Topic: Metaphor: ReFantazio Thread

@Ralizah Thanks, and yes I'll certainly be returning with a ton of notes and questions ha!

IIRC - you have a Steamdeck right? I played BG3 exclusively on deck, and genuinely it ran OK enough for it to be a really enjoyable experience. The game is unlike anything else... just so richly detailed, with amazing VA work and characters + awesome combat. There are a million ways to approach nearly every situation, and consequences for whatever you may decide to action. You should definitely have it on your hit list

@CJD87 Yeah, for games that support cloud saves, I use my Steam Deck and PC sort of like a Vita and PS4 for games with crossplay. Well, mostly for games where the experience isn't too disparate. For Metaphor, I do low-ish settings @ 45fps on Deck and max everything @ 60fps on my main PC, so it works well.

Good to hear BG3 ran well enough on Deck. I imagine I'd mostly stick to desktop for a game that's likely built with M+K in mind, but for long games, I like to have that hybrid freedom to play wherever or grind at times. I've heard insanely impressive stuff about the level of narrative detail and flexibility here. Really puts the "role playing" in RPG.

I guess my concern is that I have next to no familiarity with the universe of D&D and no real motivation to do a bunch of research to get myself up to date on it. Would you say it's approachable enough despite that limitation?

@Ralizah Honestly you'd be amazed by how approachable BG3 is in terms of combat, and the DnD enrichment etc. Its quite unique in that there isn't really a necessity to go full 'min/max', and in fact pretty much most/all builds are viable as long as you 'play smart'.

Generally speaking, the early game tutorials explain the basics of combat - and how each character can commit to so many actions during a turn (move/spell/attack etc). You'll have an idea of how you'd like to play, and then just work to balance your party of 4 a bit - ie have a healer, a melee, a rogue and/or a damage spellcaster.

Once you get a grip for how dice probability works, which is honestly simple, everything clicks in terms of understanding the probability of an attack landing - and the potential damage upon landing. Then just keepm your gear and armor updated and you'll be fine!

The fun part is that you can actually talk your way out of combat a lot, and still gain XP. Or alternatively you might accidentally talk yourself IN to combat Honestly its such a great time, I played on normal difficulty - and there were definitely some fights/areas I needed to reload. But the time I spent researching was minimal, I just kind of had fun 'figuring it out' myself and learning from mistakes.

I'd say story/explorer mode is too easy, normal is a nice curve. Normal is still really enjoyable, but you can still mess up and die if you don't pay attention!

I just started the game a couple of hours ago. So far, I’m impressed by the more graphic nature compared to the Persona series, and even SMT. Another thing that stands out is how well paced it is compared to Persona 5. The game doesn’t waste time throwing you into its world and I love that approach. And honestly, this might be more stylish than P5. As of now, I just beat the “first” boss and met my contact, and we are now resting at a bonfire. I’m looking forward to seeing the game evolve over time, and this is shaping up to be a special JRPG.

@Yagami I agree 100%. I honestly can’t think of any other franchise that comes remotely close to this level of style, from top to bottom. The loading screens, the menus, art style, combat, character models and animations — all of it draws you in to keep you engaged. It’s honesty incredible.

I'm like 20 hours in and crying already. "Their memory deserves love, not pain."

This game is phenomenal stuff.

I just finished the Nord Mines. I decided to opt in and fight the optional boss fight, the dragon, and won. The loot was great, too. I’m digging this game a lot so far.

Just a warning to any Deck players like me. They just dropped a patch it's only a couple of gig big, but it then starts a patch of around 86 gig which is I think the size of the entire game. To have enough room to install this thing I had to basically delete every game off of my deck. You cannot just have the 5 gig free for the update, you actually need like almost
100 gig free for the download to start. Really weird, never had this issue before. But I was scratching my head working out why I could not instal this thing and that's why. Hopefully this helps someone else.

Not sure how well this will go down, but I'm about 25ish hours in. My main complaint is the difficulty design - what a surprise coming from me, I know.

I thought the Archetype system worked like a classic RPG job system where you carved out roles for your party members, but really none of the individual Archetypes really matter all that much or have much individual synergy with specific characters. Instead really all that matters is: is the enemy weak to your attacks and are you weak to theirs?

As such, you'll just start swapping Archetypes around willy nilly until you hit their weakness and have no weakness which can be hit on your end. You're not actually building a team with synergy, it's just matching the ends of the triangle.

This is especially true in boss encounters which are designed less around how well built your party is like I'd have wanted and are really more like puzzles to be solved. Finite numbers of turns, needing to kill enemies in specific orders, needing to interrupt before they do a big move or a heal, very gimmicky stuff.

It's gotten to the point where it's just save at the cat, go to the boss room, did everyone hit a weakness? No? Close the game, swap everyone's Archetype, repeat until you get victory. Like maybe you like this, but I don't.

I'm technically engaging with the systems but not in a way I personally enjoy. I'd rather the strength of my tactics and my team building be tested rather than trying to win a rock paper scissors encounter where nothing else matters. You also can't brute force those encounters either cause of those gimmicks, hit a weakness or you're doing nothing.

I get it. I know this is just how Atlus design their games, and I'm sure some people would love this, but I feel it makes the Archetype system feel way more restrictive than it might have otherwise and I feel like it really strips the personality of the party on the field, cause I'm just interchangabley swapping their role to suit whatever specific encounter I'm in. This isn't like a Persona where each party member has a specific role and you build out teams for specific encounters. Maybe this comes later but right now my roster is static and the only thing changing is the menu of abilities next to their name.

I didn't feel the same strain in say a Persona or even an SMT where you're trying to build a deep roster to make sure you always have something to target a weakness. This has taken that idea but turned it into basically a bunch of different colour hats you swap interchangeably around your party and it makes the more interesting on paper system actually less interesting in practice. For me, anyway.

Wanna stress, I'm not disliking my time with this. Im loving the world, the story, the characters, enjoying all the stuff between the dungeons. But I've just found most of the boss encounters a mixture of frustrating and just sorta tedious because of how limiting their design is.

@Pizzamorg Wait, the update makes you redownload the entire game? I'm confused (also haven't played much in days, lol).

Apparently they accidentally re-added the test folder back in so it patches the entire game. Not sure it's been corrected since.

Alright, I've clocked in about 15 hours now and am really enjoying it. In my most recent play session, I finally finished the Grand Cathedral dungeon including the final surprise boss. Definitely took a while to get through that one! It seemed like it'd never end. I did have to go back and farm some MP once before I encountered Zorba or else I'd have been done with. I'm not someone who enjoys grinding in the slightest, but the overworld combat made it way more tolerable. In general, I don't think I'm going to be doing that for every dungeon, but it just seemed so unsatisfying to get all the way to the top of the Cathedral just to back out then and rest for some MP. At that point I had to just bite the bullet and farm a little rather than risk being slightly annoyed. It'll make me more wary of my MP usage for sure, which I didn't realise until this dungeon was such a scarce commodity.

I actually played and finished the Belega dungeon before tackling this one, so it helped to be a bit more high level than the game might've expected for the dungeon. I was actually surprised to find out that going to the Belega dungeon is more intended to be done after the Grand Cathedral. Sure, the characters are all talking about how maybe this is a harder fight and we should save it... but at the same time they're saying we should do some practice elsewhere before going into the Catedral so like, what do you want from me? It was the only combat area available to me pre-Cathedral! Very mixed messaging there, but luckily I was able to handle the Belega dungeon with relative ease. Just the Guptauros kicked my butt a little, but by the third try I'd figured out what works and was able to put him down. Now, after finishing the Cathedral, everyone in my party is level 18 and I'll be heading out into the Triad Desert next. I wonder if I'll be overleveled for it at this point. I tried to go to the desert before heading into the Cathedral, but the game wouldn't let me, so I'd assume the enemies are higher level there than what I've faced before.

I do like the Archetype system, but I'm having trouble coming to grips with what's the best way to get the most out of it. On one hand I want to fully level archetypes, but then the game is also constantly throwing new ones at me and recommending certain ones over others. Then combined with the inheriting skills and requirements for Archetype upgrades... it's a lot to think about. Maybe a bit too much personally, since I do enjoy when combat systems are more streamlined. I do like that it clearly gives you much freedom in how to put together your party however, but I'm not sure how much I'll be using that as I tend to just stick to what I know in games. I mean, I finished the entire Mass Effect trilogy on my first playthrough sticking exclusively to a pistol simply because that's what the game gave me first and I never switched to anything else. I'm that type of player.

I'm enjoying the story a lot so far, and it's been nice post-Cathedral to finally have a bit more of those one on one sessions with your party members which Persona was so well known for. I was kind of surprised how underbaked they felt, though? They're all such short sequences which then result in an instant improvement of your bond. I thought I'd have to work a bit harder for it. Even getting Strohl to bond level 3 with him going to see the noble to help his people I thought was going to be a much bigger thing and not just a short cutscene. Not sure how I feel about these segments not being voice either, since they're supposed to be such an integral part of the formula and forming an investment in these characters. I imagined they'd feel less like an afterthought, especially since Atlus is widely known for this being a core gameplay element. I was excited to see Strohl saying he wants to return to his hometown, only to realise that it was all talk and I don't actually have that option on my map yet. I guess it'll show up again on some following day.

@Pizzamorg I completely understand your frustration with the Archetype system in that sense! Like I said in this post, I'm not someone who's particularly experimental with combat styles and tend to go for the brute-forcing route if possible in games. I think so far it hasn't affected my experience greatly, since the first few areas are rather straight-forward when it comes to weaknesses and all that, but since you're further in the game I can imagine this might become a sticking point for me as well. I'll have to report back at some point and let you know how it's been developing for me!

This in reply to @Yagami more directly, but also addresses what I mean too @Tjuz

I dropped it down to easy, but I am not sure how much it really helps. My issue is not in moment to moment combat, in fact there where your builds and so on are tested, I feel really strong. My issue is with the gimmicky boss fights that add some kind of heavy restriction on you, and as far as I can tell the difficulty choice doesn't alter these. I don't find puzzles fun when there is only one solution. The Archetype system should allow for player freedom and expression, but the boss fights are designed in a way to promote the opposite. I'm not suggesting people can't like this, but this really isn't how I wanted this to work, and it goes against my inbuilt memory for how classes work in other games, cause it sorta works in the opposite way a class system like this works in other games.

I have yah, but from memory none of them had bosses you needed to beat in a set number of turns, or before they do certain actions or other things like that - maybe optional ones, but not ones on the main path. They were always just regular battles that tested your team comp and tactics.

I actually don't think I can @Yagami as I believe that is where they started throwing those at me back to back, so I might be giving you spoilers unintentionally. A lot of it is kinda muddled timelinewise where it all took place. They all started hitting for me around the 25 hour mark. Have you fought the worm yet? That might be the only one that took place before that city, where you had to kill all the enemies in the same turn or they'd infinitely respawn.

A heads up, once you hit September there are multiple weeks where the game is basically entirely on rails and is effectively a boss gauntlet. There is no way to break from this and grind, so you have to be ready before you hit this stretch.

I was around an average level of 45, and it was not enough. Especially the final boss in this stretch.

I thought I was truly hard stuck and was going to have to drop it to Storyteller which I wanted to avoid as you can't turn it off once it is on, but this is when I discovered I was actually playing on normal this whole time, not easy. So I turned it down to easy and it still wasn't a walk in the park because the boss had basically a 100 percent chance to apply a party wide status effect every turn but they do significantly less damage on easy versus normal, so I was able to just face tank enough to squeeze out enough damage across the phases to win.

@Yagami Interestingly after that stretch it seemed to mostly move away from that mechanic (at least so far).

I dunno though, I am like 45ish hours in now and I still don't enjoy the gameplay of this.

The next dungeon after that no spoilers was just a gruelling slog, densely packed and intentionally difficult to navigate. Then you go into that basically linear unavoidable boss rush.

You may be okay cause you sound significantly more levelled than I am. I am probably compounding my problem cause I find the moment to moment combat so unenjoyable I am going out of my way to avoid as much as I can, which is probably making my experience actively worse in the process because I am probably falling further and further behind the recommended level.

Again, I dunno another game like this for me really. Where I love the world, story, characters etc so I want to keep playing, but I dread the next time I get to an actual gameplay section cause I know I am just gonna be frustrated and just want to get through it as fast as I can to get to the next story beat.

I'll be honest, I really can't remember, but I believe that takes place right at the start of August and I am only like 10 levels ahead of that despite going through two big sections of game (now close to end of September) in that time so I am going to assume I was significantly below that level 😂

So for the longest time I focused on Mage, pumping my points into the magic damage stat. But with how often bosses have some sort of ability to negate all magic and elemental damage I have kept both the debuff and the buff classes (not saying names in case you haven't unlocked them yet) heavily levelled too so I can swap to them in boss fights when they make my Mage build redundant. It also seems worth keeping the Merchant class levelled up, their moves cost money to cast rather than MP or HP, but they are Almighty with high crit rates, so they are useful for bosses who just decide they are going to be resistant or immune to every other damage type.

It would be really nice if we could respec our points. But I wonder if they haven't offered this because some of the later more advanced classes give you huge amounts of stats just for equipping them, so it might have been more beneficial on hindsight to keep my stats mostly neutral, as the class will give me a big chunk of the stats I need for that class anyway as a bonus.

Also yeah, both those abilities, but also abilities like Hulkenberg's ability to add a weakness to pierce and others are kinda vital on bosses that will often have no weaknesses. The debuff class also has a combo move which applies Almighty damage to all enemies and costs 0 mp, you can also get items that make 0 mp moves stronger, so that has been a strat for some bosses as well.