Trixxstrr Metaphor: ReFantazio Review

Finished Metaphor: ReFantazio last night. For the most part I thought this was really great. A big jrpg fantasy with great characters, story, areas and systems. I had bounced from Persona 5 after 10 hrs due to the characters there being annoying teenagers, so I was a little hesitant going in with it being another Atlus game, but this being more grounded is definitely my sweet spot. The class system was really cool with being able to share abilities between them after learning them, and progressing through the trees was satisfying. Also, the system of having battles stay in the overworld view and be quick kills if you were levelled higher than the enemies was super nice. All of the stories from all of your party characters you meet were nice and I enjoyed going through all the bonding with all of them. The game had a great art style and everything looked and felt great. The main story had some nice twists and was very compelling to progress through. I did have some problems with the difficulty for me though. Early on I dropped it down to Easy after struggling with some of the fights, and that was great for most of the game. I thought I was over leveled myself. I did all the side quests except for the 3 towers. All the bonds. I even did a bit of grinding on the crystals that spawned enemies that I could overworld kill, which I almost never do in a game, but because they were super quick I did some. So some of the dungeons near the end were only overworld kills and I did feel good going into the end. The end of the game the ending seemed too drawn out and I was feeling fatigued from going through a whole other area, and having the boss fight never actually be the end one for 3 times, but I felt good going in. But I guess I didn't have the right combo of build and strategy, and I hate having to look up something like that outside of the game, I was on Easy! It should be a challenge but not need the exact right strat. I couldn't beat it and had to drop to story mode to be able to respawn me after he wiped me again even on story mode! But besides being a little soured on that I still thought it was really great. It was a huge game and took me 97 hrs to finish.