I was a teenager when I first picked up a JRPG made by Atlus. I was at an age where I was starting to really figure out what kind of games I like, branching out from my comfort zone that was mostly Squaresoft RPGs. I was also an edgy emo kid, so when I saw a game on sale called Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer’s Call, and it had a huge sticker on it that said “Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series” my black heart leapt at the chance to play it. It may have been the most difficult JRPG I had ever played, but I really enjoyed it and it marked the start of my love for Atlus. As time passed and I played more of their titles, like Digital Devil Saga, and the Raidou Kuzunoha titles, it was the Persona series that captivated me. Its character-driven stories and unique gameplay were a perfect fit for the types of story I loved, so when Atlus announced Metaphor Re Fantazio, a brand-new IP, my hopes were high.
So now that Metaphor has finally released and it has become my 257th Platinum trophy the big question is: does it live up to the titles that came before, especially under the massive shadow cast by Persona 5? Does it lean more towards SMT’s intense challenge or Persona’s focus on narrative and relationships? And the most important question: does it have Jack Frost? Let’s dive in.
So let’s get the basic comparison’s out of the way. Metaphor Re Fantazio is a title that takes a lot of influence and systems from its older cousins. From Persona, it has inherited the core gameplay loop, where you play through the protagonist’s life day by day, making friends and keeping yourself busy with things like reading books, or doing laundry. Doing these activities will improve your protagonist, either by increasing his in battle stats, or by increasing his Virtues. Read a book about a father looking after his Son, and it will increase your tolerance, go bungee jumping and your courage will increase, and these stats will unlock new options, and characters to meet as you improve. From the Shin Megami Tensei side of things it has inherited the Press Turn battle system, which encourages experimentation with party composition and gaining knowledge about enemy weaknesses to take the advantage in battle. Where it differs though, evolving upon its influences, is where the game shines, and that is in its setting and story.
The world of Metaphor is magical yet oppressive, deeply affected by discrimination. The kingdom of Euchronia is home to eight tribes that, despite being united, experience stark disparities, with many tribes facing systemic abuse. The protagonist belongs to the most maligned tribe, the Elda, labelled as “tainted” by the dominant religion. To make matters worse, horrific creatures known as Humans frequently raid towns, posing a constant threat.
When the King of Euchronia dies, his last act as King is to use his all powerful Royal Magic, to create a competition, where the next King will be chosen by the will of the people, and it is this competition that drives the narrative, as the protagonist enters the competition and comes into conflict with the other people vying for the crown. Most of these contenders have quite shallow political principles that the game doesn’t ever explore too closely, like the Paripus candidate named Loveless, whose only political goal is that alcohol should be free for everyone and there should be a bar on every street. Some are very on the nose and less silly, like the Rousainte man who believes in supremacy of his race over all others, and is very pointedly named…Adolf, no sorry, his name is Rudolph. Ahem.
These all pale in comparison to the main antagonists though, who are much more fleshed out. Louis, the charismatic bastard that he is, believes in Personal Power above all else, and that strength is what determines one’s right to life, and his main rival at first is, in typical JRPG fashion, the Pope. Sanctism is the state religion of Euchronia and under Sanctifex Forden’s rule, it has become corrupted and power hungry believing they should control the people below them. Forden and Louis are the frontrunners for the throne from the off, and standing against them is you, an idealist inspired by a fantasy novel about a utopian society whose main ideal is “I will help anyone”.
Like I said, its not a complicated political drama, but its so fucking earnest that it is charming. The way it deals with topics like discrimination is simplistic yes, as is the way it deals with topics like anxiety among other things but at the end of the day, the game is, like a lot of good fantasy stories, just a metaphor, and I loved it.
This is in no small part due to the characters who join you on this journey. They are all charming and relatable, deeply rooted in Atlus’s strength for writing compelling casts. The Persona games are favourites of mine for their character work and realistic friendships, and Metaphor has a cast that may be my favourite from Atlus yet. There were countless moments that made me laugh, moments that made me pause and reflect, and even moments of sadness that not many games can evoke. This emotional pull is a testament to the strength of Metaphor’s writing.
Persona games always share the same message that your strength comes from the people you meet and bond with, and Metaphor carries this message too. Like in Persona there are a handful of characters you meet that you can create bonds with. As you spend time with them, learn about the characters and grow with them, the bond levels up and gives you access to a powerful ability, called an Archetype.
These Archetypes are the Classes that you can equip and use in combat, with each of them having different strengths, tactics and abilities. For example, one of the first bonds you can forge is with Brigitta, who owns a business selling Magic items called igniters. When you unlock this bond, it also unlocks the Merchant Archetype. This archetype lets you throw money at your problems, using your currency to cast spells instead of MP. It also lets you earn more money from fights.
These archetypes not only level up by using them in battles, but by spending more time with the person you learned the Archetype from, gaining new abilities and benefits.
With the Merchant example, as Brigitta’s bond levels up, you will gain things like unlocking more slots to inherit abilities you have learned from other Archetypes, or eventually, unlocking an elite version of the Merchant, called the Tycoon.
There are 47 Archetypes in the game, and these are unlocked via 14 different character bonds, and once a bond is unlocked, any character in your party can learn and equip the class. This is crucial for progression as many classes require levelling unrelated classes first. For example, one of the main party is Hulkenberg, a Rousainte woman who unlocks the Knight archetype. One of her Elite Archetypes is the Dark Knight, which not only requires mastering the previous Knight Archetypes, but also the Wizard one.
I love a job system in games, and this might be one of my favourites. It’s incredibly fun to swap characters roles around, experimenting with new tactics and new abilities while trying to level everyone up, and make sure I have a broad range of attacks and defences available, which is important because Metaphor can actually be quite challenging in combat, if you are unprepared.
As I said earlier Metaphor’s combat DNA shares more in common with the SMT games than Persona. This is because it uses what’s called the Press Turn system. When combat starts, both you and your foes get one action for each member of the party. All of your main combat actions, like standard attacks, or using Archetype abilities cost one of these actions, which is simple enough.
However, if you hit an enemies weakness, not only does it do extra damage, you only spend half an action, enabling you to take another action. This also happens if you get a critical hit, and if you chain these weaknesses, you can drag your turn out to 8 actions. You can also choose to pass your turn onto the next party member and only use half a turn. However if you miss, or an attack is blocked, you lose 2 actions. Worse still if an attack is Absorbed or Repelled, you lose all of your remaining actions.
These rules apply to enemies too, which is why it’s so important to have your weaknesses covered and your attacks varied. If you have a whole team full of Healers, who are weak to strike damage, then you are going to be in for a bad time if you are fighting enemies who deal primarily strike damage and exploit your weaknesses. There are spells to help with this, spells that give you repel for elemental damage or physical damage, or abilities that boost your dodge chance that you can inherit from other archetypes, but sometimes all it takes is an unlucky couple of turns for combat to be over for you.
Combat isn’t all turned based though, as when you are out in the field, you can attack enemies to try and stun them. If you manage this, and then switch into turn based mode, the enemies will start with a chunk of their HP missing, and also be stunned for the first round of combat, giving you a huge advantage. However if they hit you it will force you into combat and the enemies will have the upper hand and the first turn. When you are a high enough level however, these enemies can be killed in the overworld, and you receive slightly lessened rewards for it. This however is perfect for grinding quickly, and I did find even on Normal difficulty, I needed to spend some time grinding, especially before some of the end game bosses.
To help with some of this difficulty and the chance that you might get incredibly unlucky in combat, there are few things Metaphor offers to help tip the balance in your favour. The first of these is the ability to restart combat with the press of a button if things start to go south too quickly. This has to be on one of your turns, so you can still die, and believe me I did a few times, but it is a nice option when the cards just have not fallen in your favour.
The second option, and something I really liked about the game, is the ability to buy information about certain enemies or dungeons, from informants in the main towns. Sometimes when you start a sidequest, the game will not tell you where the location of the quest actually is, and in this case you need to find an informant who will tell you about the location and mark it on your map. What is more beneficial though is the other information that comes with it, sometimes it’s as simple as telling some of the enemies weaknesses. Other times though it’s more interesting facts, like an enemies habit of targeting enemies in the front row with more powerful attacks, or focussing on characters that don’t have a defensive buff up. Goblins hate spellcasters and fly into a rage if they see someone wielding a staff type weapon, and I thought this was such a cool way to give players a knowledge advantage, rather than just a numbers one.
As much as I am raving about the gameplay and story of Metaphor, there are some places where it falls flat. The first of these is in its graphics, as I find Metaphor does look a little bit dated, especially when compared to what I’ve seen of Persona 3 Reloaded, and SMT V Vengeance, which I must admit I have not played yet. Metaphor’s art style is fantastic, with lush backgrounds that look like watercolour paintings, gorgeous character portrait art and beautiful world design. The menus and status screens are so stylish, with characters posing like the Vitruvian man, and even the post battle results screen is cool. In contrast though the actual character models and textures do not look great. It reminds me a lot of Persona 5, but that’s a game that came out 9 years ago. I also had quite a few issues with frame drops, and there are an annoying amount of loading screens, which is something I had, if I’m being honest, got used to not seeing very often on the PS5. It isn’t the end of the world, as the art style does carry the game hard, it just feels like a bit of wasted potential.
The only other, minor gripe I have with Metaphor, is some of its repetitive design choices. In the main story, there are a few expansive, well designed dungeons, with different mechanics and challenges in them and these are great. The bulk of the dungeons you face though, you visit for side quests or bounties, and these, with a few exceptions, feel very repetitive and dull. There are multiple instances of dungeons that look, and feel exactly the same and it’s disappointing. Enemy design also suffers with a lot of enemies being colour swapped versions of each other. In Persona and Shin Megami Tensei, not all of the designs are amazing, but many of them are, and they are all unique. Metaphor’s only unique enemies are its main story bosses, with even some of its side quest bosses being reused later in the game, or at least looking very similar. Even the Human enemies, which have the coolest designs in the game, are reused on occasion, and like the graphics themselves it feels like the game had some lofty goals for design that the engine just couldn’t quite keep up with.
Finally then, let’s talk about Metaphor Re Fantazio’s Platinum trophy, “Traveller”. If you have played a persona game you will find this list is pretty familiar but if not, here is the gist of it.
You need to do almost everything in the game, and with a limited number of days it requires some planning. However I did feel like the schedule wasn’t as tight as Persona 5’s was to do everything.
There are 14 Follower Bonds as I mentioned before, and all of these need to be maxed out for the “Hearts as One” trophy. Each level up requires you spending a day with the person when they are available, and some of these level ups require you to have specific levels in your Virtues, so although there is no separate trophy for that, you still need to do it. There are so many options to increase your Virtues though, and a lot of them have their own trophies attached, like reading every book for “Bookworm”, or winning a debate against every possible candidate at the town podiums for “Debate Me!” There is one missable book that you need to talk to a candidate called Julian in Brilehaven near the Inn, between the the 23rd of the 7th month, and the 13th of the 8th month. You should always check the Podiums in different towns to see if there is an opponent waiting for you before doing anything else in the evenings.
You will also need to cook every recipe while in the Gauntlet Runner for “King of Cuisine”. None of these recipes are missable but some of the ingredients are much harder to get than others. It is a good idea, whenever possible, to check the pantry in the Gauntlet Runner for a couple of free ingredients every day. Cooking itself takes time, until you have gotten your Bond with Maria up to rank 4, and then you can cook without it taking a valuable day. It is best to wait until you have this to start cooking at all.
Lastly you need to complete every quest. Most of these quests come from beating dungeons or visiting locations and buying items. Entering a dungeon is a big affair and not only takes up the daytime part of your calendar, but the evening part too as you must rest and recover. Doing this will not only get you the trophy “Help Anyone in Need” for doing all the quests but will also get you “Globetrotter” for visiting all of the towns, and “Worldly Wisdom” for unlocking the entire map. Some of the Archetypes rely on Summons, and Masks to unlock their abilities. These can be crafted in Akademia but need special materials, and you need to do all of these for “Summon Mask Time”. There is a shop that you can unlock about halfway through the game, after the 6th party member joins you, where you can buy mask materials, but there is a schedule to what materials they sell, and you can only buy one of his stock per day.
This might sound complicated, or stressful but it’s not as bad as it sounds, especially as you do need to play through the game twice, as the superboss you need to beat for “Closing the Book” is not available until NG+. I would spend your first playthrough doing what you want, on whatever difficulty you want, and focus on having fun. A few things do carry over to NG+, like your equipment, your archetype levels, and your virtues progress, but the follower bonds do not, and you will need to raise them again in NG+ to let you use the Archetypes again. If you can fully level your Virtues at least on your first run, then in NG+ it opens up so much extra time. The NG+ boss is tough, and the lowest difficulty you can fight them on is Easy. I would recommend being at least level 50 before attempting it, and then only if you have most of your archetypes unlocked and levelled. I was almost at the end of my second playthrough when I got this. There is a great point to grind levels and Archetypes in the very last dungeon, which will also help you get the trophy “Archetype Hero” for mastering every Archetype with the protagonist.
There are a bunch of miscellaneous trophies that you will likely get through normal gameplay like stunning a number of enemies, or using synthesis attacks but there are a few to keep an eye on. There is a trophy called “Money is Power” which is for using the merchant class skills to spend 100,000 reeve in attacks, and successfully steal from an enemy for “What’s yours is mine”. You also need to find 49 gold beetles, some of which are missable, and trade them to an old man in Brilehaven for “All that Glitters” You should also beat every challenge in the Brilehaven arena to get up to Gold Rank, and then beat the consecutive battle challenge at Gold Level for “Coliseum Champion”.
In the very last dungeon of the game, there are a bunch of optional bosses that you can fight before you reach the last boss. Every time you beat one of these the boss will lose some of its power and give you an easier fight. If you ignore them however and still beat the last boss, you will earn “Star Shatterer”.
The last trophies to keep an eye on are “Hey Listen” which is for asking your fairy companion Gallica for advice 100 times. You can do this by pressing triangle when you are walking around and she can let you know if you have any follower bonds to level up, or what things there are to do in the area. She will helpfully teleport you to any one who wants to see you.
There is also a trophy for surfing on your sword for what the game calls a significant distance. I don’t know how far this is, I used it as much as possible on my NG+ run, using the sword whenever it was possible, and I got the trophy near the end of the 9th month. This will get you “Sword Surfer”
It is a pretty exhaustive list, and if you want to get all but one of the trophies in one playthrough it is possible following a guide but it’s easier not to stress about it, and maybe use a guide on your second run to make sure you get all the beetles and follower levels you need. My total playtime was around 110 hours all told, but 85 of those was just my first playthrough.
I knew fairly early on that I would enjoy Metaphor Re Fantazio. Its setting held it apart from Persona, but kept the gameplay loop and character driven stories I enjoyed so much. What I didn’t expect though, was how by the end of the game, I would hold it so highly in my mind. For me, this is the best game Atlus has ever made. It feels like the perfect combination of all of the games by them I have played and enjoyed but all pushed to another level. Despite the minor issues I do have with it, it’s one of, if not THE best game I have played this year, and that isn’t something I ever expected from this title. Also, Jack Frost is in it.
So go play it, that’s all I have to say.
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