Metaphor: ReFantazio shares DNA with Persona, but is its own fascinating beast

Atlus’ new role-playing game, Metaphor: ReFantazio, strikes an impressive balance for a project of its ambition: It’s both squarely aimed at longtime fans of the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series, but detached from the legacy of those games, making it extremely welcoming to new players.

In other words, if you’ve ever been wary about jumping in on Atlus’ brand of massive, occasionally bizarre RPGs, Metaphor: ReFantazio is a great entry point. Game director Katsura Hashino calls the upcoming game a “third pillar” franchise for Atlus, and from what I’ve played, developer Studio Zero is earning the right to boast about the prospects of its new game.

Metaphor: ReFantazio’s premise is built on familiar fantasy tropes: A beloved king has been assassinated by a power-hungry general, and his succession is in question. The king’s lone heir, a son, is missing and presumed dead. A noble young warrior rises to the occasion, seeks vengeance on the king’s killer, and rallies a band of heroes to his cause.

Where Metaphor: ReFantazio deviates from that formula is in its layers, and in its approach to revenge. The United Kingdom of Euchronia is a mix of Western fantasy and modern times. Characters fight with sword and shield and with a magic known as “magla,” an ability once thought to be limited to royalty. But Euchronia is not medieval; this is an industrialized society with technology and modern problems. Racism, tribalism, religious extremism, and concerns about border protection against a feared species of monsters known as Humans — yes, really! — are at the heart of the game’s story.

That story is also set against an election. A contest to determine who will be Euchronia’s new king is to be held, and various candidates are vying for the populace’s favor, including the character you play as. In fact, I had a very intense and violent battle against a rival political candidate during my playthrough of the game. He laid out his ageist tax and civil rights policy in a pre-battle speech, right before my crew kicked his ass. And it felt really good.

And while some heroes who fight alongside the hero of Metaphor: ReFantazio want to find the king’s assassin and simply kill him, the hero’s approach to revenge is driven by the desire to defeat him fair and square in a democratic election.

There’s another layer to Metaphor: ReFantazio that I didn’t quite grasp during my hands-on time with the game. The main character (and his fairy sidekick Gallica) reads a fantasy novel about a different world that may be a “mirror” of Euchronia, and at one point, the hero meets the author of that novel, More, who exists in a liminal space called Akademia — a magical library that’s somewhat like Persona’s Velvet Room.

Hashino said last year, when announcing the game, that his team is intentionally playing with the “underlying feeling of connection between the [fantasy and modern] worlds.” Hashino has said the game also plays up modern feelings of anxiety, and looks at fantasy stories as a way to seek solutions to real-world problems. However, he said, the fact that Metaphor: ReFantazio is arriving just before another make-or-break election in the U.S. is not commentary on that presidential race — it’s purely coincidence.

I played about three hours of Metaphor: ReFantazio, on an Xbox Series X, in two chunks. The first part was from the very start of the game, where my nameless protagonist and his fairy start their journey toward Euchronia’s capital city. There, they plan to secretly infiltrate the royal guard and meet with a trusted contact to reveal incredibly important information: The king’s son is alive, but trapped in a magical spell.

On that path to joining the royal guard, who will at this point take anyone into its ranks, I meet a few allies, including Strohl, a fellow volunteer who comes from a noble family, and Hulkenberg, a former member of the royal Kingsguard who served as personal protector of the fallen prince. In another chunk of gameplay I sampled, I had a fuzzy warrior known as Heismay in my party. Some allies appear to come and go from the group.

I fight alongside these characters and others against traitors to the king, wandering beasts, and terrifying Humans, bizarre creatures who are inspired by — and in some cases, straight-up lifted from — the works of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. Humans are grotesque, in a style consistent with the Persona developers’ other work. They are two-legged things with armor that looks like eggshells. Or they are just sentient teeth. Or they are part human, part tree, like an early boss who’s plucked right out of Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. Named Homo Gorleo, he whipped his root-like legs around to attack me and ate apples from his own branches to restore his health.

In battle against these things, the protagonist learns of a special power within him. He has an ability to transform into an alternate form called an Archetype, a powerful being that can unleash special attacks and magical abilities. The hero can unlock these abilities in his allies too, and players will be able to freely experiment with more than 40 Archetypes (mage, seeker, thief, gunner, healer, etc.), mixing and matching them by assigning each member of the party roles in battle.

Combat feels dynamic. As noted in our previous hands-on preview with Metaphor: ReFantazio, you can quickly attack enemies in the game to get an upper hand on them before engaging in turn-based battles against your foes. This feels exciting every time, as you try to sneak up on monsters and get a hit in before they have a chance to do the same to you. In turn-based fights, actions and attacks are snappy; battles move at a very speedy clip.

In addition to familiar turn-based battle actions (e.g., melee attacks, spells, guarding), Metaphor: ReFantazio also has an attack option called Synthesis, a team-up ability that lets you combine the magic and Archetype abilities of two characters to attack at once, letting you target multiple foes, but at the expense of consuming a party member’s turn. There appears to be great flexibility and depth to Metaphor: ReFantazio’s combat, with dozens of weapons, spells, Archetype roles, and a growing list of allies at your disposal.

After battles, you and your allies will earn experience, which can be allotted to five stats: Strength, Magic, Endurance, Agility, and Luck. Your Archetypes can grow and strengthen, too. But there’s another intriguing leveling system in Metaphor: ReFantazio that evolves your abilities outside of combat. These are called Royal Virtues, and depending on the choices you make in interactions with other characters — your teammates and NPCs you meet — you’ll grow five other stats: Courage, Wisdom, Tolerance, Eloquence, and Imagination.

These Royal Virtues appear to help your character in winning the hearts and minds of Euchronians. Boosting your Eloquence will make you a better public speaker, and therefore more “electable” as king. Metaphor: ReFantazio’s developers say that in some cases, you’ll physically fight your political rivals, and in others, you’ll face them in other arenas, like speech contests — a battle I sadly did not get to sample myself.

In the second part of my hands-on time with the game, I was dropped into a save file much deeper into the game. Some unknown hours in, I had a long list of quests on my plate, including some that were due to expire soon. With the election creeping closer, I realized I wouldn’t be able to simply hang about and complete errands for other characters to earn their favor; I needed to move on to my next destination.

Metaphor: ReFantazio has a huge world map, with dozens of characters to interact with and associated side activities that will steal your attention away from your main quest. The theme of anxiety seems to play in here, too; you’ll sometimes have limited windows in which to get things done, or to save people, while also running your grand campaign to be king. And like in the Persona games, you’ll need to foster and maintain relationships (bonds) with your allies. These concerns eat up precious time as election day looms. Playing a tactical tabletop board game with Hulkenberg to increase your Imagination or honing your blades with Strohl to sharpen your Wisdom steals time from doing optional side quests. You’ll need to balance a lot to be your best, and to please as many people as possible under time constraints.

But the prospect of that personal quest for revenge, weighty and anxiety-inducing though it may be, is what makes Metaphor: ReFantazio so fascinating. With this grand journey, combined with a deep turn-based combat system with incredible breadth and customization, a unique fantasy world, and a story of political upheaval, the developers behind Metaphor: ReFantazio appear to have something incredibly promising on their hands — something that will stand strongly alongside Atlus’ other more famous RPG franchises. 

Metaphor: ReFantazio is coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on Oct. 11.