that you can freely build your characters. You are punished later on when the game reveals that you needed to build specific archetypes for each character. This made my long term planning completely pointless, and makes a really dynamic system needlessly simple.

Story

I came into this game expecting it to be truly incredible, given the universal aclaim. I think that this game has one of the weakest stories I've played in an atlus game. Class and race opression are beated over your head endlessly.

Gameplay

I have played P5, SMTV and SM:FE. This game combines all of those systems with a job system. Overall, it is very engaging to play with. Exceptional for someone new to the series, but very similar for me because I have played all three games.

The social gameplay is really reduce is quality from the persona games. Getting people up ranks feels ham fisted and lacks the characterisation and charm in the persona games, that told some very small but interesting vignettes.

Enjoyment

During the 50 hours I've played, I have started and finished 3 other games. This game has some really significant pacing issues, 2-3 hours story dumps interrupt the flow.

Pacing - Major issue

There have been weeks when I have played this game and it is just multiple sessions of cutscenes where you run 2 meters between each. This game has a massive problem with just dumping its story on you.

I imagine that the game reviewer and hardcore fan expereinces is very different from someone with limited time.

Graphics and Art

I am simultaneously impressed and disapointed. This game looks like persona 5, if not a little worse. The drawn art is stellar.

Music

Carries the entire experience. The amazing music is arguably the main reason to play atlus games.

I don't like Persona 5. That was the one red flag going into this game. I was cool with the dungeons and combat, but I hated Persona 5's social life sim sections. It all felt tedious with no payoff as I found most of the characters annoying, gross, or boring. After 50 hours, I couldn't take any more knowing the game was twice as long as that. Metaphor: ReFantazio is a vast improvement. Not only are the characters far better and even loveable, the activities to increase my virtues (similar to Persona 5's personality stats) had a storyline of their own making them worthwhile outside of building up my character. It's a richer, more engaging experience. Also, Metaphor provides more freedom in how I approach its different activities and quests. There's no fixed school life days and dungeon days. I can choose to make progress on the main quest dungeon, take on side quests, build up relationships with characters, or do virtue activities on any given day. It's a better paced game. No waiting forever to get to the action.

The story is for the "video games are not political" crowd. It tells a fantasy story to show the player that it's not just escapism. It's a space to discuss ideals to carry with you into the real world. The ideal is simple and obvious: all people should be treated equal no matter their birth, and it gives a thorough exploration of this through many stories over its 100+ hour playtime. It covers the struggles and horrors of everyday life to find a better way to live for yourself and for the people around you. It covers racism, classism, war, religion, grief, redemption, and what makes a good leader. There are many characters with different perspectives on life and how to run the Kingdom who sound similar to people you will see in the real world. There's even an "eat the rich" character which was pretty funny. All of them have storylines to play through to a clear conclusion. A detail of this I liked is the game gives the player opportunities to give responses in conversations with these characters, and it rewards them when they choose a compassionate dialogue option that shows they are paying attention. It encourages positive ways of engaging with people in real life. People are talking too crazy out here and need this training.

The combat borrows rules from Shin Megami Tensei V with how it handles turns, keeps the fixed party members of Persona 5, and adds a new system called Archetypes which is like having multiple personas for each party member to choose from. The game's enemies push the player to regularly switch up party composition requiring each character to train in multiple archetypes. It rewards study of characters, archetypes, strategy, and time spent training making for a great, rewarding combat system. There's also a bit of an action game element where I can attack an enemy outside of turn-based battle to initiate a fight where they start out stunned. If the enemy is a lower enough level than me, I can bypass a turn-based battle completely by killing them, and I still get all the rewards of the fight. I will still give the edge to SMTV's combat system as the Archetypes create a bit of a problem: I can't change the archetype of a character during battle. I have had times where none of my characters had the archetypes I needed equipped for a fight. To alleviate this problem, the game has informants I can pay for information on bosses and dungeons with recommendations for archetypes to use, but there are times where the game doesn't provide this. I'm left to waiting for the enemy to kill me, so I can edit my party and start over. But then, the game is too punishing about death. It sends me back to the start of a dungeon or even back multiple days. It's frustrating. They might have patched this though as I noticed the game started respawning me right in front of the enemy as I was getting close to the end of the game. Hopefully, future players don't have to deal with that. It's also a weak action game. The attacks are stiff, and it needs a lock-on. Attacking one enemy is fine, but it's a hassle when there are multiple enemies. It's not fun getting knocked around while waiting for my character to recover to attack again. It's much easier with a ranged archetype equipped allowing me to attack from a distance, but for most of the game, I wasn't using ranged archetypes on my main character.

This game was a pretty smooth experience for the most part, but they fucked that up at the end game. The final stretch gave me 30 days to prepare for the final boss. I used this time to max out all my relationships. I had time remaining to take on some side quests recommended to make sure my party is strong enough for the final boss. These side quests are dungeons that end with a boss fight. I started one and progressed through the dungeon without issue only to have my team wiped by the boss. I tried over and over again with multiple strategies, but it all ended the same. I looked online to figure out how strong I needed to be for the fight and the recommended level was 70. My party was level 55 to 59. This whole game I didn't have to grind. I now had to grind for hours. Not only my character level, but my archetype levels too. Even when my characters hit 70, I had to keep grinding for archetype experience. It really extended my time with the game in a way that pissed me off. The one good thing that came out of it was I could kill most enemies in the final dungeons without engaging in turn-based battle afterwards. All my talk about good pacing just thrown out the window.

This game is tackles big subjects and nails it. It's all really impressive. I didn't find myself as moved as I would expect to be though. This may have been due to playing this before and after the election leading me to be a bit more cynical. It also might be because Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Rise of the Ronin also tackled a lot of these subjects earlier this year, and they were great too. It's still worthy of applause regardless. It's a fantastic game, and a major step up for this developer who has now earned my respect.

Absolutely phenomenal journey this is !

90 hours to complete everything there is (thank god no tedious side quests like GOW)

Persona is my favorite series (Persona 4 de best ! ), and this new Atlus addition just blow me out of the water . i have high expectation, and expectation fulfilled.

I'll keep it short as usual

• Story - 8.5/10 (Plot twist left and right but within boundary )
• Graphic - 9/10 ( there are mix of in game animations and cutscenes !)
• Art and design - 10/10 ! The enemies designs and archtypes are sick !
• Soundtrack - 9/10 (i have no idea what they singing but what a banger)
• Combat - 9/10 ( Mix of action rpg and jrpg truly a delight ! save a lot of time with encounter and easy to farm exp)
• Character - 9/10 ( i love all my teammates !)
• Mechanics - 8/10 ( different then persona , but a welcome one specifically the archetypes)
• Voice Acting - 9/10 ( -1 due to MC intonations usually felt out of the scenes)
• Travel - 10/10 ( Fast movement speed, can teleport anywhere ! thank lord !)

Cons:

• I dont know why there have to be so many archtype , u end up using royal one anyway, and farming A-Exp very time consuming. Everyone can learn everything... im not digging it . Plus those join late wont hav time for others anyway. Also why the hell royal thief such pain in da ass to get lmao
• For final mission, i have like extra 8 days doing nothing coz i complete everything. cant jump straight to missions... so, i hv to go thru 8 days of doing nothing which is very waste of time.
• Coliseum kinda useless and too easy. rewards kinda meh. that 30 battles consecutively such a scam !
• i thought it kinda take too long for 100% completion ,also theres acheivements i think lock on new plus (difficulty). not gonna go through it again..im done

OVERALL : 9/10 from me !

4/5.

Played on PS5 - about 88 hours total.

My first Persona-style game.

Have to say that in terms of world-building, character work, writing - this is first in class for JRPG's. The people who made this game make it feel like they've been doing fantasy worlds for decades. The story itself is interesting with many great twists and turns, none of which felt contrived to me. For the first time in a while - I was actually keen to see what happens next.

The gameplay is cool too. I like the 'press-turn' system and complexity it adds to strategy. I played through on hard mode and it certainly felt unfair at times but also rewarding when I overcame obstacles. I am such a sucker for job systems where you 'inherit' abilities to other classes. It absolutely destroys me every time.

I have heard a lot of praise for this games pacing which strikes me as a little odd. It might be a relative thing to other Persona games but I felt that this game slowed to a crawl at times. The most prominent example to me was the Dragon Temple stretch (that dungeon is insanely long). I think this game could be happily scaled down to about 50-60 hours and not lose a lot in the process. Given the games reception I can confidently say this is a matter of personal preference.

Dope game though.