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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
tl;dr - Booted up the game expecting the Second Coming of Christ. He didn't show up. Dismay ensues.
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Developer: ATLUS
I started Metaphor: ReFantazio back in December, playing it pretty consistently through the holiday season (see posts one, two, three). My progress slowed way down after the new year, but I finally ended up finishing it on (2026-02-09). My "game clear" save clocks in at 89 hours, but I suspect my actual playtime is closer to 110 since I don't think the game tracks time when you game over, or otherwise reload a save.
My Playthrough
Act I: Woe Is Expectation
I was excited to start Metaphor: ReFantazio. Passively absorbing the excitement of Atlus fans over the years built up the developer as one of the best JRPG studios out there. Their UI design is legendary, they have great art direction, they go the extra mile with anime cutscenes, and their storytelling seems to really connect with their fans. My interest was piqued after Metaphor: ReFantazio released to critical acclaim, applying their Persona formula to a mature fantasy setting that I found more compelling.
Its incipit is strong: the inciting regicide whet my appetite for the mysteries surrounding the crime, the perpetrator, and politics. Mysteries the game immediately zooms out from, using a fourth wall break to frame game through its central question: "Is fantasy limited to the confines of imagination?". Just a couple minutes with Metaphor: ReFantazio was already showing a deftness that I don't typically see in JRPG storytelling. Which made me excited at the thought of a JRPG that would deliver in gameplay, while taking an ambitious swing to fully engage me with its storytelling. If it delivered, it would surely become one of my favorite games ever.
That did not happen.
My excitement dimmed in the very next scene. A sequence of clichés common to shonen media introduces the main character: a bandit ambush is thwarted by a mysterious stranger whose design is too elaborate to not reappear later, which climaxes in a fall down a sheer cliff and a subsequent chase sequence. Drawing from clichés isn't inherently bad; part of the appeal of JRPGs is how much they borrow from shonen storytelling. But clichés also leave an aftertaste from other media they've been in. Their overuse muddies emotional impact and can create tonal dissonance that makes the story harder to take seriously. I was looking for Metaphor: ReFantazio to stand with works like Pluto, Monster, or Vinland Saga. Stories where the occasional indulgence in genre cliché works in complement with the strength of their storytelling. Metaphor: ReFantazio establishes a premise and collection of themes that warrant exploration, posturing as though the playthrough would meaningfully examine them. But Atlus continually undermines that foundation with a "teen anime bullshit" approach to storytelling that is ingenuous, seldom entertains nuance, and often crutches on clichés. The first act of the game is marred by moments like this that pulled me out of the otherwise serious story because of how dumb it could be in the moment.
It's worth stressing that Metaphor: ReFantazio was still telling a perfectly competent story at this point. But the gulf between my expectations and reality spoiled my appetite for what the game had to offer. And unfortunately for me, Metaphor: ReFantazio's poor first impression did not stop at just the storytelling.
My first moment out of a cutscene started me in an area that looked a little off-putting. Definitely not bad, but not as good as I'd expect a AAA game from 2024 to look. I pushed that nitpick to the back of my mind, but it kept resurfacing as I noticed more technical issues with the game's graphical presentation. Muddy looking textures. Weird aliasing issues. Basically unfinished landscapes (one, two). Lighting that looked straight out of an early PS3 game. Odd NPC animations: walking with the exaggerated swagger of a fallen noble or the dog who spins like a beyblade to turn around (which made me notice that every NPC does this). These are issues that I usually don't notice or care about. But it wore me down as moments showcasing the game's world-class art direction were held back by technical competence frozen in the PS3-era.
The royal capital Gran Trad is the first major area in the game. A sprawling city where the wealthy luxuriate in gilded indifference to the suffering and persecution of the poor. Its introductory cutscene teases a broad possibility space to experience, that is flattened as soon as you see Gran Trad in-game. The image of the vast capital is betrayed by the in-game reality that the city is just a main street, a back alley, and a plaza split in half by an invisible wall. Every building is locked, except for locations essential to gameplay. NPCs mostly bark inanities that do little to further the player's immersion in the world, or even the quotidian. Which results in a city like a bad stage set, enough to set the scene but not to draw you in. Atlus' singular focus on function over form robbed my time in the city of any emotional texture, quickly teaching me that progressing the story was the only value the city had.
This austerity of purpose shapes the design of the game. Core systems like Side Quests, Follower Bonds, and Royal Virtues each felt like Atlus refused whenever presented with opportunities to make them meaningful and not just functional. Side Quests are little more than vehicles for exp and items. Their narrative framing is paper-thin, really only bookending the quest in conversation with the quest giver. The trite storytelling of Follower Bonds, quest lines that deepen your relationships to unlock abilities, delivers shallow character development that Atlus can't even carry back into the main story since the system is technically optional. Royal Virtues, social stats increased primarily through short in-game activities, left me with the impression that Atlus struggled with finding activities that were compelling and thematically relevant, to the point that they gave up and also had some cutscenes and quests raise virtues. Metaphor: ReFantazio fails to redeem these with moment to moment gameplay I enjoyed. Both Follower Bonds and Royal Virtues are almost exclusively experienced through short, low-budget, partially-voiced cutscenes with inconsequential dialog choices. With Side Quests, you're at best raiding a dungeon that feels like a palette swap of a previous side dungeon (hope you like caves and spiraling towers). At worst, you're buying someone a toothbrush.
I've enjoyed plenty of games with gameplay elements shallower than Metaphor: ReFantazio's, where I can usually get away with ignoring the stuff I don't like. But Metaphor: ReFantazio's design held my fun hostage by forcing me to engage with systems I disliked to make progress in the ones I did. The gameplay loop is structured around a calendar system, where time slots are spent building Follower Bonds, increasing Royal Virtues, completing Side Quests, or traveling, all in preparation for the main quest. You can't just indulge in the activities you enjoy. You'll miss out on most of the Archetype tree (the game's job system) without advancing Follower Bonds, no Follower Bonds without Royal Virtues, and main story quests will be really hard without the experience and equipment from side dungeons. Unsurprisingly, the calendar system continues the trend of core systems disavowing their primary strength. Time is a compelling mechanic because it's limited, adding weight to your choice on how to spend it. Games like Pentiment and Seance of Blake Manor exploit this to great effect. Metaphor: ReFantazio serves up a double whammy: there's an excessive amount of time to complete every activity, and the activities often aren't fun. Which leaves the calendar system as a source of friction. I spent my time on the things I felt obligated to do, while stewing in my desire to play the parts of the game I actually enjoyed.
In spite of my disappointment with the core of the game, I still found elements to enjoy.
Atlus has masterful (2D) art direction. Their anime cutscenes are well produced and high quality. Playing Trails in the Sky FC planted in me an appreciation for character portraits during dialog, and I loved seeing them here. Some locations you visit in the game are represented by "animated paintings". Initially a mechanical letdown, they gradually became moments I enjoyed because of how beautiful they were, consistently the most arresting visuals that the game presented me with. I would love to see a game from Atlus where they ditch 3D entirely and just make a sprite-based game or a visual novel, anything that highlights their artistry with a flat canvas.
Combat was the antithesis of the shallowness I felt in other areas of the game. Right from the start, it felt like Atlus delivered a turn-based battle system that was polished in every area. Battles showcase the best 3D animation the game has to offer. Atlus went so far as to make custom weapon models, with special effects for special ones. The music is awesome. Many of the most important tracks in the game are led by the chants of a priest, including on the main battle themes Warriors in Valour and Warriors in Arms. Even with the limited options available early on, combat already provided enough depth to let me have fun expressing myself in the combat framework.
Even in my disappointment with the calendar system added to the core loop, I found some of its secondary effects cool. The game goes out of its way to ground you in the passage of time, to the point that I felt as anxious about in-game deadlines as I do with real life ones. The simulation of time also presents an opportunity to depict a living world. The country celebrates "Forgiveness Day" early in the game, which mainly is used as an opportunity for shop discounts, but I appreciated it as a rare moment where the world didn't feel like it was a spectator to my playthrough.
Act II: Wait... This Game Is Actually Good?
32 hours brought me a third of the way through the game, and I was not having a good time. The bright spots weren't enough to overcome how little enjoyment the core gameplay loop provided me. So why keep playing?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe a misguided hope that I'd find the game I was excited about if I just stuck through the bad parts. It was a hope that carried me through a playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, but never bore fruit.
That hope was barely hanging on as I made it through the second major area in the game. A story mission whose twists you see coming a mile away, leaning on tropes rather than meaningful storytelling, while introducing a new character that I could not stand.
But then the mission hit its climax and the story started to click for me. The villain's monologue cut through the clichés, and got me thinking about the questions the game was raising about grief and our reactions to it. A train of thought that led me to notice how Atlus had spent this entire mission building up two characters as foils, which, through the structure of the comparison, also tied back to Metaphor: ReFantazio's central question. Suddenly, I found myself engaging with Metaphor: ReFantazio's story in the ways I had hoped it would've challenged me to from the start. And somewhere in the middle of this, the new character I disliked dropped my favorite line in the game and became my favorite character.
This was a watershed moment for my experience with the game. Metaphor: ReFantazio's second act was a marvelous crescendo, whose fresh-feeling narrative beats built towards a climax that paid off most of the narrative threads the game had woven from its start.
Atlus' writing felt fresh out of High School English class; anywhere you found a pair of characters, Atlus was probably setting them up as foils. But I never found it repetitive. It was refreshing to play a JRPG so committed to its themes that they seeped out of the storytelling.
The game's combat hit its stride as the story got good. I played the game on Hard mode. Enemies hit hard, owing to increased stats and an extra action per turn. The extra action elegantly heightens the danger they pose, by making it easier to pull off devastating sequences. The result is combat that pressures the player to continuously adapt, or risk a party wipe even from an ordinary encounter. That pressure provides a strong incentive to explore all options in combat, options that opened up fully as the story clicked with me. The game finally fills out your party, which gives you an extra action per turn. You start getting access to more advanced archetypes and interesting items, which let you start leveraging game systems in more interesting ways. Experimenting in Metaphor: ReFantazio is fun, and Atlus made sure to sand away any friction. There are few restrictions on how you build out your party, and you have the freedom to switch at any time. The game never asks you to grind; playing through the game normally always rewards you enough to comfortably proceed. You are free to inspect late game unlocks, which made me excited to plan for late game builds. The polish extended even in battle, where Atlus let you restart battles at any time and even optimized the button presses it takes to input your commands. For all of this streamlining, "solving" the combat puzzle doesn't trivialize the experience. At its best, combat in this game feels tense. Like you're walking a tightrope as you execute your plan, hoping that the enemy isn't blessed by RNGesus and wipes your team.
This is not to say that Metaphor: ReFantazio's second act is perfect. Far from it. I will think back on Metaphor: ReFantazio and remember some of the stupidest moments I've experienced in media. The ancillary content was still as vapid as it was at the start of the game. And the major locations and cities were as soulless as Gran Trad. But the good outweighed the bad. The story and the combat was more than making up for the fun I was missing from the rest of the game. Surely Atlus would carry this momentum into a strong finale...
Act III: Despair
Everything I was enjoying about the game was systematically dismantled.
Every narrative thread that had captured my interest was unwound, only leaving space for a clichéd conclusion that I no longer wanted to see through.
Major Spoiler: Second Act Denouement
Metaphor: ReFantazio's second act builds towards the reveal that the Church had a major role in driving the antagonist to commit regicide at the start of Metaphor: ReFantazio. A reveal that humanizes the antagonist's motivations, and establishes the Church as a tertiary member of the game's central conflict, narratively and thematically . Atlus could've leveraged this setup into some interesting nuance in its conclusion, developing the protagonist's eventual victory over the Church and Antagonist into an ideological one that argues the game's answer to its central question. Instead, Metaphor: ReFantazio unceremoniously topples the religious faction, thereby reducing the antagonist to a comically evil villain whose genocidal master plan perpetuates the injustice that originally inspired him to act.
The entire last act of the game is dedicated to the final battle, giving you a full 30 days of prep time before the point of no return. Even with my souring on the story, main quests still were the most engaging content the game had to offer. These 30 days were the longest period spent outside of one, a period that was unreasonably good at highlighting all the ways the game grated me. Blitzing through my remaining side quests really reinforced how samey the dungeons felt. Man was it annoying to max out my remaining Royal Virtues just so I could complete my Follower Bonds, only to be underwhelmed by the conclusions to most of those questlines. At this point, even the NPCs were getting on my nerves (I'm looking at you parishioner who complained that my presence was interrupting her prayers every time I entered the church).
Atlus did invest a bit more into the production of some late-game side quests, which broke up some of the monotony. One quest chain in particular ends up leading to some of the hardest boss fights in the game, that were lots of fun to figure out strategies for. But that wasn't enough to redeem the prep period.
With only a few days left of prep time, I realized there was no chance I would finish unlocking the remaining Archetypes in the tree. I was rich in every resource, except for the two that would actually let me make progress. I had been looking forward to these Archetypes since midway through the second act. But it seemed like I would be locked out of every late-game build and strategy, unless I suffered through a second playthrough in New Game+... or started farming. So farm I did. For 10 hours. Mindnumbingly fighting the same two enemies, sustained only by my defiance of Atlus' progression system. But my hubris in resisting the game's intended path would prove costly.
Spoiler: The Final Battle Experience (Music, Enemies, Design)
The final battle was broken across two dungeons. The first felt really ordinary, like every other main story mission. It just led to a verbal confrontation with the Antagonist before the final final dungeon.
The actual Final Dungeon managed to be the most underwhelming environment in the entire game.
I was baffled as I entered it and heard the main menu music. This wasn't a case of a musical theme that's recontextualized throughout the game's runtime to make its eventual payoff more powerful. This was Atlus taking the exact same track that you'd only ever heard while turning on the game, and plopping it right into the finale. Instead of a song that heightened my emotional connection, Atlus hit me with a track I more strongly associated with "▷ Continue Save".
The visual design just looked like Atlus took one of their uninspired side-quest cave dungeons, put it in the sky, palette swapped to imperial red, and called it a day.
Every enemy, including mini-bosses, was just a palette swap of an enemy I'd fought before. Even though there was a weak narrative explanation, it was hard to be excited to fight enemies that were on their 4th or 5th color change during my playthrough.t
I was sure that the finale would be a place that Atlus poured in their talents and effort to make great. Instead, it was another revolution of the cycle of disappointment I'd put myself through the entire game.
The fun in Metaphor: ReFantazio's combat relies on good balance. If the enemies aren't threatening, then combat isn't rewarding. My tunnel-visionned grind to unlock all the Archetypes I wanted blinded me to the fact that I was overleveling myself out of the fun. I managed to trivialize the entire final battle, mowing down everything, including bosses, with mindless attack spam. It was so bad that I don't even know what the final boss' gimmick was; I somehow interrupted it every turn by just attacking it.
What a deflating way to end the game.
Conclusion: The End Does Not Justify the Means
I felt empty finishing Metaphor: ReFantazio. Not the emptiness of having lost something cherished. The emptiness you feel after losing an afternoon to a TV show you barely like.
This was the second time that I've pushed through to credits, for a game I was convinced I'd love, and came away only being able to say "I beat it". Is that conviction enough to justify the 100+ hour commitment, for games I dislike more as I play? Up until now, yeah. The hope being that the game I was excited for would materialize if I just pushed through the bad parts. And that almost happened here; Metaphor: ReFantazio almost had the sauce. Top tier art direction, music direction, combat design, and an above average plot, all standing on top of a rich foundation of literary and artistic inspirations (e.g. Thomas More's Utopia + Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights). Yet, packaged as Metaphor: ReFantazio, these elements meshed so poorly for me that I wince at the thought of playing another Atlus game.
I do recognize my fault in this. Bloated expectations set an impossibly high bar for the game, one it was bound to fall short of, reinforcing a cycle of frustration. But I don't want my takeaway to be that I should stop being excited. Anticipation is part of the fun, and makes the experience that much better when your expectations are met.
I probably need to stop forcing myself to roll credits on games that I like more in theory than in practice. Or at the very least, I should've just played Expedition 33 instead.
Addendum
Ideas that I'm not a good enough writer to integrate into the above
Game Feels Cheap
There's a thin line between cheap and clever. Compromises that scream lazy in one game can read as elegant in another. The difference lying in whether the compromise is a weakness the game must overcome, or something it leverages.
Example (Spoiler: Pentiment's structure)
In Pentiment, its rare that your choices/dialogue meaningfully branch the narrative. But the game masks that convincingly, conjuring an illusion of choice that still succeeds in making your playthrough feel more personal. Metaphor: ReFantazio is overt about the linearity of its narrative, its token attempts at presenting choices in the story only detracting from the experience.
Metaphor: ReFantazio constantly presents me with experiences where the individual pieces feel compromised. Cutscenes with poor production quality, uninspired quest design, obvious asset reuse, to name only a few. Where I'd hoped to see these trade-offs enable another part of the experience to shine, my disappointment was only compounded by finding additional lackluster elements. Together, these issues formed a pattern that felt less like resourceful development and more like Atlus cutting corners even at the cost of the final experience.
There's a moment at the end of a Follower Bond where you go support a singer at their performance. This is the emotional payoff of the entire questline, that to this point had been middling. The game cuts to the singer performing... and it's completely silent. So silent that I thought my game had glitched, until the crowd started cheering about how good the singing was (and then they call her ugly). The silence seems to have been a deliberate choice, in a cutscene that doesn't have much going for it. A moment that could've been a nice closing note is instead overshadowed by Atlus making the scene look bugged, when simply playing an existing track or skipping the performance altogether would've worked just as well.
This feeling of cheapness was a cloud over my playthrough. A cloud darkened when I remembered that late 2024 was still early-ish in the wave of developers adopting an increased price of $70 dollars on PC, lagging behind consoles. My frustrations with this game were often compounded by the incredulity that Atlus was charging so much for what was often a subpar experience.
It may appear as if Metaphor: ReFantazio exuding an air of shoddiness is in conflict with its many elements that clearly took considerable care, skill and especially money to execute. The game's menus demonstrate art direction in a class of their own. 2D animation is expensive, and Atlus features anime cutscenes liberally throughout the game. The music in this game is inspired; I didn't know that I was missing the chants of a priest in my orchestral choir music, but Atlus had a vision and delivered on it. But even these elements fall into the trap of ineffective execution that plague so many parts of Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Anime cutscenes often are placed in great moments of the story and can convey than would be impractical with in-game assets, but other times are used frivolously.
Towards the end of my playthrough, I was convinced that I had been hearing the same 5-6 songs on repeat the entire time. I was so convinced, that I looked up the soundtrack and was surprised to see that it was as long as soundtracks I remember for their breadth. The songs in Metaphor: ReFantazio tend to sound quite similar, leading to a sense of limited dynamic range in its music. The soundtrack is dominated by driven, up-tempo songs with similar timbre. Many tracks, like the collection that can play in combat, go so far as to feel like sections of a single song. Where the game does venture beyond its typical sonic palette is in main story specific songs, which are never heard again after the hour or so you spend with them. Especially towards the end as main story missions became scarce, my auditory experience with the game was saturated by music that sounded so similar it just blended together.
Ultimately, Metaphor: ReFantazio didn't feel cheap because Atlus cut corners. Every game does. Metaphor: ReFantazio felt cheap because I could see the corners they cut, and struggled to see what those cuts bought me.
Plot Points That Keep Me up at Night
Act I
iPod Magla
Canonically, the game's soundtrack is fairy magic that plays music in the protagonist's head
Secrets For Thee but not for Me
Our party has a funny approach to guarding a country-destabilizing, antagonist-thwarting secret. An antagonist who, despite crashing the royal funeral to reveal that he's the killer, is extremely popular to the point of driving some to cultish devotion. On the other hand, our party can't escape attention. The main character is a member of a race so rare that many don't think they exist, and so hated that NPCs regularly go out of their way to throw jeers at him. His partner is a fairy, who were thought to be extinct. In spite of this, the game shows our main cast discussing their kingdom-destabilizing secret while walking down busy roads, over meals at the tavern, or even while fighting one of the antagonist's soldiers.
Justice is Blind. And so is foresight
Our party's plan to seek justice against the main antagonist is... to stab him during a royal funeral. The guy who came up with this was a mercenary so accomplished that he ingratiated himself with the royal family and became a swordsmanship tutor.
Somehow, despite needing to run a great distance through a crowd, this almost works.
Act II
Major Spoiler: Nakama
The main characters become friends with a lady who was sacrificing children. The entire point of their journey was to take her into custody, but they instead leave without her and trust that she would show up on her own accord to face justice and her likely execution.
Pride Comes Before A Fall
One mission requires you to infiltrate the antagonist's fortress to steal something, so the game asks you to case the place first. Each zone within the base is secured by a key safeguarded by top generals.
In the name of secrecy, our party obviously decides that the best plan is to do... a boss gauntlet. They challenge each of these generals to a fight over the key, with the expectation that the generals' pride would stop them from mentioning anything to their boss.
The game gives no indication that these generals said anything after the fact.
Aren't you a ninja?
One mission requires you to infiltrate the antagonist's base to steal something, so the game asks you to case the place first. At one point, your party decides that they need to send someone to sneak around some guards. The game presents you with a choice of who to send, so of course I choose my party member who was a ninja specialized in covert operations on the behalf of a royal knight order. In response to the obviously correct answer, the game hits me with a "If he gets seen, he won't be able to keep his cover" and sends the main character instead (???).
Major Spoiler: Sudden Onset Magical Blindness
A major plot point hinges on the fact that one of our party members can "see" magic. The game explicitly shows her differentiating between a Legendary Weapon and its counterfeit with her magical sight.
Atlus seemingly forgets this, because our party is foiled by the Antagonist swapping the weapon and its counterfeit without anyone noticing. Despite our magic seeing party member being present the entire time. She even has to ask for an explanation.
Major Spoiler: Social Engineering
The antagonist receives a mortal wound, only for him to show up the next day perfectly healthy. The game reveals that the Antagonist's right hand man infiltrated the clergy of the state region and saved the Antagonist's life.
This explanation gets more ridiculous when you realize:
Act III
Major Spoiler: Cosplay
One of the final major reveals in the game is that the antogonist has been disguising himself as another race using a headband with horns on it (picture a headband with cat ears and you aren't far off). The game suggests he's maintained this disguise since his youth.
How didn't anyone notice? The game lightly suggests that he might've used some magic to make the headband look less obvious, but that doesn't address the infinite ways someone could have still found out.
And why not go further. He's one of the most accomplished magic users in a world that definitely has transformation magic. Why not magically produce the horns?
Perfect Timing
Leading up the final confrontation, the game shows your entire party sacrificing themselves to give you the chance to confront the antagonist 1-on-1. The antagonist "kills" you with a spell, but you wake back up some indeterminate amount of time later. The antagonist is gone doing evil stuff I guess, but your entire party "miraculously" survived and has been worriedly trying to wake you up.
The antagonist somehow has the dramatic timing to reappear right as you wake up? Why did he leave in the first place? If he was watching you, why didn't he deal with your party while you were still out?
Extra Thoughts on Core Systems
Royal Virtues
Royal Virtues feel like Atlus gave up midway through their design. Canonically, Royal Virtues measure "the qualities necessary in a king": Courage, Eloquence, Imagination, Tolerance, and Wisdom. In game, you need to level up your Royal Virtues to continue progressing your Follower Bonds. The primary way the game has you interface with this system is through NPCs, and sometimes locations, that let you do an activity to gain experience towards a specific virtue. None of these activities are interactive; you're either spending 4-5 minutes button mashing through dialog boxes or sitting through a "talking head" cutscene. And they're really hit or miss. I appreciated the Tolerance, Eloquence, and sometimes Wisdom virtues, since they'd often give you satisfying nuggets that build on the world's cultures, religions, history, and politics. But the vast majority of these activities feel like they're just there to pad runtime. Lots of activities, like bungee jumping for Courage or people watching for Wisdom, only feel thinly connected to the virtue they represent. Their relevance to the temperament of a monarch is even thinner. Your companions offer some of these Royal Virtue activities, which compounds with many of the same Follower Bond issues that keep character development shallow and away from the main story. It eventually felt like Atlus recognized how dissatisfying these activities are, but instead of iterating, they just made it so that you could engage with it less by having some quests and cutscenes also reward you with virtue experience. The saddest part is that Royal Virtues don't even live up to their mechanical purpose in the game. Atlus sometimes supplants Royal Virtues by using your story progress to dictate when you can start a Follower Bond. Both approaches deliver the same experience to the player, which, given how little I'm getting out of them, really makes me wonder why have Royal Virtues in the game at all. .
Traveling
I found Metaphor: ReFantazio's approach to traveling especially disappointing. Traveling is often the backdrop to my favorite moments in games. These moments are compelling because they realize possibilities contained within the unknowns of the journey. Metaphor: ReFantazio has none of this. The only way to travel is to fast travel. Moving between the game's cities is just a quick cutscene. When you travel to points of interest, the game simulates your journey on your gauntlet runner, essentially an RV with legs. The routine is the same every time. You pass the time on a Royal Virtue, Follower Bond, or doing chores, after which there's a small chance your gauntlet runner gets attacked and you have to do battle. Repeat that n times until the game says you've arrived at your destination. The game tries to inject some sense of discovery by occasionally breaking the routine with mid-journey stops at small towns and natural wonders. Except these "stops" are just animated paintings of the location, in the style of a background from a visual novel. Granted, they're really beautiful paintings. But that doesn't make up for the fact that all you do is interact with a menu in the towns, or mash through dialogue while the characters stand in the natural wonders. Metaphor: ReFantazio reduces traveling in a JRPG to feeling like a road trip. A bad one at that, since you can't even enjoy looking out the window because of how ugly the passing landscapes look.
TIL Tildes has a character limit
Addendum cont.
Random Thoughts On Combat
Status Effects are essentially useless. Game goes out of its way to make status effects the strategy for an early boss. But you can't repeat that success, since status effects proc so infrequently.
Weirdly, some of the most broken builds in the game revolve around running the same archetype on your entire party
Realtime combat in the Overworld sucks. Attacking locks you into animations, which can make certain enemy attacks frustrating when they catch you mid swing. In normal play, this isn't really a problem because of how little time you spend doing this. But if you ever end up needing to farm, you're in for a frustrating time.
Metaphor is Pay to Win*
The Merchant lineage is a class where skills cost money. It's extremely broken, managing to side step many of the game's systems:
Fast Travel Doors
You get fast travel early and use it often. You'll frequently teleport in front a door, that you annoyingly can't interact with unless you move your camera a tiny bit after arriving.
There's Still Juice in the Lemon
The conflict of most stories in the game, from the main quest to mundane side quests, unfolds against a backdrop of the "systematic mistreatment of groups".
But I don't think Metaphor: ReFantazio really contends with any facets of this mistreatment.
The game limply uses it to justify the violence and societal harms seen throughout the game, in ways that only leave players with the takeaway that "mistreating people or groups is bad".
There's so much juice left to squeeze out of this theme, but Atlus never goes deeper than "thing bad". It doesn't help that some of the deeper explorations are undermined by fantasy elements in Metaphor: ReFantazio's world. The worst of it, however, is that Atlus' mishandling of the theme suffocates the genuinely interesting ideas the game presents about anxiety, self-actualization and the power to effect change.
RuneScape: Leagues II Equilibrium is out and I already have conflicting thoughts.
The first relic I obtained (Golden Touch) is overpowered as fuck. Goldenhawk Boots alone give you Agility XP and Goldenhawk feathers whenever you're running, skilling or using ultimate abilities. Feathers can be sold for 50,000gp or exchanged for a good chunk of prayer XP. I have managed to hit 40 Prayer and 86 Agility in about two hours of playtime.
It also lets you pickpocket without fail and multiplies loot, as far as 200x coins.
The other two choices were kinda dogshit. And I don't think I should really explain why solving three tedious skills and any money woes in one relic is absurdly busted.