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There is very little more you need to know about Metaphor: ReFantazio than the fact it has Count Louis Guiabern. He is the very first character presented to the audience, and from the short minute of introduction he grants you it should be immediately clear why he is so appealing. A confident, cocky, controlled and conventionally attractive antagonistic force who simply does not care about you-- yet, in his absence, you can't stop hearing about how every character care about him. Despite being backgrounded for the first half of the story Louis exists as this persistent presence that only amplifies when he becomes a direct player in the plot. At times, it feels like the game centers itself around him as its shining star; a bold task in an already gleaming game.

And yeah, beyond the noble Count himself, there's a lot to Metaphor: ReFantazio that makes it sparkle.

The first thing to catch your eye will probably be the literal sparklies on screen. Over the past decade Atlus has been cultivating a reputation for pushing the envelope of visual design in RPGs, and they've once again re-established themselves here. Though it might be trite to say in this day and age, Metaphor is a direct evolution of the ground broken by Persona 5. The character designs run remarkably close to confidants of the Phantom Thieves, and many visual effects are accompanied by a splotchy drip of ink and paint. This didn't feel like a lazy reuse of assets, to be clear. Just a natural consequence of having the same artistic team at helm of both projects.

The overall identity also strongly differs between the two works. As opposed to the sharp, jagged, scrapbooky look of Persona 5, Metaphor instead opts for a more measured approach. The primary visual theming is drawn from the work of Renaissance scientists like Leonardo DaVinci. Status screens and equipment menus show the party splayed out in Vitruvian poses; menu transitions are done by tracing around chords of a circle and following angular line segments across the screen; social contacts and characteristics appear on graphs and grids as if they were measurements quickly jotted down; the game's title itself is stylized between two hyperbolic curves. The game's UI is clearly inspired by the age of enlightment and the scientific intent and academic atmosphere of that time.

The enemy designs also showcase a clear intention-- to be completely absurd. Their inspiration is drawn a few centuries earlier, right around when the European world was getting out of the Black Death. In addition to your typical medieval staples of goblins, griffons and ghouls are the surreal Humans, creatures resembling us in names alone. Humans are very clearly inspired by early gothic and religious styles. Some designs are literally Heironymous Bosch works come to life with others being biblically accurate angels dancing the Danse Macabre. The human designs are the best depiction of the game's creativity, I feel.

Unfortunately, the visual style often got in the way of functionality. The division of submenus wasn't clear, and I often had to leaf through a few different menus before getting to where I wanted to be. As an example, the page where you determine party composition can only be used to check ally's stats. If you wanted to change their equipment, that would live in the equipment menu, which is disjoint from the items menu. Additionally, changing an ally's skills and their currently equipped class (described below) is a fourth menu unrelated to any of the ones mentioned prior. Even halfway through the game, I found myself lost in the wrong tab trying to change an ally's weapon. This was a bit of a surprisingly juvenile mistake from Atlus, as I didn't have these issues with their equally-stylized earlier work.

It should be obvious that Metaphor: ReFantazio's story heavily discusses the value and importance of fantasy as a concept. To this end, the game centered itself around a valuable question: "how beneficial are idealistic fantasies when trying to bring about practical societal change?" This focus on the utility of fantasy was immediately intriguing, since it's a stark contrast to a large bulk of narratives in this genre. The majority of JRPGs presuppose that the love, friendship and teamwork are inarguably valuable. Time and time again, we've been shown that there is nothing more powerful than a great group of friends, and through teamwork peace can be restored to an already ideal society.

Metaphor doesn't accept this as a premise. The game's frame is that of a medieval world's first democratic election, and the message backing your campaign is under constant evaluation by every member of the game's world, the fantastical United Kingdom of Euchronia. This constant scrutiny means that blind idealism isn't innately valuable. It must be weighed and judged, and the protagonist's group must demonstrate how the power of teamwork can help fix the woes of the populace. And indeed, Metaphor's premise also implies that society is not naturally good. The Kingdom of Euchronia is not and never was a utopia. It is plagued with issues and problems that happen to run exceptionally close to ones in contemporary society: racial inequality, class inequality, the separation of church and state as well as between the church and spirituality, and so on.

I had my doubts about whether Atlus would be able to hold a meaningful conversation about these topics. Atlus has somewhat successfully talked around related topics before in Persona 5. P5 discussed where corruption began in society, but was unfortunately undercut by a (somewhat necessarily) juvenile execution. This time around, it was stated from the jump that Metaphor's plot would focus on ways to assuage and solve more mature topics than those covered prior. This put Atlus in an uphill battle in my eyes: it would not serve them well if their commentary on racism was resolved by magically blessed teenagers some deific reification of racism. As much as I recognize-- and enjoy!-- the trope of overthrowing God before being able to drink, complex issues like racism require a more elegant touch.

Thus, I was impressed to find Atlus prove themselves capable of discussing these subjects. To clear the absolute lowest bar, there is no "big boss of racism" at the end of the story. There are factions and people that are responsible for further igniting racial tensions, but the core problem did not originate from one entity in particular. Much like in the real world, discrimination arose in Euchronia almost ambiently: one of the Kingdom's races, the Rhoag, is described as having a notably longer lifespan than the others. As a consequence of this, the game notes that many of the important governing institutions are perpetually headed by Rhoag. Within the story we see that this has naturally created tension between the Rhoag and other races. As the game goes on, there are further examples of how other race's innocuous features turn into pain points when combined with society at large.

Through this example with discrimination, as well as countless other plot points big and small, I had my faith in Atlus for the entirety of my road trip across Euchronia. They deftly avoid contrivances, and instead have plot points fall naturally out of the world they built. Before ending this section, I'd like to especially point out the benefits the well-constructed world has for the character writing. Like in the Persona games, Metaphor has a social element that involves helping characters through individual struggles. Since each of these characters exist in a fully-fleshed out world, their own stories feel justified given their background and greater context in the world at large. Special shout out to Brigitta, Bardon, Alonzo and of course, my darling Louis. Their individual arcs was some of the strongest writing I've seen come out of Atlus.

Speaking mechanically, Atlus has cut away a very competent middle ground between the modern Persona and Shin Megami Tensei styles of combat.

The inspiration of the former is felt through the generally fast pace of combat. Many encounters in Persona are accurately called puzzle-like: they focus on using the baton pass mechanic to knock down as many enemies in one turn as possible, setting up for an ideally enemy-wiping All-Out Attack. Metaphor follows a very similar one-turn flow: there are a great many skills in the game that are focused on making enemies vulnerable to elements they wouldn't be otherwise. Additionally, while there aren't All-Out Attacks this time around, many of the multi-target magic spells are locked behind the collaborative Synthesis mechanics, which I felt echoed the novelty of All-Out Attacks. Both of these combined made me fall into the same "set em up, knock em down" style of playing as I did in Persona.

The SMT influence is felt through the restrictions placed on player ability in combat. Metaphor inherits the fiendishly delightful Press Turn system. Instead of being guaranteed that each of your party members will act once a turn, you are instead alloted four Press Turn icons. Most actions consume one icon, meaning a regular party would act four times before changing turns to the enemy. However, attack effectiveness and accuracy can affect this: hitting an enemy's weakness grants an additional action, allowing for two full rotations through the party before switching turns.

Conversely, the player pays a price for swingly blindly. If an enemy strongly resists or dodges an attack, then a player could lose multiple icons or their entire turn. As such, the order of operations becomes a much heavier focus. In order to gain more actions you will want to probe the enemy for weaknesses, but choosing poorly could prematurely end a turn before having an opportunity to properly set your party up.

Metaphor also sports a couple of completely fresh additions that can't be traced back to either sister series, the first being the introduction of a class-based progression system. Party members notably do not gain skills by leveling up normally as is the cause with many other RPGs. Instead, characters gain proficiences in individual Archetypes. Archetypes can be thought of a template for combat roles: there are Archetypes for swordfighters, for mages, for healers and thieves.

There are explicit incentives to play around with party Archetype composition. The aforementioned Synthesis skills require specific Archetype combinations to be present in battle to execute, and executing them may require moving a dedicated physical attacker into a buff-focused support role to pull off; the game doesn't penalize you for this, though. Archetypes have the ability to inherit skills from other classes, allowing party members in an off-role to still fulfill their original niche, if a little less effectively. Additionally, every party member can learn every archetype without any penalty, so there is little reason not to get creative.

There is still clear room for improvement in this system. Some Archetypes are simply bad because of lackluster skillsets. Furthermore, while every party member can learn every archetype, party members still grow according to a base stat distribution. This means that while you could change a very late game party member from a mage to melee class, their immutable stat distribution would be leaning so far towards the magical persuasion that this would be an incredibly ineffectual move. Minor things like this make the combat feel a little less free than it appeared at first glance. By endgame, I definitely felt like there was an intended party set up, instead of being able to face down the challenging final bosses with something I had created myself.