Pointless Discussion: METAPHOR RE:FANTAZIO [First Impressions]

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Now back to Metaphor, we begin in media res with a scene of fancy royals and a blonde twink speaking colonizer (british) who then kills the already withering king. Fitting. This already sets the games tone and overall maturity way higher than what came before. In persona, death is this once in a blue moon event that affects all the characters throughout the story. That breaks the overall teen friendly tone of the game. Metaphor on the other hand starts with it and lets you know outright this is not what you've come to expect from atlus in terms of tone.  Good choice given the Medieval setting.

However this doesn't mean that this game is some entirely joyless greek tragedy with anime boys that have waists the width of my pinky. Far from it in fact. I'd say this is Atlus's most well written game in terms of jokes. Finally stepping away from the forced plethora of boys peeping into the girls hotsprings "JOKES" that really plagued the persona franchise. It's character centric, sometimes slapstick but always fun. Fun enough to effectively undercut the tension created from the fairly serious plot when needed.

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Speaking of the Plot, in broad strokes. It's filled with mysteries, conspiracies, infiltration, a meta narrative, excellent characters and is paced very well. It always feels you're constantly moving forward and never really lets up. This is fairly unique for a J-RPG. A genre notorious for being "bogged down" by repetitive busy work before you're strong enough to continue the plot. Metaphor balances things well with rewarding/engaging side missions that alleviate the worst of the aforementioned issue. I'd love to speak more in regards to the plot but I shall do that when I've fully completed the game. Besides these are just my ill-informed first impressions. A full plot breakdown comes later. Maybe.

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Combat wise this is the fastest turn based combat game I've ever played. Which is in small part due to my experience in the genre but largely in part due to fast attack animations + skippable attack animations. Letting you get past encounters very fast if you have an effective strategy.

Strategy formation in this game is also much cooler, you learn about enemy weaknesses within each dungeon/setpiece through "informants" who you pay a sum of cash too in exchange for well..information. This lets you form strats beforehand instead of facing the enemy and just start mashing elemental attacks and hoping one would stick like in persona. I prefer this SO MUCH MORE if you can't tell already. It's diegetic too which is always neat.

The crux of everything combat related however is the Archetype system. Which to put it simply lets you mix and match your strengths and weaknesses with various different archetypes (demons you control), which is great! this includes your party members too making them so much more instrumental into your combat planning. You naturally unlock more and more archetypes to experiment with within this system and ample resources to unlock and upgrade them as long as you're doing a healthy amount of side content.

The combat really clicked for me when I fought an enemy in a side quest I should have attempted way later then I did. So not only was I underleveled I had less resources than I would have then at a later stage in the game. Yet after some clever positioning and strategy I was able to take the beast down. By god was that such a gratifying feeling. Though I must undercut that achievement by saying I am playing on normal mode, I imagine it'd be way more strenuous on hard.

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The last thing I want to harp on before I close out and leave you to comment on how I should end my life for being earnest online. Would be the Art which far and away easily makes this game one of my favourites. It's this wonderful blend of traditional fantasy art with this sort of storybook type filter for a lack of a better word, placed on top. Some designs also take inspiration from western art. One notable example is this enemy based on the garden of earthy delights by Hieronymus Bosch.

Do I even need to say anything about how cool and offputting this is? This is also not some fringe fluke of a design either. All enemies of this specific type share similar inspirations. Yet all of these unique and various types of designs all fit together into one cohesive whole. Nothing standing out so much that it feels out of place. All given the right amount of context in game to work.

The character designs while not as wild as the enemies are great and communicate who they are since they aren't limited to just urban/modern design sensibilities. Though they definitely take some inspiration from there too.

A collar that is just a bit too tight, responsibility choking him figuratively and literally. Pants worn a bit too high, a high strung person person perhaps and lastly comically big shoulder pauldrons , unbecoming of one who calls himself a "noble".

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Now my closing thoughts. Metaphor is really shaping up to be one of my favorite games of all time. A wonderful RPG with unique mechanics while not forgetting what came before. An ensemble cast so lovely and endearing you want to hug all of them placed in a world with so many conspiracies you'll not want the credits to roll. Or this game just falls off a cliff in the next hour before I left to write this and there's a scene with the elf where the characters stumble on her changing and "hilarity ensues". Guess we'll see. 

I hate number reviews since they give you virtually 0 information so it's a certified Stellar/10. Go listen to bad apple or something.