Dare to Critique Metaphor Refantazio: 5 Things I think could be BETTER

Metaphor Refantazio is one of the best games of the year. Critics love it, JRPG/Atlus fans love it, JRPG/Atlus newcomers love it, and I love it too – I wouldn’t have no-lifed it for over 120 hours from start to credits and beyond if I didn’t.

BUT no game – no matter how good – is 100% perfect. So after playing Metaphor, and putting over 100 hours each into Persona 3/4/5, and bringing to bear my many years of experience playing and loving JRPGs, I have 5 things that I think Metaphor could do even better in its next outing (whether that’s in the form of a famous Atlus super definitive complete edition re-release or a totally new entry in the burgeoning franchise).

Quick spoiler warning: While I won’t be digging into specific details, I will be talking at a high level about the story and late game components so if you haven’t beaten the game and don’t want any sort of spoilage, you may want to dip now or forever hold your piece.

#1 Archetypes

Archetypes are Metaphor’s take on the classic staple: JRPG job classes. For SMT/Persona fans, this new system supplanting the traditional monster catching/persona compendium came as welcome news – something fresh but still familiar, offering new kinds of RPG customization and turn-based build crafting.

Now, I LOVE me a good job class system. It’s a major reason why the Octopath games stand tall among my favorite games of all time – come for the pretty pixels, stay for the OP late game class abilities. It’s also why I will, to this day, shout from the rooftops that Bravely Default II is one of the most criminally underrated Switch games, period.

But while I ultimately think Metaphor’s Archetypes are a successful, satisfying iteration of the beloved gameplay conceit, there’s undoubtedly room for improvement in Atlus’s next outing.

First of all, there’s the economy. In the early and mid-game especially, MAG can be a bit dear when it comes to leveling up various Archetypes for each of your party members. And even as you start to unlock the second or third tiers of Archetypal lines (ex: Magic Knight for Knights, Wizards for Mages, Assassins for Thieves, Samurais for Warriors and so on), certain story gates will meter out your ability to progress. For example, progressing the Brawler class is interrupted multiple times since your chance to rank up the Follower responsible for that Archetype is locked behind multiple main story events.

However, my larger issue with this system is how it can feel a bit inflexible. Each Archetype has higher tier versions of it, and if you max out your Follower ranks with each of your party members, they ultimately unlock a Royal Archetype – the biggest, baddest, strongest version of their respective lines. But in addition to maxing your Follower rank and having them level their way up through their core Archetype line, certain classes will also require you to hit certain levels with other Archetypes.

For example, the Knight line will also require you to level up the Mage line or the Warrior line will require you to level up the Commanders. On the surface this is all well and good, and may even seem like it encourages you to experiment with different classes. But it actually kind of has the opposite effect: it directs you down a certain path since to get the best classes in the game, you have to prioritize specific classes for each character. Why would you spend your time and MAG leveling up other Archetypes if they don’t then contribute to your late game progression?

What I would potentially like to see to let players experiment with class combinations more freely and find what “their” preferred build looks like vs. “the” build you need to progress towards the Royal Archetypes would maybe be something akin to needing to max a certain number of classes to unlock late game Archetypes instead of one specific one. Or at the very least, maybe some options – like you could max a Mage OR a Summoner to progress the Magic Knight or something like that. Job class systems are at their most fun when it feels like the player is free to experiment and find the most cracked combinations possible.

To that end, it would also be nice to see them iterate on the skill inheritance mechanic for Archetypes. As you progress, you gain the ability to inherit up to 4 skills you’ve unlocked from any class and equip them to the Archetype of your choosing. But again, to add to the flexibility and freedom of experimentation, something like skill fusion and not just raw inheritance could be really, really cool to let gamers play around with – combining different offensive skills with buff/debuffing skills or passive abilities. Anything to let build crafting feel that much deeper and more customizable in the pursuit of personal playstyle, skillful strategizing, and rewarding late game OP fuckery.

#2 Show vs. tell

One critique I’ve heard popping up from time to time for Metaphor relates back to its story pacing. Some players will point out that the early game can feel a bit slow, or certain parts of the mid game and so on. But for me, the main issue comes as you get into the mid and late stages of the narrative and it’s a thing that compounds any potential pacing slowdowns: ExPoSiTiOn DuMps.

It’s not an entirely new issue for Atlus games or JRPGs in general. It’s a staple of the genre: long cut scenes and lengthy narrative sequences. But maybe because Metaphor has the burden of bringing to life its own fantasy world (vs. the Persona games leaning on albeit fictional versions of real-life settings), or its intentionally heavy-handed emphasis on (go figure) metaphor and allegory, this game leans pretty hard on exposition, tipping the scales more in the favor of telling vs. showing a lot of its narrative.

I really started to feel this imbalance grinding on me from Altabury onwards, with two characters sticking out prominently to me (Louis and the Eldan village chief) as the most notable examples of people explaining the story to you vs. letting the events of the plot speak for themselves and trusting the audience to parse out their thematic significance.

One other potential critique I’ve been mulling over for Metaphor’s story that may be unique to Persona fans and won’t impact Atlus newcomers in the slightest is that at times, it feels like Metaphor copies Persona’s homework. Without getting too into the nitty gritty specifics, the Archetype awakenings notably feel like Persona awakenings. And later on, you learn that the MC is essentially a Persona himself for the Prince – just think about it.

Maybe its because of the similar elements reused from Atlus’s other games (literally some sound effects are one to one lifted from Persona 5 – either that or I need to get my ears checked), but it just felt like Metaphor (even while creating a new fantasy adventure) was retreading familiar ground for SMT/Persona vets.

Also, I’m used to JRPGs culminating in punching a corrupt god in the face with the power of friendship, but at least in Persona games the stakes start personal before graduating from high school drama to go full-on global catastrophe, whereas here in Metaphor we know we’re gunning for God’s face from the get-go, even if the stops along the path from A to B can still deliver surprises here and there – but I’ll leave it at that since I may be dipping further and further into personal taste vs. more objective assessment.

#3 Less hub and spoke party RPG

Characters are the windows through which we experience a world and its story. They are our anchors and our avatars. They are the spirits we come to love and laugh with, or revile and rage against. While plot beats can be epic or thematic climaxes memorable and impactful, their lessons sitting with us long after a story ends, it’s ultimately the characters we come to care about. It’s the nature of being human, and that innate desire to connect.

Apologies for waxing poetic, but I wanted to explain what it is that I love most about my favorite JRPGs – and why they ultimately are my favorites. For example, I am a lifelong Final Fantasy fan, and my franchise favorites are FFX and FFVII. They both have great stories and well realized worlds with deeply customizable and challenging RPG systems layered into fun turn-based combat. All things I love. But ultimately what sets FFX and FFVII (especially the remakes!) apart for me are the characters. The diverse casts of loveable, tragic, flawed, but fully fleshed out characters who come together and go on the journey with us.

Bringing the focus back to Metaphor, I personally think it has a great cast of core characters for your party. Are all of them as memorable as those top tier groups from FFX and FFVII or Persona 3, 4, and 5? Debatably no, but that’s going to vary from person to person based on individual taste. (Just as an FYI, my favorites here are Hulkenburg and Heismay by far, but the last couple party members who join later managed to endear themselves to me a lot too!)

But to that end, while there are moments of the whole team interacting around a table in a pub at night after returning home from a day of dungeon crawling, the social interaction side of Metaphor’s gameplay feels very hub and spoke. Looking pointedly at Metaphor’s Follower system (its equivalent of Social Links/Confidants for Persona vets), the side stories are always the protagonist and a plus one.

This is by design: you’re hanging out with your Followers to level them up, advance their Archetypes, and pursue their personal stories. But I think it’s an opportunity to level up the Social Link systems of old to do more than the traditional one-on-one interactions, and instead invite more interpersonal moments between side characters – especially for your party members.

What would Heismay say about Hulkenburg’s knightly trials and tribulations? What life lessons of the larger world could Eupha glean from Junah’s story? Or even stepping outside of just the party alone, how would Strohl develop as a potential leader if he were forced to try and arrive at different answers than Bardon does in his side quest?

These sorts of more interpersonal moments that break characters out of their siloes with the protagonist could help elevate not only the Follower system and the game’s side quests, but help further flesh out the characters themselves, grounding Metaphor’s reality that much more concretely with their personalities and how they intersect.

#4 Dungeon variety

One of the other few common critiques I’ve seen levied at Metaphor is the lack of dungeon variety – but I feel like when I do see this criticism, it’s generally focused on the visual design or layout. What I personally found myself caring more about were the actual objectives or types of progression dictating how you as the player approach and interact with the dungeons.

Suffice it to say, I firmly believe that the most memorable of Metaphor’s dungeons for me will be: a worm. At one point, the party is swallowed by a giant “Human” (aka monster) worm and the only way out is through – which means a one-way trip into the belly of the beast. And thanks to its ooey gooey digestive juices, the player is put on a timer to make their escape – all the while fighting off monsters and ferreting out resources and treasure like you would in any other dungeon.

While having a timer isn’t always received well by RPG lovers, in this case it actually made me feel a sense of urgency and I genuinely had to consider how I fought and explored my way through the area. And I’m not saying that Atlus’s next game should have more time-pressure dungeon delves, but the spin on the formula was certainly refreshing – so it’s something I’d love to see them experiment with more.

Another (albeit less exciting example for me personally) dungeon deviation in Metaphor came in the form of an early side quest area where these goblin-like enemies had learned to fear magic, and so the sight of anyone wielding a staff incited them into a rage – making battles against them that much more difficult.

On the one hand, this invites players to strategize and learn how to experiment with Archetypes. How do you keep the benefit of mages while not equipping those Archetypes in battle? How do you mix and match skill inheritance and party composition with what you have available by that point in the game?

But on the other, the goblins don’t even have weaknesses specific to mages or healers – so sacrificing those abilities aren’t such a huge deal. It falls just short of really pushing you to learn how to engage with the game’s systems in a deeper, more strategic way. And what’s more, much like with the worm example above, it’s an exception to the rule. Subsequent side quests and dungeons don’t consistently confront players with similar limits or conditions that push you to level up your tactics and use of the game’s mechanics.

It just seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to add gameplay and environmental diversity to the game’s design, all while doling out challenges to the player that not only give them something fun and new to overcome, but also consequently teach them to engage with Metaphor’s mechanics that much more deeply.

Some ideas that immediately come to mind for me would be nighttime dungeon delves (since Metaphor restricts dungeon exploration to daytime activities) that could increase enemy strength and variety or even obscure players’ vision (like the dark floors in Persona 3). Or maybe even dungeons that latch onto the game’s theme of anxiety by introducing a mechanic akin to the party’s fear of the dark in Darkest Dungeon. But a game dev I am not, so I’m sure Atlus and Studio Zero can come up with way better gimmicks than lil ole me.

#5 Accessibility & QoL

The last category I want to discuss is arguably the most important. Even ignoring the first four critiques I’ve laid out in this article, the Studio Zero team has undeniably already made a fantastic game in Metaphor. But what I would really hope for most is to see that fantastic game be as widely accessible to as many players as possible – and currently, that just isn’t necessarily the case.

First of all, a lot of people (especially coming off the likes of Persona 5 Royal and Persona 3 Reload) would have liked Metaphor to be fully voice acted. But for the most part, they’re saying that because they want to have those characters brought to life that much more vibrantly by the talented voice cast – and that’s 100% valid.

But what’s more: full voice acting – especially in a narrative-heavy game like Metaphor – is an accessibility factor too. In this way and many more, Metaphor is not the most accessible for blind/low vision players or gamers with various cognitive conditions like dyslexia. The game doesn’t offer options for increasing text size or contrast, and it’s not the type that’s going to be screen-reader friendly either. You can’t even zoom in when pulling up the area map.

And those are just some of the most obvious, common features that jump out to me. Other should-be standard or basic features that seem to be missing at launch are things like the ability to remap buttons and controls (at least on console, I played on PS5 so I can’t speak to how all of this translates to PC where things can be a bit more open and modular).

Without devolving into a list of every missing accessibility feature here, the moral of the story is that I would’ve liked to have seen Atlus and Sega do better with at least getting the basics right when it comes to making their game more accessible at launch.

Beyond that, I could rattle off some additional quality of life nitpicks I have from a gameplay/UX perspective (like being able to save equipment loadouts so that switching Archetypes doesn’t overwrite your gear by defaulting to the highest attack/defense stat regardless of what buffs or effects you’re prioritizing for that character) or even a technical one (like aliasing and stable framerate performance) – but I think it’s about time I bring this one home.

In conclusion:

When I first started outlining this article, I had originally framed it as my personal wish list for the future of Metaphor. So, while it ultimately reads as critiques of the game, it really is a summary of my hopes for the future of the studio and this franchise. They have truly made one of the best games of 2024 in a year not lacking fantastic JRPGs – and I’m more than ready to sit back and celebrate the end of year accolades Metaphor is sure to win.

But these are just the top 5 things on my own personal wish list for Metaphor’s next outing, although some of these things could even apply to future Persona games under the Atlus umbrella as well. Either way, my hopes will be high for the next 100+ hour adventure I get to take in one of their vibrant, character-rich, turn-based vibing worlds – and I can’t wait til that day comes.