When the creators of some of the most influential RPGs of the last 20 years in Persona announced they were creating a brand new IP in Metaphor: ReFantazio, you better believe many eyes were on them. After a long wait, the brand new fantasy venture is here.

Featuring deep political intrigue with a medieval fantasy backdrop that sees faith and magic collide, all with that tried and true formula found in their prior projects, it’s everything that the team has been working towards for years.

A kingdom up in arms

The king has been slain by an evil count named Louis. The heir, his son, has been inflicted with a curse that has left him in an eternal slumber. The kingdom Euchronia is in unrest as the hunt for a new successor begins, all determined by a competition that spans the entire country. With anyone able to enter, the throne is anyone’s game. Count Louis is leading that race, fortified by a loyal group of equally corrupt followers, having convinced even a majority of the well-meaning civilians that he’s the rightful heir, your world is in danger. Controlling a blue-haired close friend of the prince, it is up to you and your tightly-knitted crew to take Euchronia back for good. It’s time to rid Euchronia of despair.

Metaphor: ReFantazio may be coming from a newer studio under Atlus’ belt in Studio Zero (this specific team’s only prior project was 2019’s Catherine: Full Body), but the pedigree across all of Atlus’ other prior works is evident here. Like the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei titles, Metaphor is nothing short of an epic, and I’m not just talking about the sixty-odd hours it took me to see credits on it, either. Atlus has created a new fantasy universe that isn’t grounded in reality or a spin-off of a preexisting series for the first time. Euchronia is a stunning if bleak fantasy world where prejudice runs rampant and people live in fear. Okay, now that I write that out maybe it bears some (a lot) of resemblance to our current day.

Home to Euchronia is a series of fantasy races that are all largely humanoid but with the expected flourishes. Cat and bunny girls walk the street (fantastic news to me mind you). The Mustari are a race that many dismiss as foreign and are often found concealed by large coverings due to many not liking the third eye on their forehead. Characters that look incredibly human, such as your closest Strohl, essentially are, but with little horns. The most human of all is the Elda race, which the protagonist hails from. They resemble humans entirely, with no fantastical touches to their designs and as such are the most othered and looked down on. While these ideas aren’t exactly out there, it goes to show that Studio Zero has created their own world distinct from reality. Where Euchronia and its world feel cut of a different cloth is in that textbook worldbuilding and writing the studio is known for.

Metaphor: ReFantazio comes with a lot of ideas and themes of hope, salvation and believing in the people and all of it is incredibly impactful. Just to further emphasise how much his world needs saving, our protagonist has a fantasy book of his own that he reads leisurely, depicting a world not too dissimilar from the real world but very different from Euchronia. Cities with skyscrapers that reach the clouds, serving the purpose of keeping commerce, electricity and the like running. It emphasises a utopian modern world, where images depicted are strikingly similar to Japan’s Shibuya. Only, this is a prejudice-free world where society moves as one and everyone can live freely and without fear. Step out of those pages in Euchronia and you’re seeing the church and military collide in a fight for power each with their own selfish needs. Step out of Metaphor: ReFantazio and you’re seeing a man with a grudge on the news telling you why their discrimination of a race or creed is not only justified but quintessential for survival. I’m with you, protagonist. I too want to escape from my world.

I’m in love with Euchronia. It’s got that brooding fantasy vibe found in games like Final Fantasy XVI. The ungodly monsters you’re fighting are labelled as ‘Humans,’ painting eerie and harrowing pictures and ideas in your head of what begot civilisations prior. An early Human boss encounter saw a gigantic human head sticking out of an eggshell body. Atop its head is a saucer where a series of beings circle its heart. It’s essentially taken from The Garden of Earthly Delights artwork from Hieronymus Bosch. That sounds incredibly insane and like the words I’ve strung together here make no sense, so I’ve shown a picture of it below for your viewing displeasure.

No matter the city you’re visiting, there are always interesting little tidbits and details, such as the differences and disparity in poorer and richer districts of towns. The most striking and metal-as-hell sight throughout the game is the Majora’s Mask-esque giant moon/face of the slaughtered king that lingers over the world. Depending on the standing for the race for the king, its pupils change to resemble images of current frontrunners. Terrifying. I could spend thousands more words on this review dissecting little details; the hierarchies depicted in Metaphor’s world or the ins and outs of each race. I’ll save you that puff piece but truth be told Euchronia is a fantasy world I won’t soon forget.

Let’s get Persona-l

I didn’t pay attention to Metaphor: ReFantazio’s pre-release material much and it’s a little bit on me but I was taken aback by how much of the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei formula is utilised for this new venture. There’s its own Velvet Room from Persona where you meet a mysterious otherworldly figure who teaches you about and helps you train and unlock ‘Archetypes,’ the equivalent of Personas. Character bonds (though no romance is found) between both direct party members and familiar Euchronian faces help better your ventures and efficiency. Runs through story-focused dungeons have deadlines where you must chart through and clear it before the pre-allocated calendar days end. There’s your mascot guide for the protagonist, this time a sweetheart and lively fairy named Gallica. Your protagonist even looks nigh identical to the blue-haired hero of Persona 3. This is an Atlus game through and through. I promise that will maybe only bother you for a split second because once Metaphor: ReFantazio gets going, it’s in another gear higher than any of their prior works.

What’s provided here is the result of decades of refinement. Every single element of the Atlus formula you’ve come to know is tweaked and tuned just that little bit. For one, Archetypes are an awakened ability that each party member can use in battle. Getting one hundred per cent completion of this compendium is so much cleaner and smoother this time around as you’re not collecting or combining two Archetypes to unlock another. You’re working through a tree that is unlocked by either bolstering bonds to unlock deeper Archetype builds or getting x and y forms to z level to unlock that class’s grand tier. Besides late-game specialties, any character can use any Archetype at any time and they can be changed at any time provided you’re outside of battle or cutscenes. Even cross-Archetype abilities can be implemented to diversify skillsets. All that’s needed is a little bit of MAG, the levelling currency. Little fuss. Cleaner than ever. How it should be.

Archetypes are impressive and come in lots of different colours and flavours. They all have this striking kind of angelic soldier appearance about them that makes them feel not of this Earth. Specialisations include healing types such as Clerics to buff, heal and provide other passive aids to your party. There are melee and elemental-focused Archetypes and great advantages will come from having as many attack types possible in a given fight so that you can maximise your potential to exploit enemy weaknesses in battle. Before long, with all the extra loot and goodies you’ve loaded off at shops or earned from hunting jobs, you’re rolling in money and as such will find great benefit in vesting in the Merchant Archetype which has an endlessly valuable attack ability that uses coins to attack and almost always is a critical hit.

I can’t emphasise enough that Metaphor: ReFantazio is the most tactile and satisfying Atlus game to date. That remains true whether it’s the incredibly satisfying menu and HUD flourishes that return here with their gorgeous coat of paint or how overworld battling is just that little bit tidier. You don’t have to wait until a high bond level to unlock auto-killing in the overworld now as you did in Persona 5 as it’s available instantaneously on lower-level foes and at least provides a combat advantage when jumping into turn-based fights for those harder enemies. The contentious game-overs you receive when the protagonist is downed in battle (even if others are still up) are gone entirely. As long as one of your party members is up you’re still in the fight. That’s a change I’ve been begging for for years. 

Now you can focus on the really good and stylish stuff such as the striking anime-esque closeups on characters’ faces when you start a battle with an advantage. Getting an extra move on your turn when exploiting an enemy weakness is more tangible and easier to keep track of this time around too thanks to little crystals in the battle HUD that indicate how many goes you have left before it changes to the foe’s turn. When you get one of these weaknesses, only half of the crystal is chipped away at, allowing that extra turn. However, maybe you want to doll out more damage up front and instead use one of the ‘Synergy’ abilities that sees two teammates coming together for a more devastating attack that uses more turn icons. Whatever the approach, there’s never been more strategy and more to do in an Atlus game’s combat than this.

Jaunts through dungeons have never felt better, either. Optional and main dungeons will have secret paths through crawl spaces that will lead to hidden chests and other goodies. They bend and snake around each other in engaging ways and on that note, you have a better read and lay of the land than ever. A pulse ability that is emitted thanks to Gallica will reveal the level of enemies before you collide with them, while also indicating if they’re able to be taken out in one overworld hit or will be a formidable fight that awaits. There are more dungeons than ever thanks to all the different bounty jobs and optional missions you’re undergoing for the Euchronian locals. They’re varied enough and stress verticality and maze-like design that is engaging to decipher. I much prefer this approach of a series of smaller dungeons than Persona 5’s main palaces and one dungeon (Mementos) for grinding in.

Metaphor: ReFantazio’s other meta of trying to work out how best to spend your spare time is also the most engaging it’s ever been. Present again are character-bonding situations that each have their arc. In close companion Strohl, we learn more about his lineage as a member of a now-deceased bloodline of royalty. Here, he grapples with how best to honour his family’s legacy in an emotional and thoughtful series of scenes as acted by Stewart Clarke (of the criminally underutilized Dion of Final Fantasy XVI fame). By the end of it, I was tearing up as I saw how far he had come in a short amount of time.

I love the Persona 5 cast like they were all my children. However, I’ve started to like Metaphor’s just as much if not more. This depth of interaction doesn’t just end with Strohl. There’s the red-headed elf-like companion Hulkenberg who is wracked with guilt as a soldier who failed the duty of protecting the very same prince you’ve been working to revive after all this time. Heismay is a wise bat-like creature who’s lived a long life and in his downtime from helping you save Euchronia wants assistance in laying a deceased loved one to rest. Most angelic of all is the young and naive Maria, a girl with angel-like wings and a flower crown who isn’t of your party but is essentially your North Star, the representation of everything you’re fighting for. In her interactions, you’re witness to her making sense of the world and all its prejudice in at times quite heartbreaking but authentic means.

In between all this character bonding and the main plot, you’re doing a lot of adventuring and travelling thanks to a grand steampunk machinery beast known as the Runner, a walking (and later flying and swimming) transporter that sees you venture across the lands. This is your hub and home for your adventure where you will do a lot of these aforementioned bonding activities but also level up social stats or cook with friends, read a book or even go fishing. It just becomes another engaging piece of the puzzle as to how to spend your time on dungeon deadlines as travelling to different lands sometimes takes several days rather than just an afternoon.

I can’t stress enough how Metaphor: ReFantazio is Atlus at its all-time best. It’s magical and it’s transcendent. They’ve removed the pain points of combat and grinding and hell, there is absolutely no troubling treatment towards women in the game’s entire runtime. It’s night and day to how much objectionable stuff there was in prior Persona titles, no matter how quality their stories have always been. I struggle to find much to ding the game for. If you held a gun to my head and I had to identify something, I’d perhaps point to that I wish Magic Points (MP) were a little easier to restore than the at times sparse recovery item supplies and healing that only occurs at the end of a day. I’d have loved it restoring upon levelling up, for example. This is but a quality-of-life addition found in other RPGs. At the end of the day, I am splitting hairs about an undeniable masterpiece.