My Kingdom For Some Equity – Metaphor: ReFantazio Review

This review features a discussion of the final events of the game. For my truncated spoiler-free thoughts you can scroll to the bottom, otherwise enjoy!

I remember the first time I played Persona 5. I was 20 and had just finished my sophomore year of college bitter at my friends, ready to spend a semester in a whole other part of the world. At that time I was taking up a factory job over the summer to help build any sort of funds before my departure. I’d play Persona 5 for hours when not at work and barrel through the story. Having just lived through the first 6 months of the Trump presidency, the first time I’d see my supposed “electoral power” crumble to the hands of white supremacy, I wanted something that I thought could speak to a better tomorrow. I was disappointed, realizing that I was asking for a lot more than changing someone’s heart and hoping that goodness can lead to a brighter future. I was bitter, angrier, and a lot lonelier than when I’d started the year. On the trips to and from the factory all summer I’d listen to “The Dream Is Over,” the second studio album by Canadian punk band PUP. There was something raw and unfettered in those songs that, as someone who never really went super heavy in his music tastes, I felt drawn to. I didn’t want to be an elaborate phantom thief going on jazzy heists after high school, I just wanted to be a pissed off and immature twentysomething for a bit. Hopping in a magic cat car didn’t appeal as much as wandering around my hometown haunts like a ghost of some kind, detached from the place I grew up but still unfamiliar to the hustle and bustle of New York. A much more personal fantasy at that point, that my depression and anger were justified in some way I couldn’t describe outside of turning the volume up on my earphones.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is the newest game from Atlus, and the second game from Studio Zero after their remaster of the puzzle game Catherine, helmed by former Persona director Katsura Hashino. This turn-based RPG takes place in a medieval fantasy world where horrific monsters roam in the outskirts and the kingdom itself is divided amongst eight tribes of human-adjacent beastfolk. The king of this country has just been assassinated, and in the midst of his funeral comes the revelation that in his dying days, the king knew his reign would be soon coming to an end. Rather than depending on lineage or the leading religion of the Sanctist Church to handle affairs, he used his royal magic to set forth a challenge: the person who could bolster the most faith and trust in the common folk would be the one to seize the crown. One man already stands in high contention with these rules, the king’s own assailant, Louis Guiabern, who talks of a strong hand needed to wield power and ensure a fair world can be created. Amongst all the other prospective heirs to the throne is the player character, a young man guided by the fairy Gallica to help the prince of the country who’d been put under a wicked spell many years ago. Armed with an ancient sword and a fantasy book depicting the ideals of a fantasy world, the young man sets off to save the prince and save the kingdom.

Taking A Step Out of the City

For the most part, Metaphor is a welcome addition to the Persona family of games. Events unfold with a calendar system, where each day you’re to choose between battle opportunities, events that let you raise one of your five Royal Virtues, or spending time with a party member or close ally to your cause in order to gain some benefits in and out of battle as the story continues. The setup of the battles is a little unique, where at every dungeon you’ll roam the overworld freely with enemies you can attack in real-time to stun and then initiate turn-based battle, resulting in a huge ambush on your side that can make fights easier, to the point where lower level enemies can simply be whacked once to gain quick EXP. In battle, the familiarity continues, with magic divided into 6 elements alongside a physical damage split between slash, pierce, and strike affinities. If you’ve played any Atlus RPG in the past, these systems are not difficult to parse and you’ll find yourself in the groove of the main gameplay in no time. 

The Archetype system is your main source for freshness in the formula; the magic of ancient kings brought forth by you and your party members willing to use the anxieties of the world as fuel for their ideals. Each Archetype specializes in its own set of skills, the protagonist’s Seeker Archetype wields a mix of wind-focused spells and healing magic, while the swiftly unlocked Mage Archetype utilizes fire, electric, and ice spells. Between the followers you gather both in your party and through conversation, more Archetypes become unlocked that all playable characters can make use of, mixing skills when needed. This mechanic opens up a ton of party customization, being a lot more engaging than just waiting for the last party member to show up and spam Almighty spells. Synthesis skills are based on what Archetypes you have in your party, which means that you can spend two turns or more for more powerful spells that can mix stat effects with raw damage or just fully help out in a dire recovery turn. The more you build your followers’ connections, the more slots you gain to inherit spells from other Archetypes, leading to an even deeper well of customization options. There are equivalents to the enhanced Personas you can unlock for your party in the Persona series, but these Archetypes still require you to level up and develop other lines of magic in order to be used effectively. It’s the first time I’ve had an RPG give me three physical strength leaning characters who felt palpably different between tanking hits, full on damage dealing, and amassing skills that get amplified from critical hit cultivation. There wasn’t a “wrong” way for my party to be set up, as long as I knew what I needed for each dungeon and boss, I could make do or even just take the time to grind a little and bring an Archetype with more suitable skills that’d work well to support my team.

We’re Actually Working A Little With Themes!

Of course, the mechanics of the game don’t matter in this genre if the story is lacking, and for what it’s worth, Metaphor is maybe the best of Hashino’s stories, that alone a loaded piece of praise. The last three installments in the Persona series have substantial fans for a reason, but those stories also have some pitfalls, whether it be the disconnect around this idea of following the status quo willingly as a means to subvert the status quo, the persistent use of homophobic and transphobic jokes that only have a punchline focused on “it’s funny that these men are uncomfortable with these weird people,” or the whole history of the women in these games being undercut by whether or not the player chooses to date them at the end of the story, the brakes were being pumped immediately with the news of this game tackling issues like discrimination. Overall, I think Metaphor’s writing is actually at its best when it is focused on the complexity of bringing groups of people together. Your quest comes in direct conflict with the political motivations of Church officials and the understandable anger from the populace who simply knows that something has to change, but might not be certain what that change looks like. 

The themes around liberation through art and community connected with me, especially at the start when Gallica, your fairy companion, casts a spell that introduces the primary timbre of Shoji Meguro’s compositions for this game that introduce bombastic orchestral movements with the chanting of a Buddhist Monk in Esperanto for the “choruses.” Despite the hardships of the world, people still find time for song, theater, craftsmanship, cooking, and other flights of fancy. You collect books from your party members over the course of the game as ways to boost your stats and also learn a little more about them, either the poetry that one character writes or another party member’s literacy book containing their name scrawled over and over. The centerpiece connection between art and action is the protagonist carrying around his personal novel that depicts a society devoid of the strife and segregation he and his party deal with currently, and each character you meet gets to reflect a bit on having that fantasy of a better world, while trying to maintain a brave face to their own reality.  

Ultimately, that too becomes a piece of the story’s core when you realize antagonist Louis has a copy of this very same novel, which has also influenced his more absolute ideals. Two interpretations of a text at odds with one another is cool to see unfold, and the question the game poses on the importance of fantasy in these cases is one that definitely had me reflecting on my own creative inputs and outputs in the last few years. You don’t topple the monarchy, that was never going to be the intent of this game, and to go in expecting that is really counterintuitive to what the game does focus on, which are the ways we try to make use of the systems we’re in to support one another. There’s a lot missing for sure, especially in regard to how class is a factor in this unrest even when characters outright name money as a source of other struggles. We’re talking Brave New World levels of caste division at times with some tribes like the horned Clemar and long-eared Roussainte being the typical seat holders for government office while physically striking outcasts like the batlike Eugief are sparse in the capital cities of the country. Then of course comes the amount of furryfolk Paripus who just live in destitution or sell their bodies to study igniters, the Church approved tools for harnessing magic that are sold at ludicrous prices. It’s these pieces that give me pause when it comes to just how much I can praise this game, or what specifically I think works. There’s that brush up from 8 years ago where I can’t help but ask “so how do you take this thought further?” and Hashino just doesn’t answer that. That’s on me, I’ll go make my own game if the question haunts me so much. 

A Bleak World Bursting With Characters

The cast of characters you interact with in Metaphor is perhaps one of the most fleshed out ensembles in an Atlus game and that’s paramount to having this narrative on unity land the way that it has with so many people. Your immediate party members include the young noble Strohl and former royal knight Hulkenberg, both eager to support your cause with their own anxieties to deal with between the wellbeing of communities displaced and the sense of duty lost from previous failure. Heismay, the disgraced former knight, becomes an immediate highlight of the party for not only being coded as one of the oldest, but having a story around loss and what it means to find anything to keep pushing forward. This is the most rounded I’ve felt a cast could be, and while some characters I’m less than excited about, like Junah where it feels like she gets tethered by exposition, overall it makes sense why these people join your cause. This also extends to the followers outside your party, from the Catherina the upstart Paripus (one of the more beast-like races in the game) who wants to give her people better means of survival, to Maria, the daughter of a felled member of your initial group who’s learning how to help others for the first time and what it means to care about others. What helps as well in making these conversations stand out is your protagonist actually has a little interiority! Rather than just leaning into the formula of “positive, negative, and weird answer,” the player character’s dialogue feels like someone having a conversation, and that helps to push characters into that next tier of their follower rank. An extra boon is that the protag is voiced, making those conversations far easier to settle into. There’s a fullness to their narratives and I was consistently invested.

The writing also helps in bringing your main villain to a consistent level of threat throughout the game. Louis is cold, calculating, and ambitious from start to finish. You learn very immediately that he is unashamed in using people for his schemes, and has even committed more than enough bloodshed to get to his current position. But his charisma and resolve are what create a fanbase of sorts amongst the populace, and Metaphor does such a great job of continually asking: What if Louis is right? There’s no reality of this game where the answer is yes, but it at least entertains the question and gives Louis a platform to peer down on for the time being. It’s how you bring your party together, it’s how you build the stakes of the narrative in a way that feels natural, and it’s how you help develop the politics of the world when even at the most popular you might be, people cling to the promises of someone else because it does feel more aligned with their own beliefs. He stays calm, he gives amazing speeches to the masses, and he always focuses on this idea of right to power through very material methods. Louis would’ve thrived in the manosphere I’ll say that much. Genuinely, the game makes it so that Louis having followers is believable, so if you stand against him, talking to NPCs around town and hearing their reasons why they support the king’s assassin makes the struggle to gain popularity feel grounded. 

Throughout this game, there’s a lot of focus on the right to rule, structures of leadership, and where creative pursuits and art as a whole slot into the conversation amidst an unrest of the people. Apart from the overall race to the crown that your group gets entangled with, the game’s populace is mired with a lot of issues from racism to literal monster outbreaks. On one hand, yeah it’s a little dissonant that there’s another story about a chosen king coming forth to bring everyone into a grand new age. The way that there’s this call for the imaginary and the unknown and yet we can’t imagine a way to govern that would move away from a monarchy. On the other hand, the game still sits with the unrest of its society and how its people are so tired in the midst of this tournament. In that overall journey, the potential candidates give some perspective on what those communal anxieties are, which is such a great purview to that pipeline of local to federal concerns. People who want oligarchy, people who want to just loot from the nobles, people who think no one under the age of like 50 should hold power, you got all of these folks running around and trying to piece together how exactly access to power leads to change and prosperity. Your party, this rainbow coalition of people from different tribes but also people spurned in some way by the systems currently in place, helps to paint at least what that potential next step could look like. 

I played this game in November and finished up right into the middle of January. Within that time I’ve seen an election go the worst possible route it could, media companies other and silence the voices of immigrant and queer minorities, tech dickheads continue to use generative AI in a way that can only be described as maddening when compared to the one weird trick of “using thought,” money continue to be poured into a ghoulish state to fund a genocide, and thousands of people lose their homes due to wildfires on the West Coast. In a way I’d play through the game sometimes to piss myself off a little, having this quest that was much easier to solve than everything else going on in the world. Grand Trad’s dealing with physical manifestations of anxiety and a theocratic iron rule, but shit at least they have water on their planet! It was conjuring that feeling from nearly a decade ago, wanting escape in a way but also feeling dejected at the idea of just running from what’s going on, hoping for a fantasy closer to home.

The Final Encounter

The final moments of the game actually speak to some of that, which really took me by surprise. By the end of the game you find out that the prince you’ve been fighting for and the player character are one and the same (roll with it), and the world you live in is in fact a post apocalyptic scenario where the accumulation of magic ended up leading to war and the eventual formation of the tribes. Louis is himself a member of the Elda tribe, like the prince, and witnessed the murder of his parents when the tribe was ransacked earlier by the Church’s warrior monks. When you finally confront Louis at the penultimate moments of the game, he reveals that his plan is to effectively force everyone into an anxiety induced Instrumentality as the magic source of the world is literally fueled by fear, and those who become consumed and overwhelmed by that fear turn into the “human” beasts that roam the world (who themselves are all loosely based on Hieronymus Bosch’s famous depictions of hell, genuinely great designs). Get pumped up with fear and will yourself through it to effectively come out the other side as part of Louis’s alpha race. It’s the kind of future that relishes in the idea of strength and logic to prosper, something that is so inherently opposed to what your party’s been able to cultivate for its support. You eventually best Louis with a big beam and the game ends not at the coronation, but a year after your initial reign where systems start to fall in place, people feel like they can breathe a little easier, and your party sets off on another journey of their own to see beyond their kingdom and experience the world with a new lens. 

One thing that’s curious about the morals of the game is that at no point are you ever trying to find a peaceful resolution to your rivalry with Louis. You gain allies, you find opportunities for peaceful solutions when possible, but a lot of moments in the game do hammer in the fact that sometimes your dream is in opposition to someone, that you do need to take drastic measures to make that dream happen. Louis does become a bit of a comically evil man towards the very end, but the times you do speak with him ultimately boil down to the realization that yes he talks big, he’s also used people, you need to kill him so you can move towards a world that doesn’t involve people like him in power. You plan assassinations, bring the atrocities of the church to light, and overall force the populace to sit in discomfort of what’s been going on. It’s a far cry from just changing someone’s heart to make them suddenly do the good thing. Maybe it’s what happens when you see a successful assassination happen once in the development cycle, and once more when the game’s out. Regardless, there is a sense of mortality that also makes the motif for the awakening of an Archetype so palpable: ripping out your heart and yelling out your truth for the world to hear. 

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a solid JRPG with great gameplay, a fun little soundtrack, and characters that really are fun to see grow and support each other. It’s a long game, at times really asking you to settle in for a session to get a few plot points settled out of a bombastic display. I am not giving Hashino the Nobel Peacy Prize for this script but it’s maybe the least I’ve sat there just loathing the story I was taking in. I love Heismay, Hulkenberg, and Basilio amongst all the other characters you meet. Above all else, there’s no single character that I just wish would get off my screen or who acts in a way that feels like the story needs them to be an active nuisance. The Ryuji and Morgana beef sits heavy on me since it took a whole separate game for them to give one of your main party members a personality and depth. Here though, you do have a tight package of a game whose only sins are following a bit too closely in the footsteps of its forefathers when it comes to level grinding and timesinks for the completionists to spend hours on to get those achievements.

Beyond Just Fantasy

If you’re reading this review, there’s a likely chance you’re also getting really tired at what’s been happening in the world lately. This winter especially feels a lot colder when more and more people are realizing that hate and prejudice are especially profitable at the moment. Earlier last year I played a game that helped me get through a very personal moment of uncertainty, and while it was a salve for that winter, so much has compounded by the end of last year that my time with Ichiban feels so distant.

This past December I had a day where I woke up and by the time I got to the subway I just started to cry. It was a constant stream of tears, of just this unwell feeling. I wanted to yell, to run, to have someone hold me and say that things would be OK. I managed to do my work and show up how I could at my job but it’s the most fully inadequate I’d have felt apart from full on physical illness, a genuine mental health decay.  It was a mix of so many things: of feeling I’ve wasted time somehow, that I’m not helping anyone, and the idea that I’ve just become a little colder as well in some way after everything I’ve had to go through in life so far and that others keep having to go through and one day I’d just be curmudgeon waiting for the day I no longer wake up. It was genuinely agonizing and difficult to sit with. I have more language for it now thankfully, where really I’m focusing on the hole much more than I am the donut lately.

Metaphor was not the cure all that suddenly made me feel better. There’s no one game that just answers all the questions and there never will be. What this game did for me was at least provide a tangible means to just put these thoughts somewhere, to make a number go up because my spirits couldn’t for the time. From that came methods for me to work back to my full self, talking to people at the local bar who’d been playing and also talking about other games we’d play, or making plans with friends to see each other after not doing that since the summer. Posting all this in February, that pit of anguish feels so long ago now.

I hope that this game makes you reach out to someone you hadn’t in a while, or has you pick up that other game you might’ve ignored. Hell, maybe even pick up that book on your shelf that you haven’t found the time to actually read. Do the things you like, share them with others, support the people here and overseas who are dealing with a lot more than maybe you and I right now, and keep waking up each morning. Even in your own community, take the time to look past yourself and help someone else out. The thing about anxiety is you either let it sit on top of you all day or you push through it. It doesn’t leave you, and it hopes that you lose the energy to do anything at all about it. Personally, I strive to do the latter, because the former means I miss out on things. I miss out on the people I love, the things I love to do, and the chance to see something I might not have before. For every bad day I could have, and I’ve had plenty at this point, they’re made up by the days I remember I’m not out here by myself. You aren’t either, and it’s especially important to remember that now. Take care of you and yours, we need you here.