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Metaphor Re: Fantazio (2024) Review
7 months ago
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Metaphor Re: Fantazio. Unfortunately, I do not have one.
Metaphor Re: Fantazio (MRF) is a JRPG that takes place in the fantasy setting of the United Kingdom of Euchronia where you play as a travelling boy tasked with removing the curse cast upon the prince of the kingdom while stopping a dictator from becoming the next king.
Story
Since the story is a major part of the game, the detailed review of the story will be spoilered. In a nutshell, i found the story to be a very cliche one of a prince coming back to save their kingdom from certain doom making sure to hit all the JRPG story and character tropes. If you've played any other Atlus game, then you know what to expect here. However, the characterization of the party members and the Followers / Social Links is better than past Atlus games as Atlus took note of the shortcomings of past party members and made new characters that are miles better than what they came out with. Strohl being the key example as he serves the same role as Junpei, Yosuke, and Ryuji from the Persona series but without the annoying parts of their character. You will see that Atlus uses the same character archetypes from their Persona games in MRF but there are noticeable improvements in their storytelling and characterization and that easily is the best part about the game story wise even if there are some characters that fall flat. I did find that the overall story fell flat at times because its a predictable story that you have seen multiple times and ends as you would expect it to be. There are just too many missed opportunities that would have made the story better and more impactful instead of being predictable.
MRF has an interesting high-fantasy world as they focused on making their own races instead of falling for the usual tropes of elves, dwarves, etc. which fits perfectly with the game world. The monsters here are actually called humans which are basically characters from Bosch's art made reality so its a fantasy game that ends up taking their own twist on what they define as fantasy compared to existing fantasy setting conventions such as the LOTR universe, the FF universe, the Elder Scrolls / DnD universe etc. I am all for it as it leads to interesting takes on the races but I feel that alone is a missed opportunity in gameplay section which i'll explain further but I like it when stories take the familiar and twist it in their own ways. One example is the Roussainte tribe which is marked by their long ears be the brawny military-men race which subverts your expectation as you would expect them to be magically adept like the Elves but Hulkenberg is a pure stone wall in terms of story and gameplay. I wish they did more with certian tribes / races such as the Clemar feeling like regular guys with horns or Ishka and their wings feel like accessories and not actual parts of their character. I feel that Atlus could have gone further with the unique races they made and incorporated their traits into the story like they did with the Nidia, Mustari, and Papirus.
(we were robbed of minotaur Strohl, bird Neuras, and furry Basilio)
Another thing I loved about the story is that the protagonist (Will) is no longer silent but he becomes a protagonist that takes after Commander Shepard from Mass Effect 1 where his lines are what you pick as this dialogue options. As such, I ended up naming him Shepard for that reason but I love that this is a step forward from the silent protagonist of previous Atlus games (and JRPGs as a whole) because too often, they sit in the corner of every scene and watch people speak for him like the infamous "Ramierez, Do everything!" meme from MW2. Will has a companion fairy named Gallica who serves as the navigator role for MRF and she often speaks on behalf of the protagonist which I'm fine with for the most part as Atlus is working out how to actually do a non-silent protagonist going forward.
Will however, has so many missed opportunities for him as a character. He is an Elda that is basically the most reviled tribe in the world because the Sanctist (Catholic Church in the world of MRF) basically identified them as heretics that are responsible for all bad things happening in the world including the existence of humans. However, you don;t get those moments in game where you actually feel the racism crushing your neck in the form of stores refusing to sell to you, getting harassed in the street, or having areas in towns be inaccessible because a racist gang /knight will beat you up if you get too close. The only impediment that you face as a result of anti-elda racism is the church refusing to sell goods to you and purify your gear until you become smart enough to be one of the "good ones". Another instance is that Will is supposed to be naturally good at magic as an Elda but the game lets you pick out Will's stats at the start and all throughout the game by letting you allocate your stat points. I wish the game took that away from you and made you naturally adept at magic with future stat points focused on making you a mage to really hammer in who you are. Hell, the game could have made the racism into a social link tutorial such that stores will refuse to sell to you as an Elda so you're SOL trying to get supplies for the first dungeon but Gallica could have suggested asking Strohl to help you so you meet up with Strohl for a SL event in which he speaks for you and convinces the shopkeeper to sell to you on behalf of Strohl using his wits This would have counted as character development for Strohl while also showing just how much Will needs them as much as Will needs his friends.
The reason for my rambling about racism being a key theme is that I keep thinking about MachineGames' Wolfenstein: The New Order. In this game, you play as B.J. Blazko who has to free Nazi-Occupied Europe from the Nazis after they win WW2. The game never misses an opportunity to show how awful the nazis are from sticking you in front of an officer murdering disabled people, sneaking into a concentration / labour camp that has become more efficient and brutal under the Nazis, and seeing Berlin get turned into a concrete monstrosity dreamed up by the Nazis. In short, the game always shows just how awful the world is and how important it is to stand up and kill every single Nazi. Of course this is an extreme example but it shows that Metaphor had such a shitty world that they should have made you get mistreated and be the victim of racism so that you have a desire to become the new King / stop Louis from becoming king by killing him.
Now that Will is out of the way, I love the character and camadrie of the party members as an adult cast actually lets the better character tropes and designs show off with all of them still having jabs at each other but generally being chill with everyone else. They manage to avoid the pitfalls of Haru's arc from P5 while feeling more mature and refreshing. Even Heismay who's supposed to be the token mascot character is actually the best written one in the cast that he would even be a husbando just off his charm alone. I also like the other characters as Hulkenberg is honour-bound to a fault but it never gets annoying and her VA is very talented to begin with. Eupha radiates Adorableness that never feels unsettling while Junah uses her charm but its for a practical purpose. Basilio is dumb muscle but he has enough street smarts to give him more depth as a character (and he's a baker JUST LIKE ME). In short, all of the characters follow well-established tropes but they never overstay their quirks such that it becomes unbearable and annoying.
The same goes for the social links as they are shorter (8 levels vs Persona's 10 levels) which allows their stories to be more focused with less filler in the way. You can also make the wrong choice or pick the funny response without worrying about losing progress on the SL because SL EXP has been removed and replaced with just levels. This is the best implementation so far and the SL themselves are better written such as Brigitta, Cuculus, and Bardon that deal with the reality of their jobs.
The main bad guy Louis is a good villain but i feel that Atlus missed the mark by having him hang back after the first dungeon. I expected him to be a constant pain in the ass everywhere you went undercutting the church at every opportunity and making him a desirable politician. Had Atlus implemented the harsh Elda racism i suggested earlier, you would be in the perfect mindset to follow Louis and consider his points valid. On the same token, I wish that the game had shown you a vision or a gameplay section of Louis' ideal world just to see how much of a threat he really is beyond just hearing his speeches. The church has no shoratge of enemies including the Papirus Riots and the game should have done more showing and less telling to radicalize you into following Louis which would have made future plot twists even more shocking. (The same can be said with Pope Forden to show how much of a vile racist he is because well, go on Facebook, you have no shortage of racist boomers to work off.)
The final section is more gameplay related but you have side-dungeons in the game that take the form of stereotypical forests, caves, and towers that act as places to get stronger. I found them to be boring and yet another missed opportunity because since the game takes place after the end of the world with Euchronia being on top of the ruins of Tokyo; they could have made them take the form of modern day buildings with towers being office buildings, caves being subway stations, and forests being public parks / community centres. This alone would make the side dungeons more memorable as you get to see the people gaslit into believing those are normal caves when they are not by the Church and it would have made one of the final scenes with More be more impactful going from a rambling crazy man to a rambling crazy man with an actual point. Again, i can't say more because EVERYTHING about More and Akademia is a walking spoiler so i'll leave this as is.
So the overview of the story is that the characters are the best part but its full of missed opportinities as it often violates the rule of "show, don't tell". Make no mistake, the scenes where they show are good but there needs to be a lot more not only in the story but also in the gameplay department.
Gameplay
The gameplay, like the story of Metaphor is familiar in that it's a turn based JRPG with SMT's press turn system where you get extra turns for hitting weaknesses but lose turns for missing or getting attacks blocked / reflected back onto you. Its still good in SMT and it works very well here. MRF adds some new twists such as adding in skills that grant enemies one-time weaknesses so that you have a means of getting extra turns on enemies but the enemies can do the same to you. This works well because enemies with no weaknesses are the bane of your existence in SMT / persona games that serve to make you waste MP to kill them off especially if you don't have the insta-kill skills. Fittingly enough, the game does have Hama and Mudo but they deal light and dark damage. The particular skills that are insta-kill are locked behind a particular job instead. Again, it's the same press-turn system but better this time.
The dungeon exploration works just as well in MRF with decent dungeons (the 4th one being the best in the game) but some dungeons are vastly superior than others. the 3rd dungeon and story arc was just... ugh. One great thing MRF does is that it lends into being an ARPG such that you can actually attack enemies to stun them to get free turns. Basically, you hit the enemy and dodge their attacks like in an action RPG depleting their stun bar and once the bar falls, you get the option to leave them stunned or enter battle in which the enemies start off stunned and you get a free turn. This is so fucking satisfying and if the enemy is weaker than you, you can just instantly kill them without having to enter battle. Will also gets unique attacking animations and styles for each weapon type so you have to be careful and learn the weapon as to avoid getting attacked by the enemy and forced into battle at a disadvantage. I often found myself wishing that the game was an ARPG / character action game based on that alone.
MRF uses a job system akin to FF in which each character gets archetypes which are basically fighting spirits the character transforms into to attack. Everyone can be any archetype they want to be but they all have an ultimate archetype you'll be working towards. It's decent but the existence of ultimate jobs ends up forcing characters down particular job trees so that you get their ultimate job during the first playthrough. You also gain the ability to inherit skills from other jobs into your current one like mix & matching in FF5 / Dimensions 1 and this works very well. I think this could have been improved more by introducing racial bonuses as character passives and personal skills because for most of then, they only get one passive which is boring. I feel that levelling up your character's social links should have also given you a LOT more racial bonuses that apply regardless of job so that instead of each character feeling the same up till they get their ultimate job, each character would have felt unique right off the bat and help with the worldbuilding.
Conclusion
Metaphor is a very competent game full of references to other Atlus games that tells a decent story with the characters being the best part of the package. However, it feels like a love letter to Atlus which has me thiking that the best way to play this game is to make sure that it's your 3rd or 4th Atlus game and i simply cannot overlook the missed opportunities. I hope that Atlus is able to tackle the same-high fantasy setting but making sure to explore all opportunities such a setting presents. The story itself being familiar and full of cliches / tropes is generally not a bad thing as long as you execute it perfectly but I feel they could have done so much more.
As such, I cannot recommend Metaphor to first timers to Atlus games. I feel that this game will be better appreciated if you have played and cleared several Atlus games from various franchises being Shin Megami Tensei, Etrian Odyssey, and Persona. If you have, then I recommend giving this game a try.
Metaphor Re: Fantazio (MRF) is a JRPG that takes place in the fantasy setting of the United Kingdom of Euchronia where you play as a travelling boy tasked with removing the curse cast upon the prince of the kingdom while stopping a dictator from becoming the next king.
Story
Since the story is a major part of the game, the detailed review of the story will be spoilered. In a nutshell, i found the story to be a very cliche one of a prince coming back to save their kingdom from certain doom making sure to hit all the JRPG story and character tropes. If you've played any other Atlus game, then you know what to expect here. However, the characterization of the party members and the Followers / Social Links is better than past Atlus games as Atlus took note of the shortcomings of past party members and made new characters that are miles better than what they came out with. Strohl being the key example as he serves the same role as Junpei, Yosuke, and Ryuji from the Persona series but without the annoying parts of their character. You will see that Atlus uses the same character archetypes from their Persona games in MRF but there are noticeable improvements in their storytelling and characterization and that easily is the best part about the game story wise even if there are some characters that fall flat. I did find that the overall story fell flat at times because its a predictable story that you have seen multiple times and ends as you would expect it to be. There are just too many missed opportunities that would have made the story better and more impactful instead of being predictable.
MRF has an interesting high-fantasy world as they focused on making their own races instead of falling for the usual tropes of elves, dwarves, etc. which fits perfectly with the game world. The monsters here are actually called humans which are basically characters from Bosch's art made reality so its a fantasy game that ends up taking their own twist on what they define as fantasy compared to existing fantasy setting conventions such as the LOTR universe, the FF universe, the Elder Scrolls / DnD universe etc. I am all for it as it leads to interesting takes on the races but I feel that alone is a missed opportunity in gameplay section which i'll explain further but I like it when stories take the familiar and twist it in their own ways. One example is the Roussainte tribe which is marked by their long ears be the brawny military-men race which subverts your expectation as you would expect them to be magically adept like the Elves but Hulkenberg is a pure stone wall in terms of story and gameplay. I wish they did more with certian tribes / races such as the Clemar feeling like regular guys with horns or Ishka and their wings feel like accessories and not actual parts of their character. I feel that Atlus could have gone further with the unique races they made and incorporated their traits into the story like they did with the Nidia, Mustari, and Papirus.
(we were robbed of minotaur Strohl, bird Neuras, and furry Basilio)
Another thing I loved about the story is that the protagonist (Will) is no longer silent but he becomes a protagonist that takes after Commander Shepard from Mass Effect 1 where his lines are what you pick as this dialogue options. As such, I ended up naming him Shepard for that reason but I love that this is a step forward from the silent protagonist of previous Atlus games (and JRPGs as a whole) because too often, they sit in the corner of every scene and watch people speak for him like the infamous "Ramierez, Do everything!" meme from MW2. Will has a companion fairy named Gallica who serves as the navigator role for MRF and she often speaks on behalf of the protagonist which I'm fine with for the most part as Atlus is working out how to actually do a non-silent protagonist going forward.
Will however, has so many missed opportunities for him as a character. He is an Elda that is basically the most reviled tribe in the world because the Sanctist (Catholic Church in the world of MRF) basically identified them as heretics that are responsible for all bad things happening in the world including the existence of humans. However, you don;t get those moments in game where you actually feel the racism crushing your neck in the form of stores refusing to sell to you, getting harassed in the street, or having areas in towns be inaccessible because a racist gang /knight will beat you up if you get too close. The only impediment that you face as a result of anti-elda racism is the church refusing to sell goods to you and purify your gear until you become smart enough to be one of the "good ones". Another instance is that Will is supposed to be naturally good at magic as an Elda but the game lets you pick out Will's stats at the start and all throughout the game by letting you allocate your stat points. I wish the game took that away from you and made you naturally adept at magic with future stat points focused on making you a mage to really hammer in who you are. Hell, the game could have made the racism into a social link tutorial such that stores will refuse to sell to you as an Elda so you're SOL trying to get supplies for the first dungeon but Gallica could have suggested asking Strohl to help you so you meet up with Strohl for a SL event in which he speaks for you and convinces the shopkeeper to sell to you on behalf of Strohl using his wits This would have counted as character development for Strohl while also showing just how much Will needs them as much as Will needs his friends.
The reason for my rambling about racism being a key theme is that I keep thinking about MachineGames' Wolfenstein: The New Order. In this game, you play as B.J. Blazko who has to free Nazi-Occupied Europe from the Nazis after they win WW2. The game never misses an opportunity to show how awful the nazis are from sticking you in front of an officer murdering disabled people, sneaking into a concentration / labour camp that has become more efficient and brutal under the Nazis, and seeing Berlin get turned into a concrete monstrosity dreamed up by the Nazis. In short, the game always shows just how awful the world is and how important it is to stand up and kill every single Nazi. Of course this is an extreme example but it shows that Metaphor had such a shitty world that they should have made you get mistreated and be the victim of racism so that you have a desire to become the new King / stop Louis from becoming king by killing him.
Now that Will is out of the way, I love the character and camadrie of the party members as an adult cast actually lets the better character tropes and designs show off with all of them still having jabs at each other but generally being chill with everyone else. They manage to avoid the pitfalls of Haru's arc from P5 while feeling more mature and refreshing. Even Heismay who's supposed to be the token mascot character is actually the best written one in the cast that he would even be a husbando just off his charm alone. I also like the other characters as Hulkenberg is honour-bound to a fault but it never gets annoying and her VA is very talented to begin with. Eupha radiates Adorableness that never feels unsettling while Junah uses her charm but its for a practical purpose. Basilio is dumb muscle but he has enough street smarts to give him more depth as a character (and he's a baker JUST LIKE ME). In short, all of the characters follow well-established tropes but they never overstay their quirks such that it becomes unbearable and annoying.
The same goes for the social links as they are shorter (8 levels vs Persona's 10 levels) which allows their stories to be more focused with less filler in the way. You can also make the wrong choice or pick the funny response without worrying about losing progress on the SL because SL EXP has been removed and replaced with just levels. This is the best implementation so far and the SL themselves are better written such as Brigitta, Cuculus, and Bardon that deal with the reality of their jobs.
The main bad guy Louis is a good villain but i feel that Atlus missed the mark by having him hang back after the first dungeon. I expected him to be a constant pain in the ass everywhere you went undercutting the church at every opportunity and making him a desirable politician. Had Atlus implemented the harsh Elda racism i suggested earlier, you would be in the perfect mindset to follow Louis and consider his points valid. On the same token, I wish that the game had shown you a vision or a gameplay section of Louis' ideal world just to see how much of a threat he really is beyond just hearing his speeches. The church has no shoratge of enemies including the Papirus Riots and the game should have done more showing and less telling to radicalize you into following Louis which would have made future plot twists even more shocking. (The same can be said with Pope Forden to show how much of a vile racist he is because well, go on Facebook, you have no shortage of racist boomers to work off.)
The final section is more gameplay related but you have side-dungeons in the game that take the form of stereotypical forests, caves, and towers that act as places to get stronger. I found them to be boring and yet another missed opportunity because since the game takes place after the end of the world with Euchronia being on top of the ruins of Tokyo; they could have made them take the form of modern day buildings with towers being office buildings, caves being subway stations, and forests being public parks / community centres. This alone would make the side dungeons more memorable as you get to see the people gaslit into believing those are normal caves when they are not by the Church and it would have made one of the final scenes with More be more impactful going from a rambling crazy man to a rambling crazy man with an actual point. Again, i can't say more because EVERYTHING about More and Akademia is a walking spoiler so i'll leave this as is.
So the overview of the story is that the characters are the best part but its full of missed opportinities as it often violates the rule of "show, don't tell". Make no mistake, the scenes where they show are good but there needs to be a lot more not only in the story but also in the gameplay department.
Gameplay
The gameplay, like the story of Metaphor is familiar in that it's a turn based JRPG with SMT's press turn system where you get extra turns for hitting weaknesses but lose turns for missing or getting attacks blocked / reflected back onto you. Its still good in SMT and it works very well here. MRF adds some new twists such as adding in skills that grant enemies one-time weaknesses so that you have a means of getting extra turns on enemies but the enemies can do the same to you. This works well because enemies with no weaknesses are the bane of your existence in SMT / persona games that serve to make you waste MP to kill them off especially if you don't have the insta-kill skills. Fittingly enough, the game does have Hama and Mudo but they deal light and dark damage. The particular skills that are insta-kill are locked behind a particular job instead. Again, it's the same press-turn system but better this time.
The dungeon exploration works just as well in MRF with decent dungeons (the 4th one being the best in the game) but some dungeons are vastly superior than others. the 3rd dungeon and story arc was just... ugh. One great thing MRF does is that it lends into being an ARPG such that you can actually attack enemies to stun them to get free turns. Basically, you hit the enemy and dodge their attacks like in an action RPG depleting their stun bar and once the bar falls, you get the option to leave them stunned or enter battle in which the enemies start off stunned and you get a free turn. This is so fucking satisfying and if the enemy is weaker than you, you can just instantly kill them without having to enter battle. Will also gets unique attacking animations and styles for each weapon type so you have to be careful and learn the weapon as to avoid getting attacked by the enemy and forced into battle at a disadvantage. I often found myself wishing that the game was an ARPG / character action game based on that alone.
MRF uses a job system akin to FF in which each character gets archetypes which are basically fighting spirits the character transforms into to attack. Everyone can be any archetype they want to be but they all have an ultimate archetype you'll be working towards. It's decent but the existence of ultimate jobs ends up forcing characters down particular job trees so that you get their ultimate job during the first playthrough. You also gain the ability to inherit skills from other jobs into your current one like mix & matching in FF5 / Dimensions 1 and this works very well. I think this could have been improved more by introducing racial bonuses as character passives and personal skills because for most of then, they only get one passive which is boring. I feel that levelling up your character's social links should have also given you a LOT more racial bonuses that apply regardless of job so that instead of each character feeling the same up till they get their ultimate job, each character would have felt unique right off the bat and help with the worldbuilding.
Conclusion
Metaphor is a very competent game full of references to other Atlus games that tells a decent story with the characters being the best part of the package. However, it feels like a love letter to Atlus which has me thiking that the best way to play this game is to make sure that it's your 3rd or 4th Atlus game and i simply cannot overlook the missed opportunities. I hope that Atlus is able to tackle the same-high fantasy setting but making sure to explore all opportunities such a setting presents. The story itself being familiar and full of cliches / tropes is generally not a bad thing as long as you execute it perfectly but I feel they could have done so much more.
As such, I cannot recommend Metaphor to first timers to Atlus games. I feel that this game will be better appreciated if you have played and cleared several Atlus games from various franchises being Shin Megami Tensei, Etrian Odyssey, and Persona. If you have, then I recommend giving this game a try.
