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.

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.