Can Metaphor: ReFantazio Escape the Shadow of Persona? Exploring One of 2024’s Most Interesting Games – IGN

Eight years ago, Japanese director Katsura Hashino announced that he was forming a new team within Atlus after more than a decade spent working on the Persona series (and Catherine), saying he wanted to try something new. Last summer, his game was finally revealed – Metaphor: ReFantazio, an RPG that features plenty of similarities to the Persona games, but has a personality all its own.

In broad strokes, Metaphor retains many familiar elements from Hashino’s previous games. Like its spiritual predecessors, Metaphor utilizes a turn-based command system built around exploiting the weaknesses of enemies. The main character, an outcast who uses forbidden magic, looks a great deal like the hero of Persona 3 Reload thanks in no small part to the art of Shigenori Soejima. Even some of the terminology is the same, a notable example being Tarukaja – a spell that boosts attacks in Persona and now Metaphor (though Hashino denies any link between the two).

Its pedigree and excellent production values has been enough to generate excitement in some RPG circles, with some going so far as to call it their most anticipated game of the year. But others in the broader gaming community are a bit more perplexed, either because of the similarities to Persona, because of the unconventional name, or both.

So what is Metaphor: ReFantazio really all about? And does it have a chance to step out of Persona’s shadow and establish a fanbase all of its own? These are still open questions, but I did get a little closer to developing my own understanding of Metaphor when I played it at Summer Game Fest earlier this month.

About Metaphor’s name, and why it doesn’t have romance

First, that name, which is definitely a mouthful. The Metaphor part is easy enough to understand – Hashino says that 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 think of many good ones so we were like, ‘Okay, just Metaphor. It’s easy.’”

As for the second part, Hashino says, the team wanted to rethink the idea of a fantasy world. Hence, ReFantazio. Okay, so it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, but you can’t say it’s not memorable.

As for the game itself, the demo I saw consisted of three different sections – a story sequence, a dungeon crawling sequence, and a boss battle. The demo begins by establishing some of the world through Gallica, a fairy companion who brings a bit of an 80s D&D vibe to Metaphor.

In the sequence, Gallica relates the legend of a place that looks suspiciously like New York City, with Gallica amazed by a world with no magic, no tribal conflict, and “towers of glass that reach the heavens.” It’s a story that seems to suggest that discrimination is a recurring theme through Metaphor, with many of the main cast members battling prejudice of some sort.

Speaking with IGN in a follow-up email, Hashino confirmed that Metaphor’s story is “closely related 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 past works while still leveraging the comprehensive strength and experience of Atlus as an RPG maker. As we developed the concept of the game, we realized our interest in exploring the idea of inner strength and how people overcome limitations. Essentially we wanted to explore how we can become the best possible versions of ourselves,” he said.

“To achieve this, we focused on how people perceive each other based on personality or personal interactions. This led us to the idea that biases or prejudices can form around judgements of these characteristics. We created a backdrop to this world around the idea that various characters in this world are exposed to some form of bias or prejudice in this regard.”

While the fantasy world of Metaphor is different from ours in many ways, if we are able to convey it well, we believe fans will be able to find various similarities between it and our own.”

Ultimately, Hashino says, his main goal for Metaphor was to move away from Persona’s modern setting while sticking to the format he knows best. That means that Metaphor plays a great deal like Persona on a moment to moment basis, which is especially evident in the dungeon crawling and boss battle sequences. It even has summons that look a lot like the demons from Personas. Admittedly, there’s plenty of nuance to be found in these comparisons – among other things, a big part of the strategy is positioning your characters in the front or the back row, and the battles overall are much faster – but on the surface the resemblance is clear.

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