The reviews are in and it appears that Metaphor: ReFantazio is a heck of a game, especially for those that have a soft spot for the Persona series. Our sister-site, GameSpot, even rewarded it with a 10/10 review score. That review and many others have echoed that the game's turn-based combat still remains strategic, while streamlining what was seen in the Persona 5 games. Speaking of streamlining already positive parts of Persona 5, the GameSpot review suggests that the day-to-day calendaring and management of out-of-combat time is more accessible and rewarding than what we have seen in previous Persona games. Obviously, the game has STYYYYYYLE but it is also refreshing to hear that the cast is well-written and mostly relatable.

The reviews thus far:

• GameSpot - 10/10
• IGN - 9/10
• Famitsu - 37/40
• TheGamer - 5/5
• GamesRadar+ - 4.5/5
• Eurogamer - 5/5
• DigitalTrends - 4/5
• PCGamesN - 9/10

Now, I do have to err on the side of caution. This might paint me into a weird negative corner, but I think it's hard to talk about modern game reviews for stuff by Atlus or From because it feels like the only use of day one or pre-release reviews is whether or not the PC port is borked. Does the game's grand scale or narrative themes actually hit all of the targets they aim for? To me, the jury is out until people actually finish it because there are no outsiders reviewing Atlus titles. Again, this might be conspiratorial, but it feels like the state of JRPG review meta is that critic reviews are always positive and user reviews are a desolate wasteland. The end result is that I simply cannot take and glowing wave of reviews seriously with the genre. Likewise, I just no longer trust any new Atlus release. Why buy this now when it is likely going to get Royal-ed in two years?

Likewise, when do you think the tide turned and Atlus overtook Square Enix's status as the pre-eminent JRPG developer and maker? Oh, and here's the weirdest Metaphor crossover with F1's Haas team putting a Metaphor character's name on their car's livery and the racers needing to comment about it:

I'm still 99% convinced they did that marketing deal with the Haas F1 team because one of the characters shares names with Nico Hulkenberg, one of the Haas drivers.

It's taking all of my self control not to buy this game.

Look I'm always there for Atlus as close to day one as I can be and I know that I'll probably buy whatever goddamn re-release shows up in 4-5 years too. I simply accept this.

In addition to being excited to play what seems like a great game, also quietly enjoying that this is of course one of the games that various weird parts of twitter have tried to brigade against so I love a wave of overwhelming positivity right out the gate.

All I know is that I enjoyed the demo of the game a lot. Yes, there are a lot of things in the game that are borrowed from Persona, but there is equally enough things different about the game for it to stand out. Despite the delays and disappointments, 2024 seems to be heading for a strong finish in gaming. I won't be getting to this game anytime soon, but I will play it in time.

I thought the game was going to average in the low 80s. Guess the game gets a lot better later after the first few hours. The graphics felt off in some way. I don't know if the word I'm looking for is muddy or blurry. The demo I played felt very familiar to Persona 5. It's very Persona. I can see the game also being different because it has a job system, fantasy setting and adult characters in the party. I like the combat, dungeons, music, and art so I was eager for more. My personal highlight was probably meeting More and mysterious study area.

Really looking forward to this one. Looks cool!

If you have reservations about prior Atlus titles, then I think it's fair to think your opinion may differ from the glowing reviews on this one too.

As for me, I'm fully bought in at this point. I'm day one on Atlus releases until I feel like they do something that really misses the mark for me.

I tried reading the Steam reviews to get some clues as to how this game is on PC/Steam Deck from a technical perspective since most of the major professional reviews were for the console version. Seems like there are some complaints about the graphics settings and quality, which isn't surprising in the least since a lot of these issues also were in Persona 5 Royal, which shares the same engine (Persona 3 Reload is made on Unreal, not the old engine). Also saw a few people mentioning sound-related issues. Given it's Atlus, this isn't too surprising since they've had other games with weird sound quirks and problems. At least it does sound like the game runs pretty well on Steam Deck. The demo supposedly had some performance issues that aren't present in the final release.

As always, a certain dogmatic subset of JRPG people continue to suck. Reasonable criticism like "hey why doesn't this game have proper anti-aliasing or other meaningful graphics settings" or "why does the audio seem extremely low and uneven compared to other Atlus games even with the in-game sound settings maxed" is being met with people dogpiling them for daring to criticize problems that have been in Atlus PC games for years that Atlus has never bothered to fix. The PC version of Persona 4 Golden back in 2020 even had these problems and other optimization issues. Nearly 5 years later Atlus is still releasing games with these types of features missing or problems present.

The other thing I'm trying to get a read on is how Persona 5-ish this game is. I was lukewarm on the original Persona 5 and though Royal fixed some of my complaints, it still had a lot of things I wasn't hugely into, primarily how the story in the back half of the game was paced (a tighter Persona 4-length version of Persona 5 would be a much better game than Persona 5 as it is. The game was like 20-30 hours too long. They optimized Persona 3 Reload like this and it worked wonders) and how much easier P5/P5R is compared to other Persona or SMT games. Most of the more glowing reviews are written by people who are big Persona 5 fans and are predisposed to like these games, especially Higham at IGN, so it's hard to gauge how much this is impacting their reviews.

I'll probably end up getting the game either way it's just more of a "should I get it now or wait for sales" type of deal.

There's a lot of this game that is like someone found an archive of my tiny nitpicks about Persona over the years and just kinda tweaked all of them for the better, really appreciate it glad I could be of service.

I feel as though I'm still very much in the guided intro section of the game so I have yet to get a complete grasp on just how Persona it can be but I'm really enjoying what I've see so far.

I will say though, I don't think it's a particularly strong entry in the usual Atlus Styyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyle category.

@efesell: I am still in the intro-ish section (despite being 5 hours in in Atlus fashion), and I can't put my finger on what it is, but something about the look and style of this one feels good but not quite there. I wish I could articulate it better.

I think it's better than Persona 5, which was a game I really wanted to like but ended up bouncing off of pretty hard. Specifically, there's lot of QoL additions in this one:

• The game is much better at fronting when something will take time and whether you are going to derive a benefit from doing it. One of my big issues with Persona 5 was having situations of "I just wasted an afternoon talking with this person and didn't increase my relationship with them". That's mostly gone here.
• I like that they simplified the Persona/Archetype system so that you aren't having to waste a bunch of time faffing around with combining Personas or trying to recruit them (one of my most hated things in Persona 5). You just get what you get and unlock more by leveling up the one's you have.

That said, there are a few things that really grind my gears the farther I get into the game:

• It's obnoxious how often you need to swap Archetypes either to get a heal in a dungeon or just to optimize your setup for the boss. This game would really benefit from having some kind of loadout system you could quickly swap between Archetypes groups.
• Your stupid fairy companion will remember enemy weaknesses within a dungeon but not across dungeons. So if you fight the exact same enemy with the exact same name in multiple locations, unless you have a good memory, you're going to need to remember resistances. It's super annoying.

@sethmode I think part of it for me is the severe lack of enemy variety and that they aren't as many crazy designs as the enemies in Persona. No giant penis monsters here. Just a lot of palette swaps of goblins, skeletons, insects, and giant birds. The Archetypes are also nowhere near as interesting as the Personas visually. While I like that they are grouped into more defined "families" so you know kind of what you are going to get with them, they are not very visually distinct.

I started the game being a little down on this music and I am ending the game with the fervent desire for that goddamn monk to follow me around to rap about my triumphs in life.

To the few weird GB forum obsessives who are still reading this—

Been looking forward to playing this game, but have been sidetracked by other games until now. I wanted to wait until I could devote my full attention to it. Probably gonna start tomorrow (U.S. election day, nice distraction, right?).

So: what I want from you guys is your early-game tips. I'm a Persona veteran not worried about story spoilers. I want my first playthrough to be without any online guides but I'm happy to hear from the GB community anything that will give me a leg up in the early game, gameplay-wise (still not sure exactly how much this game departs from Persona). Be as specific as you dare. I'm a min-maxing, save-scumming sort of player, so I'll happily take any advice you'll give me.

@atheistpreacher: The Persona concept of needing to mix/max super hard to do all the social links and level up your social stats is not remotely a thing in this game.

Social links now always advance a level with every interaction, so the filler interactions with nothing but the whole "I feel like our relationship will grow stronger soon" are completely removed. If someone is available that day, you're going to advance their story. No more worrying about having a matching arcana on you or looking up the dialogue choices which give more points.

The game also gives you more than enough days to level up all your social stats, complete every character's social link, and do every single side quest. I had more than a week left over before the end of the game where I literally had nothing left to do at all, and that's without even trying to be very efficient or looking anything up.

Unless you end wasting a ton of days for no reason, or take several days to complete each dungeon, you should have no trouble seeing everything. I did do most dungeons in one day, so keep that in mind, but it wasn't a huge challenge to do that if you're not afraid to use your MP items and always be on the lookout for more when they're available for sale.

This also isn't a Fusion based game so you won't need recipes for unique overpowered builds or anything. You can always see the entire list of what Archetypes you have available and a full list of of what skills you can slap onto them.

When you unlock Merchant though slap that on the Main Character and its basically his default Field archetype for the entire game.

@ll_exile_ll:Good to know. I'm happy to hear that I'll probably be able to finish everything naturally without the help of a guide, which was very possible in P5 but not so much with the other Persona games. If I'm less concerned throughout about being uber-efficient then I'm probably going to have more fun with it.

@efesell: Cool, I have no idea what the "merchant" thing is all about, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.

I was about 30% through it yesterday, and I loved it. It was great, everything was so good about it.

Then the real election hit and I do not know if I can touch Metaphor for a good long while. That is no fault of the game, but I REALLY wish I beat it before the election beat me.

@tartyron: I beat the first major boss (I think), the game was really clicking for me at last, and then...same. I tried to play some to take my mind off of things, but that didn't go so well. Rough times, to say the least.

My only real complaint with the game is the same one I've had with a lof of Personas - the dungeons are just too damn long. Other than that, it's fantastic.

@tartyron: Yeah same, I have just a little left and it’ll be a bit before I go back.

The game really has a lovely message but right now I’d look up from it and think “Yeah nah it is just a fantasy after all.”

Whereas I started it today. Which is going to leave it with some unpleasant associations, but at this point that's probably unavoidable. Anyway, it seems fine so far, but I'm still in the early parts so it remains on rails for now, hard for me to judge for sure.

@efesell: Ooof, you just outright said it. Cut it right down to it.

FWIW I mostly disagreed with this, until today when I did the Dragon Temple main story dungeon and holy crap I though that thing would never end. I'm hoping that one is just a bit of an outlier. I don't usually mind long dungeons, but there's a limit!

Otherwise been mostly enjoying the game so far. It's not perfect, I have my quibbles (e.g., the fast travel menus could really use some work). And also the fantasy setting is not grabbing me like the modern Japanese high school setting in the Persona games did, though the writing is generally pretty good (a tad trite at times) and I like the individual characters just fine (Heismay feels like a standout and I really like his English VA). Not sure if I'm feeling oversaturated with high fantasy in general or it's this game's specific take on it; will probably have to meditate on that one a little more.

But the gameplay design is all pretty clever and they've also streamlined some of the hangout stuff in relation to how the Persona games do it, mostly for the better. Nice to see Atlus stretching their legs and tweaking the formula some, one wonders if any of these changes will make their way into Persona 6.

I started playing it again today and it’s a bit of a balm instead of a bummer. I was worried the real world killed my play through but I think I’ll be able to finish. Just in the oceanside city now and looking forward to at least helping out a fantasy world, even if the real one is fucked.

I definitely started off kinda hating the music... and then I got used to it, which is not exactly the same thing as liking it. Some of it I genuinely did grow to like, but for the moment the thing I'm annoyed about is that, nearly a week after I stopped playing the game, "Journey's Legs" has become a total earworm that I just cannot get out of my head.