Metaphor: ReFantazio Spiel
Metaphor has everything you hope for in a Japanese game. It has the winner-takes-all tournament, where you are one of the candidate running to become the next king; It even comes with the ranking system. Characters, even the villains, have its own plan. The combat rewards strategic play style learning and targeting enemy weaknesses, and should you be over-leveled it has the ‘quick’ combat system to defeat the enemies without engaging them in a turn-based combat. The game doesn’t shy away to express its unique art style, in designing monsters, the fashion styles of each major characters. Even the menu screen shows much though went into it. And the anime cinematic slipped into some of the major cutscenes are something to be admired.
So, if the game is all sunshines and roses, what’s the need for a spiel? Just end the post with “great” from “great-okay-bad” scale, and be done with it, no? They say the devil is in the details, and for Metaphor, the shortcoming is in the finale. Metaphor is a hybrid experience. The way I would put it is that it felt as though I was enjoying two different mediums at the same time —a JRPG and an anime. It’s as if Atlus was adopting an anime into a video game and decided to slip in the popular cut scenes from the original; that’s how good the cinematic is. The only problem is, this isn’t an adaptation, and there is no original material. If we were to see the game in the lens of one medium, say, anime, Metaphor has less engaged attitude toward its political discourse than in anime from back in 2000s, namely Code Geass franchise. For a game that has most of its plot unfolding during anime cutscenes, weak sauce is bound to make a weak dish.
With 6 party members, not including the main character and other supporting roles, and your 14 political sponsors, ironically translated to “followers” in the English version, you do have some relationships to manage. There is some overlaps between your party and the followers, so it doesn’t come out as stealing 20 people’s hearts. But with every subplot in every characters, it ultimately boils down to being a good friend or friend-zoning them. If dating sims start with learning the character and end with the lover status, Metaphor starts with friendship and end with friendship. I suppose “friendship is magic”, in every sense of the word, but that’s not a basis to monarchy.
It’s at this point the game fails to pieces things together. The ranking system, for example, appears as though you do need to play the cards right to get people’s support. But that is simply not true. From my playthrough, the ranking was simply a gimmick, just an arbitrary number. You can certainly gain supports from side quests, but it’s either you win more (e.g. like leveling) or it stays the same. Same goes with the relationships with the followers. The only thing that’s keeping the show on the road is the calendar system, where you have strict deadlines to meet. The deadline enforces a curated experience where the world of Metaphor appears to be full of adventure. If, by any accident, you happened to see beneath the veneer of attractions, it’s hard to unsee them and get back on track.
The most unfortunate downfall is the combat system. The introduction of archetypes makes it as though you can freely create 6 characters with variable classes —in the classical RPG sense— who will accompany your journey, except every single one of them are railroaded into specific archetype. And the battle against the enemies, by and large, starts to lose any sense of interactivity, as most of the enemies in the late game don’t have any natural weaknesses or their intel isn’t available at all. It’s at this point the game demands your party to mix-max its damage, just repeating the time-tested strategy, regardless of the enemy types. What’s worse is that the many enemies in the late games are rehashed version of the earlier designs, only in different color palette.
As I’ve played Metaphor on PS5 hooked up to the home theater, I was quite disheartened by the lack of proper support from the game. Some cinematic had issues with playing dialogue audio through the surround sound, mumbled and out of place. And the game would play some audios on the rear speakers, but it was hardly relative to what was actually going on. Not to mention a lot of the dialogues in side quests are actually half-voiced, —or whatever the technical term is— meaning, the only starting words are voiced and the rest is simply printed on screen. The beautiful menu screen, while it is an artwork of its own, is also quite painful to navigate as you are trying to adjust your party.
Conclusions: Okay, But By Which Standard?
Again, Metaphor: ReFantazio is like a theme park. It has everything: it has JRPG, it has simulator, it has a fantasy tournament, and it even has some cool anime cinematic and soundtracks. But if I were to compare Metaphor to actual theme park, like Disney World, where differently themed areas have to be integrated to be one magical park, its integrations of different elements are subpar at most. The game doesn’t make much effort to harness the combined effects of different elements, but rather leave the cardboards exposed. There could be many speculations as to why it is, —and I’ve read posts nodding to possible future DLCs— but where the game stands now, it is an okay game, or maybe an interactive anime, or maybe something else. It’s the criteria which I am not sure what Metaphor is trying to satisfy.