Topic: Metaphor: ReFantazio Thread

@Pizzamorg Yeah, it is! Until they patch it, seems broken to me XD

Grotesque Guptauros feels like a nod to SMT IV nod. Love how connected this feels to the rest of their JRPG legacy.

@Pizzamorg The good thing about properly balanced press turn combat is that it can be satisfying even on lower difficulties (versus something like Persona 5 being stupidly easy even on the highest difficulty, ugh).

Yeah, this game has given me mad Three Houses vibes since the beginning. For both good and bad reasons, lol. I need to play on Deck for a bit and see how everything fares in Tradia Desert. The dungeons do really well in handheld form.

Well, I just gave into the hype and purchased the game myself today. I've actually never played any other Atlus game before this. The Persona series always intrigued me, but the school setting put me off as it just didn't seem that interesting to me. The whole fantasy politics is way more up my alley... so I decided to take the plunge. Aside from no previous experience with Atlus, I gotta say I also have never really finished a JRPG. I'm familiar with turn-based combat of course, but it's been hit or miss for me whether I enjoy it. Combat systems like in Divinity: Original Sin and X-Com I enjoy, but the demo for Octopath Traveler 2 put me off with its repetitive combat encounters.

I've now put in two hours, so we're very early on in the game, but it's made a good first impression. I was surprised by how different the cinematics were from each other. From full-on anime to in-game rendered to pretty much non-voiced static dialogue. I'm not particularly a fan of the not voiced dialogues, but I'm pretty sure that's a staple of the JRPG genre so I'm not all too fussed about it. However, it does irritate me how they still put in voice lines for unvoiced dialogue that are either barely relevant to what's being said or not at all. I'd rather they'd have just kept it completely silent then instead of forcing that in. I also think that while exploring the world the game is way too hyperactive with random voice lines left, right and in front of me everywhere I walk. It's like sensory overload, and so often these voice lines seem to just repeat as well. It was giving me traumatic flashbacks to the Divinity: Original Sin Cyseal market... not in the mood for cheese, anyone? It felt like that but on steroids.

I'm actually a big fan of the combat system so far though. It feels intuitive, flows nicely and they end quick when it's just farming simple creatures. It's pretty much all I could ask, because I absolutely despite to grind for levels in RPGs, so to at least make that process painless and swift is already a huge pro on my side. I'm also interested to see where the story goes from here. I'm definitely invested in Strohl's character already as well and was sad when I thought he died for a second there. Excited to play more of it along with all of you!

I also disliked the school element of Persona, I think over the years I better understood the intention behind why it was there, but I still haven't come around to loving that part of the game.

However, it is funny because I was playing Metaphor and thinking to myself man... that is about as refined of a Persona experience as I've had, but it is weird, I just can't quite figure out what they did differently that has had such a profound effect on making this feel like a better paced, more focused, experience.

Then it clicked.

Oh yeah, the school is gone.

Mechanically very little has really been done to alter the formula in a physical way, but when you're asked to do busywork to stay up to date with random people in town, or to study for a test or keep up with your after school clubs or whatever it may be, it really makes the busy work obviously busy work. Some of that may have been intentional, but understanding the narrative intent doesn't automatically make doing that stuff fun.

Here when the game asks you to do busy work, you're working on some grand goal, or going on a quest, or building an army or whatever fantasy flavoured endeavour it may ask for. And while it may be mostly just narrative dressing, it really does positively alter the perception of you feeling like you are doing meaningful activities in your down time, when really you're doing much of the same stuff we've been doing in these games now for like two decades.

They basically imported the modern Shin Megami Tensei "Press Turn" battle system almost outright for this game, which is nice. The big addition here I'm a fan of is how fully they integrate on-map battles for clearing out weak mobs, which is a huge boon. It's more commonplace and skill-based than a similar mechanic in Persona 5 with the dodging and whatnot.

I've seen several people try this game now and say they've never dabbled in Persona or SMT. I feel like the more Western fantasy theming is really bringing people on-board in a big way.

It'll remain to be seen if the game has legs, but sales are FAR outpacing any of Atlus' previous releases to date, and it's garnering a ton of mainstream attention. Very cool to see for one of my absolute favorite developers.

I think another underrated mass appeal thing to Metaphor is the dub. I think Persona 5 and Reload have pretty good dubs, but they still are very much anime dubs. Whereas, I feel like the direction just feels more natural for the dub in Metaphor and it just feels more like a Western RPG made to be played in English.

@Pizzamorg Did they re-sync the lip movement for the dub, during cutscenes? I could never bring myself to try it

The music is amazing as always. Shoji Meguro outdid himself once more. The ambush battle theme and the first big dungeon theme have to be my favourites so far.

I'll be honest I never much paid attention, I am playing predominantly on Steam Deck so the mouths are very small 😂 I will try and focus on that the next time I play and report back.

JRPG dubs just seem to sound better when everyone doesn't sound like an American.

Xenoblade fans have known this for years.

@Yagami I'm playing with the English dub myself and I've definitely paid attention to the syncing at certain points, because I don't think it's very good. I honestly can't even tell if they tried to re-sync it for the English dub or not, though I would lean towards no? The lip syncing seems so half-assed to begin with that I feel like it doesn't really matter ultimately, haha. I'm not even saying that as a criticism or anything since it doesn't really bother me, but I can't imagine the lip-syncing in Japanese feels much better with the way these mouths move.

Only thing I prefer in the sub is the thing @Tjuz pointed out which I didn't know was a problem until I swapped, and its that in the unvoiced bits of dialogue they play like a canned word or two from the actor like its from an emote wheel or something. In Japanese this feels like flavour because I don't know what is being said, but its extremely distracting in English when you're trying to read a block of text while a random English voiceline is blared over the top of it, that matches nothing to what is written and sometimes isn't even tonally aligned, either.

Picking this up hopefully tomorrow. Enjoyed the demo a lot so excited to jump into the full game.

How accessible is this game for someone with zero experience with Persona/SMT....

The GOTY Hype has me really intrigued by this title, albeit I don't think I have ever played anything quite like it? This is the same feeling I got about Baldurs 3, which I took the plunge on and absolutely fell in love with (only CRPG experience prior was Disco Elysium...)

My JRPG experience is pretty limited, mainly Xenoblade series (Switch, 1-2-3) alongside the PS1-era Final Fantasy games.

Is it a game whereby I'll need to have the laptop open the whole playthrough to understand the various mechanics? I'm no stranger to that, having been well versed in Monster Hunter (!), but I'd rather have something a bit more 'pick up and play' if possible.

This might seem impossible, but would be great to hear a hard sell for a ATLUS n00b ha

@CJD87 As someone who was in your position prior to starting, I would say it's mostly safe to jump in. I do feel somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of systems in the game already (and by all accounts it'll just get even more with time), but the game introduces them gradually enough that it's not an instant dump of information you're bound to forget half of. The game also has plenty of tutorials at the ready if you ever feel out of your depth because you didn't pay enough attention when a mechanic was first introduced or need a little more information to get the gist of it. So far I haven't needed to go out of the game to get more explanation elsewhere, so that's a good sign at the very least. The only thing I've had to Google was how to dodge while exploring the overworld, which I'm pretty sure the game tutorialised me on but I simply forgot in the slow onslaught of more information. If you're comfortable at least committing enough to getting to grips with the mechanics, I don't think it will turn you off entirely. If you'd rather not have a game with a bunch of different systems in general, then maybe wait out on this one until you're more in the mood for that type of experience.

@Tjuz Thanks man, and appreciate the response.
As a newcomer to ATLUS yourself, are you enjoying it so far? What elements are pulling you in? And is anything turning you off?

I'm really leaning towards it, as the last 2 GOTY winners (ER and BG3) are some of my favorites of all time... and this could well follow suit

I'd say it is as pick up and play as you want it to be, @CJD87. A cop out answer maybe, but an honest one. Outside of making sure you hit deadlines for quests, there isn't really that much you need to pay attention to if you put it on the Storyteller difficulty (as this is the only difficulty that lets you revive with progress restored on failure, so any boss you could keep reviving and whittle its health down until its over if you really wanted). I do think though if you want a rewarding experience with this or push the higher difficulties, this isn't going to be very pick up and play friendly at all and you're going to have to be pretty committed to it. You won't need to follow a guide word for word though unless you are aiming for a 100 percent completionist playthrough whatever you chose to do.