Eight years ago, Japanese director Katsura Hashino announced he was forming a new team at Atlus after more than a decade working on the Persona (and Catherine) series, saying he wanted to try something again. Last summer, his game was finally revealed: Metaphor: ReFantazio, an RPG that has many similarities to the Persona games, but has its own personality.
Overall, Metaphor retains many familiar elements from Hashino’s previous games. Like its spiritual predecessors, Metaphor uses a turn-based command system designed to exploit enemies’ weaknesses. The main character, an outcast who uses forbidden magic, closely resembles the hero of Persona 3 Reload, thanks in large part to the art work of Shigenori Soejima. Even some of the terminology is the same, a notable example being Tarukaja – a spell that increases attacks in Persona and now Metaphor (although Hashino denies any connection between the two).
Its pedigree and excellent production quality were enough to generate excitement in some RPG circles, with some going so far as to call it the most anticipated game of the year. But others in the wider gaming community are a little more perplexed, either because of the similarities to Persona, the unconventional name, or both.
So what is Metaphor: ReFantazio really about? And does he have a chance to emerge from Persona’s shadow and build his own fan base? These are still open questions, but I was able to get a little closer to my own understanding of Metaphor when I played it at Summer Game Fest earlier this month.
About the name Metaphor and why there is no romance
First, that name, which is really kind of long. The Metaphor part is pretty easy to understand: Hashino says he wants players to be able to relate the story to their own lives. In short, he wants it to be a metaphor. “We had all these different ideas. We couldn’t come up with a lot of good ones, so we were like, ‘Okay, just Metaphor. That’s easy.'”
As for the second part, Hashino explains that the team wanted to rethink the idea of a fantasy world. Hence the name ReFantazio. Well, it doesn’t seem very obvious, but we can’t say that it isn’t memorable.
As for the game itself, the demo I saw consisted of three different sections: a story sequence, a dungeon crawl sequence, and a boss battle. The demo starts by establishing a portion of the world through Gallica, a fairy companion who brings a bit of ’80s D&D vibe to Metaphor.
In this sequence, Gallica tells the legend of a place that looks strangely like New York. Gallica is amazed by a world without magic, without tribal conflict, and “with glass towers that reach the heavens.” This story seems to suggest that discrimination is a recurring theme in Metaphor, with many of the main players struggling with prejudices of all kinds.
Speaking to IGN in a follow-up email, Hashino confirmed that Metaphor’s story is “closely tied to the theme of changing the world for the better.”
“As we approached this project, we wanted to challenge ourselves to do something different from our previous work while still leveraging Atlus’ overall strength and experience as an RPG maker. As we developed the concept for the game, we realized our interest in exploring the idea of inner strength and how people overcome their limitations. Essentially, we wanted to explore how we can become the best possible versions of ourselves,” he said.
“To do this, we focused on how people perceive each other based on their personalities or personal interactions. This led us to the idea that biases can form around judgments about these characteristics. We created a backdrop for this world around the idea that various characters in this world are exposed to some form of bias in this regard.”
Although Metaphor’s fantasy world is different from ours in many ways, if we can convey it well, we believe fans will be able to find various similarities between it and ours.
Ultimately, Hashino says, his main goal for Metaphor was to move away from Persona’s modern setting while still sticking to the format he knows best. This means that Metaphor feels very much like Persona at all times, which is especially evident in the dungeon crawl and boss fight sequences. He even has summons that look a lot like the demons from Personas. Granted, there’s a lot of nuance to these comparisons – among other things, a lot of the strategy involves positioning your characters in the front or back row, and the fights are much faster overall – but on the surface the resemblance is clear.
The most significant change comes in the demo’s third section, which, in addition to the boss fight, shows a bit of how the story progresses. While recent Persona games are built around a linear daily school schedule, Metaphor is structured more like a road trip where you have the freedom to go wherever you want (Hashino compares it to a vacation where you won’t be able to see everything in one playthrough).
Setting a destination on the Gauntlet Runner, the crew’s land ship, will take some time to reach, during which you can improve your stats by reading books with titles like “Pride and Persuasion” or doing laundry.
Notably, Metaphor does not have any romantic connections to build on, unlike Persona, which Hashino attributes to a desire to avoid making a “romance game.”
“We created (Persona) as an RPG story about teenagers. And teenagers, they date, they have romance. That’s part of the joy of being a young person exploring your limits. That’s why we included it in the game… because if we didn’t have it, it wouldn’t really feel authentic. For our new game… we didn’t want to include it because it didn’t feel as natural, if that makes sense,” Hashino explains.
“The second point I would like to make is that the main plot centers on one character, the protagonist, who is trying to become the next king. And rather than focusing on his love life, we wanted to make sure we had this whole follower system. So we wanted people to focus on that. »
The metaphor draws heavily on 80s and 90s fantasy.
This approach is at the heart of what sets Metaphor apart from Hashino’s previous work. I’ve often compared the later Persona games to a kind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer anime, featuring Japanese teenagers dealing with high school drama by day and battling demons by night. However, when I played Metaphor, the first series that came to mind was Aura Battle Dunbine, an early example of the isekai subgenre about a young motorcycle enthusiast transported to a fantasy world populated by giant insect-like robots.
Hashino acknowledges being a fan of Dunbine, but attributes any influence the game may have had to its considerable popularity in the 1980s. Perhaps more importantly, though, is what Soejima calls “the fantasy boom” of the 1980s and 1990s, which spawned Record of Lodoss War, Dragon Quest, and a host of other well-known properties.
“I lived through the late 80s and early 90s, when the fantasy genre was booming here. Everything that existed at that time and previously came from abroad was part of my artistic DNA,” explains Soejima. “After that, I read a lot of very serious fantasy books, which became part of me and mixed with this other base layer, helping to form my DNA. The first fantasy genre I interacted with was (Dungeons and Dragons), a very long time ago. More than the books, it was Wizardry that really influenced me in the fantasy genre. »
One way or another, Metaphor is shaping up to be an interesting experiment for Hashino and his colleagues. With a new canvas, the team seems keen to leave their own mark on the fantasy genre, drawing on well-known influences and putting a new spin on them with their distinctive verve and style. The game feels both familiar and invigorating – a fresh approach that still builds on their individual strengths, with a beefed-up art style and an even faster combat system. Atlus, for its part, is treating it like the launch of a new franchise, giving it a global launch with a prime October release slot.
“When we created this game, we thought, okay, we know people like the approach we’re taking,” Hashino says, “so we have more confidence to execute our vision without fearing people’s reaction, because we think people will like our game.
We’ll be able to see for ourselves when Metaphor: ReFantazio releases on October 11 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director and co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Got a tip? Send her a private message at @the_katbot.