Metaphor ReFantazio Is Less Similar To Persona Than You Thought

Maybe it was because the single had just released the day before, but as I sat down to play 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Metaphor: ReFantazio at 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Summer Game Fest, Sabrina Carpenter's Please Please Please was ringing in my ears. Everyone I had mentioned the game to before and at the show had the same response: "Is that the Persona one?", and all I could think was 'please, please, please, don't prove 'em right'.

I am Sabrina Carpenter. Metaphor: ReFantazio is my Barry Keoghan. Persona is the fear that he turns into a Matty Healy. The metaphor (eh? eh? layered writing) becomes strained at this point. The point is, no, it's not the Persona one. Though developed by Atlus and using a similarly hyper-designed aesthetic, Metaphor is not explicitly part of the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Shin Megami Tensei family tree, and is supposed to feel like a fresh IP. I love Persona, but Metaphor is not meant to be that, and we have 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Persona 6 on the way too. So how does Metaphor stack up?

I know I have good judgment, I know I have good taste

Right off the bat, Metaphor establishes the differences between its world and Persona's. There are no humans (*see below) in Metaphor at all, with all of the creatures some form of fantasy thing. You have your classic elves and fairies, a riff on things like tieflings, and some specific-to-Metaphor creations like rabbit/bat-like species and horse girls. With a more medieval setting, there are your classic castle dungeons, racism towards certain species, and a more defined magic system, plus kingdoms and factions all in play. Though our hero - the Travelling Boy - is still a generic everyman, he is not an outsider to the supernatural occurrences like in Persona.

There's also a fairytale present in the game which tells the tale of our own world - with descriptions of bullet trains and skyscrapers and offices, all described with whimsy and wonder. The humans (*asterisk time, baby) of the world are only present as godlike enemies, stomping over our heroes as giants, and looking more like Biblical angels with contorted limbs, inner organs twisting around their outsides, several blinking eyes, and tentacles swiping at you.

These humans are all called 'homo', which makes sense. But you can't call a boss Giant Sea Homo and expect me to be scared of it.

I beg you, don't embarrass me, mother...

Goofy name or not, that boss put up a helluva fight, and I had to use a lot of revives to get through it. I couldn't defeat it in the 15 minutes I was given, but before the battle you could talk to the cast and I dwelled on this too long rather than diving into the action. Still, this was a drawn out fight that was chosen to show off how the game works, and I had several characters impaled on that glistening difficulty spike.

The fact that it's not a Persona game makes the difficulty harder to gauge, as Persona is typically more approachable than the core SMT series. For the most part, Metaphor was more in the Persona ballpark with a lot of fodder to wipe away in an instant. The action combat is not a true alternative way to play, as it can only be used for the weakest enemies, but when using it on stronger foes you can get advantages like extra damage for sneak attacks or stunning them for another turn.

The turn-based combat is most similar to Persona, with different roles and the ability to launch a melee attack (the answer to Persona's gun attacks) as well as various magical abilities. There's no All-Out Attack, but there is synergy between the moves. Rather than just everyone on one team attacking, then everyone on the next, each battle comes with different move counters that determine the order of attacks and how many per team. From what I saw, these were one-per-character, but as you go deeper into the game I believe these get more varied and tactical.

I tell them it's just your culture and everyone rolls their eyes

Metaphor Refantazio - shaking hands with a pink haired rabbit

The characters themselves were key to the distinction between Metaphor and Persona, however. While team dynamics are still front and centre, Metaphor's cast is deeply immersed in the fantasy settings and thus communicate very differently to the modern bickering Ryuji and Ann. They're closer to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fire Emblem in that regard.

The writing remains as strong as ever, and while I couldn't see much in the way of team dynamics in my shorter segment, the part before the boss battle gave me the opportunity to talk to them one on one. Here, I saw decent variety, and those I took with me on my one mission added some personality. Gallica, who plays the Mona role if this were Persona, is also decidedly less annoying and creepy.

There's still some of the classic Atlus character presentation, though - Catherina is a horse girl who wears hot pants that flash what appears to be a metal thong from beneath it, as well as pink overknee socks and thigh highs. She's also near-identical to Rin from Catherine: Full Body, with her name offering an extra link. The voice, harsh and British here, is different, but whether that means Atlus is re-examining one of its more problematic characters or just referencing them we won't know until the game launches on October 11.

All ✅in all, I loved what I saw from Metaphor: ReFantazio. The demos being limited to 15 minutes stopped me from exploring - and from completing the boss due to wandering the ship too much, which both rankled a little. But the style of fantasy, injection of action combat, and general character writing all felt very different to Persona, even if some core elements remain part of the same SMT style of design despite it being a new series.

I left the room more confident in the game than I did when I arrived, and for games you're already looking forward to at these things, that's the best outcome you can hope for. Just please please please, don't make me hate you prolifically.