LCSnoogs Metaphor: ReFantazio Review

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. 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 messed 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 angered me. 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.