Metaphor: ReFantazio Preview - A Fresh Take On Classic Atlus Tropes

Summary

Metaphor: ReFantazio creates a unique experience that blends familiar Atlus elements with fresh mechanics and high fantasy lore.
The game delves into racial tensions, royal intrigue, and combat strategy with over 40 diverse Archetypes offering unique skills and affinities.
Boss battles feature horrifying humanoid creations, while the protagonist navigates a fantastical world with ties to a mundane reality.

I didn’t quite know what to expect of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Metaphor: ReFantazio. And yet, I was incredibly excited to play. I love Atlus games, but there’s a spectrum of what kind of Atlus game Metaphor could fall into. Will it be familiar but tough combat lik🥂e Shin Megami Tensei? Will it have slice-of-life gameplay against a dramatic mission for a group of memorable characters like Persona? Will it be as weird and wonderful as Catherine?

I was wasting time trying to fit it into the pre-existing Atlus-shaped holes - Metaphor makes its own unique mark in Atlus history. While there are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:undeniable similarities 👍to past titles, it works hard to creatꦛe something fresh and exciting. Like a good book that you simply can’t put down, Metaphor entices you down the rabbit hole into an unfamiliar high fantasy world with magic, fictional races, and a whole lot of lore for you to sink your teeth into.

A preview card for Persona 3 Reload's The Answer expansion.

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The protagonist seems almost as unfamiliar with the world you find yourself in as you are, which means you’re learning the rules of play alongside them with the help of your fairy friend Gallica. It quickly becomes clear that racial issues will play a part in the narrative as the fantastical races throw slurs at each other, such as “knife ears” towards the elf-like Roussaintes, and as an Elda, a rare race believed to bring misfortune, the protagonist is sure ಌto attract their own dose of racism.

These racial tensions are just one of many threads that weave together the tapestry that tells the🌠 tale of a tournament to win the crown. Left reeling after the death of the king and with the crown prince cursed and dying (while most of the population believes him to be dead), the R෴oyal Magic is invoked to catalyse a tournament to elect a new king. As the protagonist, you’re one of the contenders for the crown.

Gameplay is familiar. You can choose between different daily activities similar to Persona, with some unlocking different quests or increasing certain skills📖, called Royal Virtues here. Quests and travelling take time, so you have to weigh up what you can achieve within a given timeframe without missing out on things you should prioritise. It feels like it’s going to be just as meaty as Persona 5, and no doubt require a lot of experimenting to nail down that perfect playthrough.

Combat is both familiar and fresh. T♔here is clearly SMT/Persona DNA at play here as you target elemental weaknesses in enemies in turn-based battles, but there is so much more to learn. As you progress, the protagonist will awaken the transformative power of the Archetype, essentially a type of class system in Metaphor. Later in the game, you and your companions can all use these Archetypes, allowing you to build different parties, with some Archetypes more suitable for tanking, damage, he🤪aling, or more wildcard qualities. Weaker enemies can even be dispatched or disadvantaged through action combat too.

Affinity weaknesses aren’t as straightforward as in previous games. While you still get the usual, such as enemies weak to ice can still be blasted with ice in their sore spot, there is more nuance to how Archetypes, party formations, and battles play out. For example, the Merchant Archetype’s money-throwing skill can distract an enemy and cau༺se it to waste its turn, creating a weakness that isn’t tied to the elemental wheel.

There are over 40 Archetypes in the game, each of which has its own skills with different affinities and strengths, though they also share some common skills. Some strengths and abilities only come about through ꦦdifferent party configurations, so your party setup can both help or hinder you depending on how you choose your team. There’s a lot of room here for fine-tuning the combat, and finding the most effective setups for different situations.

For those who may struggle with this, you can find informants in cities who can be paid to give you hints about ce🌼rtain dungeons and enemies, letting you know which affinities and Archetypes will work best. Traveller’s Voices is also a feature that allows you to see what level other players were at when they completed dungeons, or which formations they used.

Party formation plays an important role and you can switch up where your characters are standing during battle. Those up front are more likely to get chowed down on by enemies but deal more damage, while those in the rear will be a🗹 little safer yet deal less damage. Dungeons are not randomly generated, so each one is specifically configured with set enemies, traps, bosses, and puzzles for players to get their heaꦇds around, so there is a correct way or five to beast through each dungeon.

Did I menꦏtion that bosses are humans? No, not humans like you or me, but horrifying, disfigured weird creations with vague human features. Think Attack on Titan and you’re halfway there. The first I encountered, Homo Gorleo, was a multi-limbed humanoid with a feathered head and lots of apples. Based on the other humans I saw during the preview, they all look different and weird. All the better to smack their faces in with your Archetypes.

That leads me to another thread in this tapestry. While the protagonist is living in this fantastical world, they have their own special fantasy book that was gifted to them by the prince. Much like the world itself, this fantasy book is a reversal of our own. Their world is filled with magic and fantasy, their fantasy books are filled with… a sprawlinဣg metropolis with glass towers, only one tribe, and no magic. Sound familiar? Yeah, pretty sure that’s our very mundane world.

This isn’t some ordinary book either, there’s magic tied to it, and you even meet the mysterious author of the book squirrelled away in some other realm. You can’t help but get some sense that a reverse-isekai 🐲thing is about to happen. Is that where the humans are coming from? Do they get turned into weird abominations somehow? I have a lot of thoughts on this which I’ll delve into at a later date, but if there is a tie between worlds it might explain why some characters ⛄were vaping in this medieval fantasy, or perhaps the magic made that happen. Who knows? The magic definitely explains the sword hoverboard thing I somehow managed to do at one point.

It’s hard to put into words everything that I feel about Metaphor in just one article, so you can bet I’ll be writing up a few others too. What you need to know is this: some elements will be familiar to those who have played Persona/SMT, but Metaphor is its own beast. It maintains Atlus’ staples of a 💟banging soundtrack with gorgeous style and graphics, but it introduces plenty of new mechanics and features alongside some familiar elements, like a remix of your favourite song with some new trendy bop. Metaphor seems to be offering up a tantalisingly interesting narrative against a high fantasy setting, unlike anything it’s done before. I’m already hooked and I want more.