Metaphor: ReFantazio just became my most anticipated game of the fall

This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

Of all the big games coming this fall, Metaphor: ReFantaziois the most fascinating. The project is the next RPG from Atlus Studio Zero, the developers behind the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei franchise. When it was first unveiled, we saw that team ditch the modern day Tokyo setting for a more high-fantasy-themed world.

The easy shorthand would be “fantasy Persona” but after playing a few hours, its ideas run so much deeper than a new coat of paint. Metaphor feels like the culmination of the team’s aspirations with both the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei franchises. It enhances the world-building, combat, characters, and themes of those titles, all wrapped into the United Kingdom of Euchronia, the world that Metaphor takes place in. After only as few hours of play, I can’t wait to go back.

Getting started

Before you even step foot into the world, you’re asked for your name. Not your character’s name, but the player’s. It’s a simple question, yet my head swirled with thoughts about how the game would try to use this to bridge the gap between fantasy and reality. Sometimes such a simple question can be so powerful, and the way Metaphor’s sharp and quick-witted writing wields its words wisely, I needed to know more. Luckily throughout the preview, I caught glimpses of the way Metaphor sets out to use this neat little trick to lay the groundwork for bigger questions down the line.

The opening hours of Metaphor are a bit of a slow burn, as most RPGs tend to be. The Protagonist and their sidekick Gallica, a fairy who’s bonded to you and your quest, set out in hopes of finding an informant inside of the army as a request from our childhood friend who for an unknown reason has been encased in cursed thorns and is slowly dying. With our childhood friend’s father, The King, assassinated, the world is quickly turning to chaos and things are looking bleak. We set out in hopes of putting the new power vacuum of a kingless