Muveeer Metaphor: ReFantazio Review

Fans of Japanese games must be the most undemanding people on Earth. Players and critics praising the story, characters, gameplay, and visuals seriously? Was Pac-Man the last game you played? After spending around twenty hours in the game, I checked out some reviews on Metacritic, and they pretty much boiled down to this: "Best RPG of the decade, a stunning political fantasy with an engaging plot, perfectly written characters, an unmatched combat system, and a rich, dynamic world with mind-blowing visuals; a level of quality that won’t be reached again anytime soon, a dream game unlike anything else," etc. I’m speechless (well, not really). The Plot So, the villain kills the king of some fantasy kingdom, leaving the country without a ruler or a legit heir since the king’s only son is lying in a coma, cursed by dark magic. Naturally, the throne is up for grabs by the same guy who offed the king, but the dead king shows up as a giant stone golem and announces that the next ruler will be the one who does the most noble deeds by a certain deadline, earning the love of the people. The game’s goal is to help the main character, a buddy of the cursed prince, win the people's favor in time. Okay, fine, why not. I can handle some schizoid Japanese decadence; no one was expecting grounded ultra-realism here (except for game journalists who somehow found it, judging by their 10/10 reviews praising the “intriguing, twist-filled political plot”). The way it’s presented leaves me feeling a bit confused. It’s like watching a toddler’s educational cartoon. The way the characters talk, act, and their motivations are so mind-numbingly stupid, primitive, and illogical that it’s baffling. Yet the game’s lore and setting seem to hint that this isn’t meant for kids: the setting describes a pretty brutal society run by racial and social prejudices, segregation, and class inequality. There are detailed scenes of murder, blood, and violence; the main character’s first arrival in the city is greeted by a public execution of some low-caste dude, gallows are everywhere, and in the poorer parts of town, unburied corpses of the destitute litter the streets—basically, it’s not exactly cutesy. But despite all that... The characters seem to have only one neural pathway, which just loops their personality description over and over. For instance, the first party member we meet, a low-ranking noble named Stroll. His family died defending a village from monsters while helping the locals. Stroll sees it as his noble duty to protect the weak, and he reminds us of this in literally every single line he says: “I’m a noble, so I must defend the weak / It’s my duty as a noble to help those in need / You’re evil, and I’ll destroy you because I’m a noble who saves common folk / Oh, I’m gonna grab a bite, by the way, I’m a noble, and it’s my duty to help the weak.” Same goes for all the other NPCs. The main antagonist, Count Louis the regicide, for example, is super evil, and he makes sure to remind the player of this too, as if the game’s writers think we’re complete idiots. Count Louis acts like a full-blown maniacal sociopath—he publicly confesses to killing the king, sets off a terrorist attack, commits genocide in the regions he hypothetically plans to rule, and even terrorizes and kills his own supporters to turn them into undead soldiers—why though? The late king made it clear: the throne goes to the one most loved by the people. Couldn’t they have written this character with just a shred of subtlety? Even Pixar movies manage that. In short, the drama is on Zelda’s level, except in Zelda, the story and narrative are just filler while the gameplay is front and center, but in Metaphor, we’re stuck watching cutscenes (anime) and reading dialogues for most of the time spent outside of dungeons. Lore Let me say a few words about the lore because, surprisingly, it’s actually pretty good. There’s an in-game encyclopedia, and reading through it is almost more fun than anything else in the game. The encyclopedia does a meticulous job describing the various races, their social standing in society, the privileges their origins grant them, as well as politics, religion, geography, architecture, monsters (the most terrifying of which are referred to as “people”—there doesn’t seem to be a human race in the sense we’re used to). Too bad the guy who wrote the encyclopedia didn’t team up with the dialogue writer. Combat and Dungeons Persona, as is. Huge, copy-paste labyrinths stretching for miles, where we wander until our mana runs out, go back to the city to chill, and then wander some more. Visually, the dungeons look like something out of Castlevania: Curse of Darkness from 2007—empty, devoid of interior details or architectural sense, absurdly oversized hallways filled with monsters and chests full of junk. In Persona, this kind of lameness was somewhat forgivable since it’s all part of a dog’s dream, a parallel world, and just general craziness, but in Metaphor, we’re supposed to believe that actual medieval architects designed these places. Again, I kinda know what to expect from this genre—most JRPGs have a certain illogical gigantism when it comes to level design, and I’m not looking for something on par with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but what Metaphor offers is just lazy. Without a quest marker, wandering around the dungeons becomes a chore. The corridors all look the same, so it’s super easy to get lost. On top of that, the already annoying walking is made worse by the fact that monsters respawn every 20 seconds—turn a corner, realize it’s a dead end, come back, and bam, there’s a whole squad of goblins you just killed waiting for you again. The devs did manage to squeeze out one revolutionary mechanic: now you can kill low-level enemies in real time without having to go through load screens, moves, or stat calculations every time. It looks awful though, nothing remotely smooth or cool about the combat, but at least it gets the job done by cutting out some of the typical Atlus grind. The main turn-based combat system is the same as in Persona, which means it’s pretty decent. Boss fights are enjoyable. The leveling and build mechanics haven’t changed; instead of Personas, we now have “archetypes,” which are essentially the same as Personas—magical transformers that symbolically reflect the hero’s personality: Knight, Seeker, Healer, etc., each with its own function (healer, mage, support, etc.). Archetypes can work in synergy with other archetypes, boosting their abilities by teaming up with the party members’ archetypes. Archetypes aren’t locked to specific characters and can be assigned to your team however you like in the local version of the Velvet Room. Boss fights usually require specific tactics and gear, so the combat system is still solid, though there’s no real progress compared to Persona City and Social Life The city, unlike the dungeons, looks somewhat acceptable—especially when you compare it to everything else outside of its boundaries. At least there are a few benches and the occasional NPC hanging out in the corners, which is something, I guess. Just like in Persona, between clearing dungeons, you have to build social links that help level up your archetypes and push the story forward. They’ve literally copied the system exactly, not even bothering to come up with anything new, other than the elf ears on the characters. You get a short cutscene of cooking, another one of sitting on a bench, and then you read through some empty dialogue (most of the text isn't even voiced). Then you level up your "social stats" a.k.a. “royal qualities” like benevolence, eloquence, etc. Rinse and repeat about a million times. There are side quests, but the only good thing about them is there aren’t too many. No need to go into detail; it's your standard JRPG “fetch me something.” You’ve also got monster-hunting quests with better rewards and boss fights. But before that, of course, you’ve got to grind through another dungeon, and some of the side dungeons don’t even have fast-travel rooms—those special "rest points" where you can save or exit and pick up where you left off. For anyone who hasn’t played previous Atlus games: pretty much all attacks, heals, and other archetype/persona abilities use up mana (“MP”). You can restore it with consumable items (which are hard to come by), or by resting, which means heading back to the city. If a dungeon doesn’t have a "rest room," you’ll be starting that dungeon all over again. So, by the time you get to the boss, you’re basically out of MP, and that means you have no chance of winning. This forces you to either skip all the enemies on your way to the boss so you can save your resources, or grind like crazy to be over-leveled, so regular mobs just die instantly from basic attacks and don’t drain your precious MP. Game design we deserve, right? In the city, you’re farming social stats, doing side quests, taking on monster contracts, and visiting shops to stock up on consumables and gear. Gear, of course, is just numbers on the equipment screen; Japanese devs still haven’t figured out how to visually show armor and other gear on the character’s model after 30 years of the genre being in 3D. Music Absolute banger, the one undeniably good part of the game. Graphics Awful. And I don’t mean the art style—I mean from a technical standpoint, the game looks and feels like a relic from the PS3 era. Releasing something like this in 2024 should be embarrassing, even for an indie studio. Everything is just blurred-out textures with no detail, empty spaces, hero animations that look like they’re from the early 2000s, back when characters couldn’t even move in full 360 degrees. So, the MC can only run forward, backward, right, and left at perfect angles. Don’t even get me started on the physics—there literally aren’t any. All the cutscenes are anime-style drawings because I’m pretty sure the game engine can’t even handle any animations besides idle (when the character is standing still and doing something small) or basic walking/running. Even the camera can’t move normally. All the in-engine cutscenes look like this: a character sits and says something, lies down, sits at a table, reads a book, or eats while the camera stays static, and the character doesn’t leave that one spot. About 70% of the dialogues aren’t voiced. Instead of speech, the character just goes like, "Oh! Wow!" and then you read a wall of text. If they need to show an action, but can’t be bothered to animate it, here’s what you get. For example, there was this moment (in a main story quest, mind you) where a girl asks you to find her friend among the hostages in a fortress under siege. When the heroes arrive, they find the friend dead. The girl (the quest-giver) walks into the room with a blank face, the screen fades to black, and a message appears saying: “The girl hugs her dead friend and cries.” Then the screen brightens, and the girl is standing in the exact same spot with a blank face. And the loading screens, man. They’re everywhere. Start a conversation—loading screen. End the conversation—loading screen. Enter a fight—loading screen. Open a door—loading screen. Walk three steps down the street and turn the corner—long-a** loading screen. Move to another spot on the map outside the city—super long loading screen with an animation of a marker moving across the map. Verdict Metaphor: ReFantazio – A Long Journey of Disappointment Any Western game with this level of primitive graphics, this blatant exploitation of mechanics that have been outdated for decades, this utterly helpless narrative, and this ungodly poor optimization would be buried alive by critics. But for some reason, Japanese games manage to win awards and get sky-high ratings. I literally can’t understand how these gaming journalists assess quality. 10/10 because “I feel like it”? The counter-argument I always see is, “Well, it’s a JRPG,” as if that explains everything. As if Japanese RPGs are immune to objective scrutiny, and somehow you can’t apply the same quality standards to them that you would to the rest of the gaming industry. 1 = I didn't like it Pros: music, lore?, and the occasional decent boss fight