While we were at the Summer Game Fest, we were invited to get some hands-on with Atlus’s upcoming RPG, Metaphor: ReFantazio. So, of course, we jumped at the chance to check out this game. Metaphor: ReFantazio, if you haven’t heard by know, is being created by several members at Atlus who also worked on Persona 3, and it is in a much more of a medieval setting. It’s also a game that looks amazing, and the art design blew me away.
Oh, we finally get to play this masterpiece
During the hands-on, we were able to get in nearly an hour of gameplay, which was segmented into three parts. The first part puts us at the beginning of the game when you first get access to your fairy counterpart. This part dealt with learning the mechanics of the game’s movement and the overall gameplay loop. You get a brief introduction to combat and a single-party member. Here, you attempt to meet up with a contact of the fairy you are traveling around with. Unfortunately, the meet-up location turns into a battle with humans.
In this game, the monsters attacking you and your party members are humans, hellbent on killing you. It’s a weird take, as most RPGs involve humans as the heroes taking on the monsters, but not so much here. There are no humans in the traditional sense, and it’s an interesting game to figure out, with all the metaphors in the game! You, Strohl ( a member of the army you met up with), and Gallica (your fairy friend) now have to go through this tower to find your contact. A lot of enemies roam the halls in this tower.
This is where the combat tutorial takes place. There are two aspects to combat. Real-time and turn-based combat. When exploring dungeons you can come in contact with enemies. You can dodge attacks that will be aimed at you, or you can attack them. If you hit them enough times that their stamina gauge depletes, you can initiate turn-based combat. If you initiate combat this way, the enemy will be stunned and will lose a section of health. Otherwise, you can initiate turn-based combat whenever you are in proximity to an enemy.
Turn-based combat in Metaphor: Refantazio will be familiar to those who have played any of the Persona games. You can use a skill that your character has access to. Whether it is a character skill or a skill from your current archetype. You can also use your equipped weapon to do a melee attack on the enemy. You can also guard or pass your turn. Certain skills can buff you or do magical damage. In this first dungeon, the only skill you had was a fire magic ability that caused fire damage to the enemy. If you can defeat an enemy without getting hit, you will gain a bonus of extra experience points and money.
After time was up for the first segment, we were moved to the next phase of the demo, which started soon after I got my hands in the combat, where it whisks you away to a different dungeon but with two party members this time. Strohl, the warrior from the first section, as well as Hulkenberg a new paladin. She has long ears, longer than an elf, and red hair. Throughout the dungeon, there is a variety of side quests you can accept from the NPCs you can find.
In this dungeon, you get to see some of the perks of real-time action combat. If you deal enough damage to the enemy while you are trying to get their stamina gauge to zero, you can flat-out defeat them without needing to initiate turn-based combat. You also get to see more of the archetype system in this dungeon. Your main character is a seeker with a good mix of skills that are damaging and supportive. Strohl is a warrior with mostly physically damaging skills. Hulkenberg, as a Paladin, has much more defensive skills. Her archetype supplies a small healing skill as well.
This is where we also get to see some of the amazing art screens in Metaphor: ReFantazio. The party menu, the victory screen, and the pause screen. Everything in this game is a spectacle to behold. The art direction in this game is insane. You could make any of the screen flashes for battles that start, or even when they end into wallpapers, and be delighted to look at them every time you boot up your computer. Even the very fast and small loading screen that pops up at times is great. It even shows a little floating dynamic picture of Gallica.
When you activate skills, you are using your archetype. Whenever you are in the skill menu, your archetype appears over your character to use the skill. You get experience that goes into your characters as well as the archetype your character has activated. When your archetype levels up, you get extra stats, but most importantly, you get more skills for your character. When I completed one of the quests, I got a new bond that unlocked a new archetype, Brawler. You get new archetypes by forming bonds or by leveling up the archetypes; you already have to evolve them to new tiers.
The final section of the hands-on preview takes place right before a boss fight. You get a new party member with you in this section. Heismay looks like a rabbit with a staff in his hand. He had the archetype of the mage. I had access to tier two of a few archetypes. However, in this boss fight, the tier one archetypes are recommended as they are more leveled up and have more skills available to you.
What We Learned
Metaphor: ReFantazio is a passion-driven RPG from the makers of Persona, and it shows. The art, the gameplay, and the substance of archetypes and party members all have a lot of charm to them. This is absolutely a game to look forward to. I love the fantasy-era designs. The Archetype system has a lot of depth, and I wish I had more time to dig into it. That is kind of my biggest feeling about this demo. There simply wasn’t enough time to dig into this RPG during the event, and I wanted to spend more time in each of them to get more information on it.
Metaphor: ReFantazio will be released on October 11th, 2024, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
