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Metaphor: ReFantazio (PS5)

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It’s rare I post about a game before I’ve completed it these days, but I felt I had to write something about Metaphor: ReFantazio. I’m only about 10 hours in, with the last five of those being mostly spent in the first proper dungeon, so it’s early doors, but oh my, is this a game.

To begin with, I was a little disappointed in the graphics. I’m not All About The Graphics, as regular readers would know, but it’s sometimes nice to play a PS5 game and have All The Graphics. Sadly, although it’s pretty, for the most part so far Metaphor isn’t an improvement on Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Until it comes to the UI, where it is utterly mental. If you thought, as I did, that Persona 4 Golden had UI diarrhoea (in a good way), then get a load of the exploded fontbook that is the Metaphor menu system and battle UI. Everything moves and has different fonts and styles and it’s all circular and spirals and flashy overlays and and and… there’s no reason for it! It doesn’t affect the gameplay in any way! My guess is the UI designer got bored after their task on the game only took a week.

Look at that beautiful mess on the left there.

That’s the first thing that hit me. The second was more subtle to begin with and is to do with the Metaphor title. After reaching Grand Trad, the (first?) big city in the game, and chatting to everyone and finding out what’s going on, my mission, and the general state of various races, religion, and relationships, added to a class system and a man who wants to change everything and be King, the real story was then as subtle as a brick to the face. It’s all about real life issues and politics under the guise of fantasy and magic. Clever.

That aside, the gameplay is Persona. So I’m loving it. The dungeon I’m in might be big and hard but it’s so slick and the turn-based combat is tuned to be fast and clear and stupidly over the top. It’s a shame the graphics aren’t quite there, but as I said, not a big loss for me.

Populous the Beginning: fog of war

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I hate fog of war. I particularly hate it when the enemy uses it to land loads of boats in quick succession and then set off a volcano in the middle of my base.

The joke was on them in the end, though. The top of the volcano provided a great platform for several watch towers manned by fire warriors, who then knocked people out of any subsequent boats before they could land. It took a while to build up my tribe again, of course, but once I had enough warriors and preachers I created a causeway and set up a camp on the top of a hill overlooking the yellow’s base, from where I could rain down lightning and swarms. Capturing boats would have just been a bit too slow.

I haven’t mentioned the unseen enemy level here. It turned out to be pretty easy, for once, as the enemy only attacked across one thin land bridge, making it easy to defend. I kept a fair number of warriors and preachers in the centre of my base to deal with the invisibility issues, but there were few occasions they were needed.

Populous the Beginning: building a bridge, again

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A new computer, and starting from the beginning of Populous the Beginning, again. This time I could have imported my previous save, and I still might, but with the increased graphical prowess of the new laptop I thought the game deserved a full showing. This coincided with an update to the game on GOG, which has made it run much more consistently and stable on Windows 11, and I’ve been running it through GOG Galaxy rather than the multiverse launcher which had previously been needed. To be honest, the quality improvements through the multiverse mean I’ll probably revert to that at some point, but for now I’ll up my time played counter on GOG.

PC gaming is still mostly about configuration.

None of the first levels gave me a problem, of course, although I had forgotten the best strategy for Death from Above and spent a minute or so bumbling around the world in a boat. I still passed it first time, though, after gathering multiple warriors and preachers and surrounding my shaman on her trip to the statue.

I finished with quite an epic battle on Building Bridges. The green tribe opened up the passage to my peninsular quite early, so I was having to fight them off at the same time as fending off yellow raids. It was only after I reinforced the three entry points with multiple followers, and set my shaman on top of a hillside to concentrate on lightning spells, that I was able to amass enough force to take the totem and open the bridge between the two tribes, sparking a conflict between them.

The next level to play is one of my least favourite – Unseen Enemy. I’ll tackle that when I’ve got some time and patience.

Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic! Marching Band (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Note: A free code was given to me by the devs for review purposes for an upcoming episode of the ugvm Podcast. This isn’t a full review, just a record in my gaming diary. The full review will be over there anon.

A while back, I played the totally ridiculous Switch game About An Elf. It had a very unique art style and gameplay which teeters on the very definition of what gameplay is, and was baffling before you even got into the plot. Very few games leave me with a lasting impression like that, so when I saw Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic! Marching Band, which features the same art style because, well, it turns out it’s by the same devs and set in the same universe, there was a pang of omgneed. And here I am having completed it to tell you about it.

I’ll start with the gameplay because, frankly, that’s the only bit that makes the slightest bit of sense. Each level, or rather, episode of Miss Rosen’s TV show, you’re given a number of “packing” puzzles to complete. You have to fit things on a desk, or in a suitcase, or a box, before the time runs out. That’s easy to understand, right? It’s not quite as easy as it seems because they’re mostly real-world items with their odd shapes and sizes, and later levels add gimmicks like things that are invisible or that constantly move to make it trickier.

On it’s own, it’s no Unpacking or anything, but the rest of the game. Oh my.

So Miss Rosen is a wind-up majorette. She has a TV show where she has “adventures” each episode, and you know they’re going to be fun because she’s here! How much fun? This much fun! Quite. The “fun” mainly involves talking to bizarre people, creatures and sentient objects, and then solving the packing puzzles in order to help or defeat them as appropriate. All while assisted by a child called Dunno who wears a bandana over his mouth which completely disguises the fact that he’s really a T-Rex because obviously?

As the game goes on, you find there’s Something Bad happening, with things disappearing not only from existence, but from time itself. Then your friends disappear too. Is it the work of a magician who makes things disappear in front of your very eyes? Well, that would be too obvious, surely?

I… well. Erm.

What I really, really love about the game is the animation and art. Like About An Elf (Dam and her cat from that game make an appearance here too, actually) it’s hard to tell what is real, what is models, what is CGI, and what is your imagination because surely you can’t really be building a horse can you? Oh, you are? Righty-o. Backgrounds are filled with semi-humanoid mice that speed up and slow down. Is the sun made of plasticine or is it a woman wearing a mask? Why do all the women have hotpants on? THE CAR HAS A FACE. And WHY is the game called Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic! Marching Band when she doesn’t really have a marching band. Or even a band of any other sort. All important questions, none of which are answered and by the end you’re feeling bewildered and maybe a little bit sick like you’ve been on a Waltzer.

Flock: a different type of bird watching

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In many ways, Flock reminds me of Flower, the relaxing1 and peaceful game on the PS3 (and other Sony consoles) where you gently guide the wind and petals to find new blooms. Guiding your character – someone riding a giant bird – is really easy, with the vertical component automatically taken care of and only the horizontal direction left for your input. This means you can spend time looking in the distance for where you want to go, and also for signs of creatures.

You have to find the creatures, you see. Your aunt is a zoological expert but she can’t be bothered to move from her water tower perch, so instead you have to go out into the world and search for them. When you find a creature, you can observe it for a little while before having to identify it. Is it a bewl (bean-like creatures with no legs), a gleeb (generally those with wings), or a drupe (a bit of a catch-all category)? Once you’ve identified the family, you get more accurate descriptions to compare against the creature on the screen. Why we need to identify the creatures is unclear, since Aunt Jane tells us if we get them right or wrong. Really she should just get down and do it herself.

That would be a bit more of a boring game, though.

Creature hunting isn’t the only aspect though. Evil robber creatures have stolen flutes and knitting patterns and are buried in mounds of grass. You have to find these mounds, and get the flying sheep that follow you around to graze there. Once they’ve eaten all the grass you can see the tail of the awful evil baddie, and you can pull them out of the hole. This is needed if you want to get the whistles for each family of creatures, and once you have the whistle you can get any creature to join your flock, following you around. You can also increase the number of sheep by finding them around, and increase the number of creatures in your flock, and (most importantly) get new clothes to wear.

It’s really difficult to get a decent picture of how the flock follows you around.

To start with there’s not much of the world uncovered, and you can see creatures relatively easily. After a while the Emperor Cosmet appears, and when it’s been identified the fog or clouds or mist or … whatever it is clears a bit, and new areas are revealed. Some of the creatures require more of a stealthy approach. Some are really fast and you have to be lucky to see them. Some are just rare. As well as the requirement to find the creatures, some of your Aunt’s friends are dotted around the levels on perches, and you have to find them and carry out other tasks.

The game has an amazing and consistent art style, and charm by the bucketful. The day/night cycle is quite affecting, and I suspect that the reason that some of the spaces in my catalogue are still unfilled is because I need to look at certain times of the day. I think I’ve unlocked most of the map now, but there are still entire families which are undiscovered.

  1. Until the horrendous and depressing last level. ↩︎