Imagine Metaphor ReFantazio as your favorite restaurant opening a second location with a completely new menu. The original spot is a local legend—loved by you and every food critic in town. Finally, the big day arrives. You take your seat, and the waiter places the menu in front of you. Just as you begin to browse, the waiter snatches it away and launches into a 20-minute spiel about all the incredible dishes they offer. When you finally get to place your order, you watch as delicious plates are carried past your table—each one more tempting than the last—but none of them are yours. Another 30 minutes pass, and at last, your food arrives. You eagerly pick up your fork and take a bite, only for the waiter to swoop back in, whisk your dish away, and continue extolling the restaurant’s culinary wonders. The waiter finishes their second soliloquy and graciously gives you your food back. Exhausted, you pick up your utensil and take a bite, discovering that the food is just…okay. Then the waiter swoops back and repeats the previous process. Dejected, you slump in your chair and pass out because your blood sugar is so low.
Metaphor ReFantazio marks P-Studio’s debut under ex-Persona 5 director Katsura Hashino. Though not entirely crafted by the main Persona team, the game’s inspiration is unmistakable: the familiar time-management system, skill upgrades between story moments, and character interactions are all here. Yet, as a fan of Persona 5, I found myself disappointed, often wishing I was playing it instead.
PLAY! THE! GAME!
At around the 8-hour and 31-minute mark, I thought to myself, “Okay, I think I’m done with the tutorial.” I had the same thought at 30 hours and 6 minutes. Only then did the game finally relinquish control and let me fully play.
For anyone familiar with Persona, the gameplay loop will seem familiar: you enter an area and have a set number of days to complete side quests, upgrade stats, or gear up before the next major event. But in Metaphor, this loop is mostly inaccessible for hours on end. I expected a dialogue-heavy experience—Persona 5 certainly was—but at least it let you play. Here, it often felt like a chore: lengthy anime cutscenes would segue into cinematic sequences, followed by in-game dialogues, all before you could take a few steps and trigger the same cycle again. And when you finally did get to play, you’d be bombarded with tutorial boxes—sometimes up to 10—before even starting a fight. This pattern persisted until the 8-10-hour mark.
What’s a Fantazio Anyway?
The premise here is essentially more fantasy/medieval persona. You play as an “elda” boy, who is from a tribe that has been outcast for being born with “forbidden magic.” You travel to the capital with your fairy companion, Gallica. Your quest is to lift the curse on your childhood friend, the rightful prince of the crown who was believed to have been assassinated years before. As you arrive, the king is murdered, and a fantastical race to see who the next king starts. With the king’s death comes the main crux of the game. A popularity contest that decides the next king of the country.
The story tries to juggle a few noble topics such as: who rightly deserves to be king, the importance of democracy when choosing a leader, why a monarchy is important, how power corrupts, can someone in power stay noble, etc. The problem with the plot is it is all over the place, as subtle as Godzilla, and thematically is all over the place. The game simultaneously tries to espouse the importance of democracy while also being pro-monarchy. Along with that, the game makes it a point to talk about how “anyone can be king! Any commoner now could be king!” The problem here is that to even enter the race to become king, you have to own a massive ship, disqualifying 99% of the population.
The story is an entertaining spectacle and has some big moments, but overall is an altruistic melodrama bogged down by horrible pacing and bizarre, incongruous themes.
Dungeons and Dialogue
Gameplay is another mixed bag. Even when you’re finally allowed to play, the game stumbles in odd ways. At times, you’re given dialogue choices that turn out to be meaningless—pick an option, and your companions often overrule you, making your input feel inconsequential.
So what about combat and dungeons? Combat here is your standard turn-based with special and basic attacks. The unique thing here is the introduction of archetypes. These are essentially classes. Each archetype has its own set of skills you can unlock. A fun aspect here is that you can unlock and assign archetypes to your party members. Once unlocked, these can be freely switched outside of combat. Along with that, each archetype can inherit one skill from a previously unlocked archetype-allowing you to do some cross-archetype attacks. These are fun at first until you realize how limiting they are in the way that combat is designed.
Each archetype specializes in physical attacks like the Warrior, or magic attacks like the Mage. Most enemies are only susceptible to your special attacks which use MP. Let’s say you start a battle against foes who are entirely physical attack-resistant, hope you brought an archetype for each party member that does magic, and hope you switched to those prior to the battle starting. If not? You’re out of luck. Yes, the game does give you a gracious option to instantly restart a battle, but if you’re unable to escape, your only other option is to die. And what happens if you die? Oh, you’re reset at the last manual save point or auto-save. Which in many cases is back at the beginning of the dungeon. Causing you to lose upwards of 10-15 minutes of progress. Or let’s say you didn’t prepare the right way in town before the fight. Annoyingly, the game considers that a feature and gives you the option to restart from the last free roam spot which could be hours of progress lost. It’s a truly bizarre design decision. I know it’s a system meant to reward critical thinking and preparation, but to me, it was more frustrating than anything.
In most battles, you’ll encounter the same type of enemies over and over. As a result, you can use the same exact attacks in the same order to beat all of them as long as they are the same group of enemies. Besides that, some fights suffer from a problem X-Com sometimes had. You whittle down a group to one enemy. The enemy has 20 health left. You have all three turns with your party. Your first attack misses causing you to lose 2 turns (yes, that’s a feature) and then the enemy will spam AOE attacks or get lucky and crit on all their attacks to wipe most of your party. This happened enough times that it almost seems by design. As you get further on, you realize some enemies are pushovers, so the game decides to have them spam AOE attacks that do damage to your whole party. This is the equivalent of AI constantly throwing grenades in FPS titles.
Enemies can also inflict status effects that double the damage you take or reduce your attack power. While you can dispel these effects, the enemy will often immediately recast them, forcing you to spend precious MP in a back-and-forth struggle. This turns combat into a predictable routine rather than a dynamic battle decided by tactics or strategy.
Graphics and Audio
The art style does harken more to the medieval, fantastical setting. And while it does contain fun art designs, it does tend to fall too hard on the drab greys and dull browns that medieval design is known for. This is a shame given how flashy some of the character designs or combat moves are. Besides that, some textures in the game look downright unfinished. Especially the ground under your feet in battles if you’re in a city. The street/concrete textures can look unfinished and this extends to other areas as well. Overall, the title looks like a PS4-era title.
Audio-wise, the tracks do find a way to bring something fresh sounding to the medieval period. Most of the tracks are epic, grand, and fun to listen to. That is until you hear them repeated for the 80th time. The main combat track is maybe 1 minute long and repeats constantly. Sometimes even in dungeons, it will continue to loop. And that would be fine if it were an ambient track, but instead it is grand and bombastic.
Outside of combat, all characters are brought to life by some amazing voice talent. They all deliver solid performances that invoke an emotional response. However, in combat, they’ll repeat the same 2 or 3 voice lines over and over. Sometimes triggering immediately after the last line is finished. It got so bad that I ended up turning off the voice volume in most battles later in the game.
Conclusion
I wanted to love Metaphor ReFantazio—given its pedigree, why wouldn’t I? But I walked away disappointed. Requiring players to invest 30+ hours before the game truly begins is an unsustainable ask. Even if the gameplay was perfect, I still couldn’t recommend it at full price. It’s not a terrible game—just an above-average one. If you’re a diehard Persona fan, I think you’ll still love this game. But if you’re a casual enjoyer of them, I’d wait for a sale.
In today’s gaming landscape, there are plenty of well-paced experiences available, and “okay” isn’t enough for me to sink 30-40 hours into a game before it fully opens up to the meat of the game. Let alone recommend it at full price to others.
Metaphor ReFantazio
$70
Pros
- Beautiful Animated Cutscenes
- Wonderful Companions
Cons
- Overly Long
- Mediocre Combat System
- Takes Control From The Player Too Often
- Repetitive Audio
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