You realize the rhythm: Spot an enemy, sprint as much as it from behind, strike, acquire benefit, discover the weak point, all-out assault. Rinse and repeat for wherever from 75 to 150 hours and, increase, you’ve got received a Persona. It is a time-tested technique and, by god, it really works. Or a minimum of it does if the lots of upon lots of of hours I’ve collected throughout varied Persona video games imply something (please allow them to imply one thing).
It is a loop you may recognise in Metaphor: ReFantazio, Atlus’ upcoming fantasy RPG, and that is no shock. Metaphor is a brand new sport—and new universe—from Katsura Hashino, Persona’s director ever since 2006’s Persona 3 set the template for what these video games are within the fashionable period.
However having spent about an hour with the sport throughout three 15-minute eventualities at this yr’s Summer time Recreation Fest, I’ve additionally discovered myself stunned by the myriad methods wherein the sport is not Persona: the ways in which it pulls in little bits and items of different Shins Megami Tensei to create one thing new, distinct, and—most of all—much more preposterously fashionable than ever.
Mass destruction
The three demo eventualities I received have been all combat-focused: The primary was primarily a brief tutorial space, the second was a meatier dungeon, and the final was a showdown towards a many-tentacled boss that emerged from the ocean to menace my social gathering’s cellular base.
Like I mentioned, loads of the broad strokes of how fight works will most likely sound acquainted: Single enemies wander the world, ready so that you can whack them and transition into the turn-based squad battles.
Thus far, so Persona, however even right here there are wrinkles. The place Hashino’s earlier video games have solely requested you to rapidly whack (or be whacked by) an enemy to transition to a battle, Metaphor needs you to hit them just a few occasions in succession. Breaking their posture bar provides you with a free assault in battle, probably ending issues as quickly as they start.
That is in case your assaults do not merely kill them outright earlier than you get into the turn-based mode: Low-level enemies will simply keel over while you hit ’em—a bit like in Persona 5’s Mementos—sparing you the trouble of preventing them for actual to seize their XP and loot.
When you’re in a battle, different SMT affect begins to creep in. Keep in mind Nocturne’s Press Flip system? The one which noticed both sides’s allotment of strikes managed by what number of “flip icons” that they had remaining on-screen (in Nocturne, some strikes solely took half an icon, whereas failures may cost a little multiple)? An identical if not equivalent system seems in Metaphor, as does a system that sees your social gathering members mix to carry out highly effective “synthesis” strikes which may command a excessive turn-icon value.
It is value doing it, although: Making sensible use of my synthesis strikes made quick work of the boss in section three of my demo. Or it virtually did. Sorry, everybody: I received misplaced on the ship and wasted 5 minutes within the pantry, that means I did not fairly get to complete the battle. Hey, it was a really fashionable pantry.
Get up, rise up, get on the market
No, actually, extra fashionable than ever. Extra fashionable than Persona 5, even, a sport drenched in a lot assured swagger it launched a thousand character artist careers. The sport’s UI specifically is a feast for the senses. Each button press in Metaphor triggers some type of gala occasion. One thing so simple as checking my character stats sparked a sugar rush of Shigenori Soejima art work as social gathering member portraits twisted throughout the display, all of them distinct and lovely. It is the identical creative philosophy that noticed, for example, Joker’s define current you pause-menu choices in Persona 5, however taken to a lavish, technicolour excessive.
We have bunny-girls, goat-boys, and your protagonist seems to be some type of persecuted, adolescent David Bowie
It is nice, should you could not inform from my gushing, and actually seems like a squad of Persona grandmasters working on the top of their powers. It extends into the design of the world and its characters, too. Atlus is leaning onerous into fantasy for Metaphor, and has taken that as an excuse to go hog-wild with its characters and world design.
We have bunny-girls, goat-boys, and your protagonist seems to be some type of persecuted, adolescent David Bowie: A heterochromatic “Travelling boy” who’s a member of a victimised fantasy tribe referred to as the elda. The enemies you battle are of a chunk with the emerged-from-the-collective-subconscious Jungian weirdness of the Persona video games, however even they nonetheless handle to look novel. I spent loads of my time within the sport’s demos battling bipedal eggs pierced by arrows, whereas the bosses have been a gross mess of limbs and pustules and tentacles. Oh, and your enemies are referred to as “people,” by the by.
However most of all, it is British as hell. Bid farewell to Persona’s all-American voice casts, mates, as a result of Metaphor: ReFantazio guarantees to be the primary Atlus sport to acknowledge the existence of Geordies. As somebody used to the dulcet US tones of the Troy Bakers and Cherami Leighs of the world in my Atlus video games, encountering a rabbit-woman bounty hunter with essentially the most potent cockney accent an individual’s vocal cords can muster had roughly the identical impact on me as being flashbanged.
It was a pleasure to play and to have a look at, and all of it of it combines to offer Metaphor a really distinct sense of setting even in my quick time with the sport, even because it attracts on Atlus’ (and Hashino’s) different work to invent itself. I am unable to wait to play a bit extra, most due to what I’ve simply spoken about, but additionally to search out out simply what the hell a ReFantazio even is.
