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, growth, you’ve got obtained a Persona. It is a time-tested technique and, by god, it really works. Or no less than it does if the a whole lot upon a whole lot of hours I’ve accrued throughout numerous 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 recreation—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 12 months’s Summer season Sport Fest, I’ve additionally discovered myself shocked by the myriad methods through which 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 trendy than ever.
Mass destruction
The three demo eventualities I obtained 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 occasion’s cell base.Â
Like I mentioned, a number of the broad strokes of how fight works will in all probability sound acquainted: Single enemies wander the world, ready so that you can whack them and transition into the turn-based squad battles.
Up to now, 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 desires you to hit them just a few occasions in succession. Breaking their posture bar will provide you with a free assault in battle, doubtlessly ending issues as quickly as they start.Â
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 if 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 struggle, different SMT affect begins to creep in. Keep in mind Nocturne’s Press Flip system? The one which noticed all 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 a couple of)? An identical if not equivalent system seems in Metaphor, as does a system that sees your occasion members mix to carry out highly effective “synthesis” strikes which may command a excessive turn-icon price.Â
It is price doing it, although: Making good use of my synthesis strikes made quick work of the boss in section three of my demo. Or it virtually did. Sorry, everybody: I obtained misplaced on the ship and wasted 5 minutes within the pantry, that means I did not fairly get to complete the struggle. Hey, it was a really trendy pantry.
Get up, stand up, get on the market
No, actually, extra trendy than ever. Extra trendy than Persona 5, even, a recreation drenched in a lot assured swagger it launched a thousand character artist careers. The sport’s UI particularly is a feast for the senses. Each button press in Metaphor triggers some form of gala occasion. One thing so simple as checking my character stats sparked a sugar rush of Shigenori Soejima paintings as occasion member portraits twisted throughout the display screen, 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.
It is nice, for those who could not inform from my gushing, and actually appears 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 laborious into fantasy for Metaphor, and has taken that as an excuse to go hog-wild with its characters and world design.Â
We have bunny-girls, goat-boys, and your protagonist seems to be some form of persecuted, adolescent David Bowie: A heterochromatic “Travelling boy” who’s a member of a victimised fantasy tribe known as the elda. The enemies you struggle are of a bit with the emerged-from-the-collective-subconscious Jungian weirdness of the Persona video games, however even they nonetheless handle to look novel. I spent a number of my time within the recreation’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 known as “people,” by the by.
However most of all, it is British as hell. Bid farewell to Persona’s all-American voice casts, buddies, as a result of Metaphor: ReFantazio guarantees to be the primary Atlus recreation 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.Â
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, largely due to what I’ve simply spoken about, but in addition to seek out out simply what the hell a ReFantazio even is.