After gaining glowing reviews earlier this week, Metaphor: ReFantazio is out now. Atlus’ new RPG takes the basic gameplay of Persona but does away with its modern-day high school story. Instead, it’s a fantasy tale about a high-stakes election in a kingdom full of monsters, nefarious kings, and political strife. It’s a gripping story that justifies Metaphor’s gargantuan runtime.
I’m sure that it won’t be long until genre fans begin debating if Metaphor is “better” than Persona. It’s a silly question; despite their similarities, both games have very different tonal and narrative strengths, as well as some key differences in combat. There’s no need to pit the two against one another, but Metaphor does make a few quality-of-life changes to Persona’s formula that feel like a definitive improvement. Among the long list of big-picture tweaks, Atlus fixed my biggest pet peeve with Persona: death.
I’ll use Persona 5 as an example. Over the 100-hour RPG, players collect a whole cast of characters, with four fighting in turn-based battle at once. However, they only directly control one outside of combat: Joker. He’s the primary protagonist, and the story flows through his perspective. That’s how most RPGs with parties operate, and it comes with a frustrating design caveat. When a party member dies in combat, the battle continues, but it’s game over the second that Joker dies. It’s absolutely maddening.
Is it a nitpick? Perhaps, but that small decision is one of Persona’s worst traits. First and foremost, it doesn’t make a lick of sense. This is a world where characters can be revived with a single spell during combat. Why wouldn’t a party member just be able to bring Joker back on their turn like anyone else? That decision has two negative effects. On a psychological level, though, the move also hurts the team dynamic that’s so central to the story. I don’t feel like I’m part of a group; Joker is the hero and everyone else is expendable.
On a more functional level, it makes exploration a slog. When I spend 30 minutes exploring a dungeon only to enter a battle where Joker gets randomly hit by an instant KO move, it feels like I’ve wasted a big chunk of time in an already long game. Decisions like that have me thinking twice about whether I want to sink so much time into a game that doesn’t totally respect that time investment. Fortunately, Atlus seems to have realized that with Metaphor: ReFantazio.
The RPG does away with that system entirely. The blue-haired protagonist can fall in battle, and it’ll continue on until all party members are down. That instantly makes battles more forgiving and makes each member of my squad feel important.
It’s a small change, but it’s one that speaks to a much wider design philosophy that makes Metaphor feel so refined. Atlus entirely hones in on quality-of-life upgrades that make for less wasted time. For example, whenever I’m in a battle, I can press a button to restart it from the top instantly. That’s a godsend in fights where a bad string of criticals puts me on defense before the fight even starts. It also allows me to experiment in each fight so I can find each enemy’s weakness. If I happen to drain my magic using every spell until I find the one that works, I can start the battle from the jump instead of dying and popping back to my last save.
There are plenty of other tweaks that go a long way, like a clearer bond system that shows me exactly when my relationship with an NPC will raise and what rewards I’ll get for my efforts. Quests are easier to manage too, as I can stack up multiple at once and set sail on a multi-day journey where I can check off a few over the course of my trip. All of these changes add up to make a long RPG that rarely feels like it’s wasting my time. I have about 40 hours in my save file right now, and very little of that has been dead space.
I hope to see the same thinking applied to the Persona series going forward. Jumping into a giant RPG is intimidating enough as is and any bit of unneeded friction only makes that more daunting. Metaphor: ReFantazio smoothes the experience in the right ways without throwing out what makes the Persona format so special. That makes it a new bar for Atlus, one that I might actually enjoy playing more than any Persona game.
Metaphor: ReFantazio is out now on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
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