General Gaming Metaphor: ReFantazio | new fantasy RPG from Atlus | October 10, 2024 - Opencritic Posted

[Best]

13 minutes ago, Biggie said:

Let me know if I should get this instead of Mario Party Jamboree

 

They are completely different games though. From reviews I read this has all the great elements of Persona but with a lot of the mundane stuff cut out. 

[Biggie]

15 minutes ago, Best said:

 

They are completely different games though. From reviews I read this has all the great elements of Persona but with a lot of the mundane stuff cut out. 

Oh ya nevermind. Jamboree is gonna be simple fun. 

[Bacon]

47 minutes ago, Best said:

@Bacon I'm starting the game now. When you get a chance I'd like to read your early impressions on it. 

It's still too early to give early impressions outside of a few minor things, which I have already said.

 

• The ENG voice acting is surprisingly good. Tho, some VAs are still anime-tier trash.
• The ability to kill low-level mobs without entering "tactical mode" is great.
• The audio is way too low. I usually have to turn that shit down when I start a new game, but this time I can't seem to get it loud enough.
• You know, I'm not really a graphics whore, honest. But like, I'm actually pretty let down by the visuals. I mean, it looks like Switch game port with no enhancements. Got jaggies and even some low rez grpahics. The mouse pointer looks like it's been stretched 10x and even the image in the back of Leon's jacket is pretty low rez. The whole game looks like it was not meant to be played above 1080 or 720p.

[Best]

Surprisingly I'm very pleased with the visuals. Also, the sound is completely fine for me. I'm wearing headphones though. 

 

I'm still early and about to continue now. 

[legend]

The art direction is fantastic as usual.

 

But technically it looks like the engine was built by Tom Bombadil in the spring of Arda.

[Best]

I'm really enjoying this about 3 hours in. I still feel I'm in the tutorial sections but I really love how detailed everything is. It does a great job explaining mechanics and it's really organized in the menu's to keep track of lore etc. It's much more appealing to me than Persona 5 was. 

[Brian]

Metaphor: ReFantazio Has Already Sold 1 Million Copies and It’s Only Been Out a Day - IGN

WWW.IGN.COM

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Metaphor: ReFantazio has sold over one million copies as of its official release date, becoming the fastest-selling Atlus game of all time.

[Bacon]

This right here is what I mean by some things are just low rez

 

If you look at the upper middle left, there's that black and silver fancy square. You might need to open it in a new tab, but you can see how it's literally a PS2 texture. There is a fair amount of that stuff in the game.

[Xbob42]

Yeah, there's a lot of weirdly ultra low res stuff. Some of the secondary characters standing around look like prototype PS2 models. None of that bothers me too much, as I think the heavily stylized look covers a lot of it up quite well and it's usually background stuff you actually have to stop and look for (usually) but the aliasing is really bad, even at native 4k. I think that actively harms the style they're going for. A simple TAA or even DLSS would clean it up real nice, but even MSAA if it was possible to implement would be great.

 

That said, this game is extremely simple, at least outwardly, from a technical perspective. It should by all means be running at like 500+ FPS on any modern machine and locked to 120 FPS on the Switch, but it actually has some mild performance issues on the PS5 and even on my PC I need to lock it at 120 as it gets really unstable when unlocked at like 160-180 FPS. Which is high, but again, not an demanding-looking game.

That said, it's super stable and not a stuttery mess like the early demo was! So I can indeed lock it to 120 FPS and even the menus work at that or even higher refresh rates (the text flying into place when you open the menu is weirdly incredibly satisfying to watch when I unlock it and it's at 240hz) which is quite nice.

 

Overall, having a great time. This setting is still so much more interesting to me than anything Persona has done in a while, and certainly more interesting than SMT in recent memory. Been sloggin through SMT V and boy does that game just not have any energy or ambition.

[Bacon]

9 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

Overall, having a great time. This setting is still so much more interesting to me than anything Persona has done in a while, and certainly more interesting than SMT in recent memory. Been sloggin through SMT V and boy does that game just not have any energy or ambition.

 

My main problem is how the game rushes you into stuff. I'm a HUGE fan of the slow start. I never hated the start of Twilight Princess. And Persona and SMT both do better jobs at character introductions and making your allies join you naturally, especially in persona. It feels totally natural in how the gangs are formed and how you become friends with them. In M:R, well, characters just feel like they join you because you need a party. And every Persona awakening so far has been pretty lame TBH. There's usually a better lead-up to that. It's too much of "meet MC and gain a persona 5 minutes later."

[Xbob42]

Slow starts are great, but Persona has been languishing in absolutely abysmal glacial starts for too long. Persona 5 spends what feels like 20 hours stuck in neutral. I like Metaphor's brisk pace. These are alliances of convenience that may become something more over time.

[Bacon]

5 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

Slow starts are great, but Persona has been languishing in absolutely abysmal glacial starts for too long. Persona 5 spends what feels like 20 hours stuck in neutral.

I would at least like a middle ground. Even SMT4 had a better way of introducing the player to the world. I always feel like I'm missing something when games jump into it. Black Myth Wukong felt the same way. It takes way longer for me to get "immersed" or "feel connected to the world and characters."

[Xbob42]

Maybe it's different for me since I connected with almost no characters in Persona 5. Part of the reason I didn't really like the game very much. SMT V as well, now I think about it. SMT 4 did have a very interesting introduction to the world though. Was intriguing for sure.

[Best]

As much as I'm picky on graphics I love how this game looks and runs on PS5.

 

It looks so fuckin awesome. In my 3-4 hours it has the charm of Persona but all the bullshit cut out. I'm actually kinda the opposite of Bacon in that I like how the pacing is early on. It moves at just the right speed to keep you interested but moving things along. 

[Bacon]

It giga sucks that Catherina doesn't join you. She's hot. She'd be my romance option if this were persona.

[Biggie]

How is this not on Switch?

[Bacon]

Oh. No. Why would the game do this to me? Why would they put in a source of infinitely respawning enemies that I can insta kill? Ugh, I should have started the demo when it launched.

[Xbob42]

28 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Oh. No. Why would the game do this to me? Why would they put in a source of infinitely respawning enemies that I can insta kill? Ugh, I should have started the demo when it launched.

 

 

Just bookmarking this so I can read the 8 paragraph rant on how this ruined your game in about 2 weeks, because you spent 55 hours grinding in one spot while watching movies and shit. 

 

1 hour ago, Biggie said:

How is this not on Switch?

It really should be. If this game was properly optimized for how it looks (which is about on par with Persona 5, a PS3 game) then I'd absolutely expect it to run on Switch.

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, Xbob42 said:

Just bookmarking this so I can read the 8 paragraph rant on how this ruined your game in about 2 weeks, because you spent 55 hours grinding in one spot while watching movies and shit. 

I have a stream up lol

[Bacon]

OK, I won't grind for too long. Only to like level 16-20

[Bacon]

Also, man, the trance crystals are basically a free MP restore item. Takes a bit, but just equip mage on the party leader and you get 1MP per kill.

[Bacon]

14-15 takes a bit too long. I will get to 15 on MC and then move on.

[BloodyHell]

I finished the first dungeon yesterday. I was actually shocked at how much of it I had left after the demo. 
 

it’s very interesting so far, I really enjoy the characters and story, as well as the systems. The art style is beautiful, but the fidelity is awful. 
 

Like @Xbob42 I really, really dislike the setting of Persona. P3 is the only Persona I have ever enjoyed (haven’t played 1&2). I’ve always found P5 to be extremely overrated, but I still love the dungeon crawling. 
 

I definitely prefer this setting in every way. I also vastly prefer this Archetype system to the Persona system. 
 

These guys always do a great job with turn based combat, I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I could definitely do without the splash screen announcing whether it’s my turn or the enemies. It’s not unbearable or anything, just pointless and a little annoying. 
 

There is one other thing that annoys me.  LET ME SAVE ANYWHERE. It isn’t just this game. All RPG’s please. I’m a damned adult and the dungeons are long. Give me a damn quick save for those times where I couldn’t get to a Magla Hollow or whatever. 
 

Otherwise I’m just having fun. Galica is so much better than P5’s dumb cat, and Hulkenburg is a better party member than anyone in Persona. 

[Best]

I agree that you should be able to save everywhere. I was in a section where I wanted to stop but was forced to keep moving until I could magically save.

 

I'm booting this up in 10 minutes. 

[Paperclyp]

I think I’ve got to the point where I assume they’re gonna do some kind of deluxe version of this game in a couple years (of course they will, right?) and maybe by THEN I’ll have finished persona 5 and will feel comfortable buying this. 

[Xbob42]

Got the MetaphorFix mod for PC. It adds ultrawide support or whatever, but the real benefit is that it turns off that gross ass radial motion blur and speed lines when you're sprinting! Now I can sprint without it making the game look like shit!

[legend]

1 minute ago, Xbob42 said:

Got the MetaphorFix mod for PC. It adds ultrawide support or whatever, but the real benefit is that it turns off that gross ass radial motion blur and speed lines when you're sprinting! Now I can sprint without it making the game look like shit!

 

[Xbob42]

3 minutes ago, legend said:

 

GitHub - Lyall/MetaphorFix: A fix for Metaphor: ReFantazio that adds ultrawide/narrower support and much more.

GITHUB.COM

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A fix for Metaphor: ReFantazio that adds ultrawide/narrower support and much more. - Lyall/MetaphorFix

(Be sure to open MetaphorFix.ini after you copy it to your game's install folder so you can change the settings to what you'd like!)

[Best]

Playing now. Let's go! 

[Best]

This game is so good. This has a chance in grabbing the GOTY that's for sure. 

[Bacon]

What's nuts is that I  felt I grinded for a decent amount of time but I still haven't out leveled all the mobs in the first dungeon. Also, damn, that dungeon is hella long.

[Best]

1 minute ago, Bacon said:

What's nuts is that I  felt I grinded for a decent amount of time but I still haven't out leveled all the mobs in the first dungeon. Also, damn, that dungeon is hella long.

 

Why are you grinding?

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, Best said:

 

Why are you grinding?

because I hate myself

[Bacon]

9 minutes ago, Best said:

 

Why are you grinding?

ok but for real, I like to grind so I can hit a spot where I no longer have to grind or worry about reaching the right levels

 

Like, let's say I hit level 30 in the very first dungeon. Maybe that would be enough levels to where I no longer had to think about fighting extra mobs for EXP. Like, I would still need to fight every mob that enters my path naturally, but I wouldn't need to ever fight a mob that respawned or grind again/for a long while. That is always my goal.

[Best]

7 minutes ago, Bacon said:

ok but for real, I like to grind so I can hit a spot where I no longer have to grind or worry about reaching the right levels

 

Like, let's say I hit level 30 in the very first dungeon. Maybe that would be enough levels to where I no longer had to think about fighting extra mobs for EXP. Like, I would still need to fight every mob that enters my path naturally, but I wouldn't need to ever fight a mob that respawned or grind again/for a long while. That is always my goal.

 

I see. I thought maybe you were struggling somewhere and needed to grind to get past a section. 

 

So far the difficulty has been basically perfect for me but I do make sure to fight every enemy I see.