©ATLUS. © Sega.
I spent some time playing a demo of the upcoming game at Tokyo Game Show 2024 atlas role playing games, Metaphor: ReFantazio. The title comes from the idea behind persona series, including Hashino Katsuradirector, producer and occasional writer of several games in the series. As a result, the game looks and feels like a fantasy version of Fantasyland. persona series. While the adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is strong here, some noticeable quality-of-life updates take away some of the drudgery.
In the demo I played, I was tasked with infiltrating a castle and rescuing an injured adventurer’s friend who was waiting at the entrance. With this mission in mind, I walked in and was immediately met with many feral canine enemies.
As long as I’m in the same basic area as the enemy, I can choose to press a button and start a turn-based battle. However, I used the attack button to chop down the monster. I thought this would give me an advantage in turn-based combat – like all my characters being able to attack first. After all, this is the standard persona game. What happens is the monster disappears in a puff of black smoke and a little popup window tells me how much experience and money I got.
In the demo, my character is level 10. Time makes me fight them. But that’s not all.
©ATLUS. © Sega.
The game then told me that I could scan the area around my character and the scan would reveal the level of the monsters in that area. With this, I can see which monsters I can kill without engaging in combat. But what about the monsters that are close to my level? With these, I have to hit them with my sword a few times before I choose to start a turn-based battle with the advantage (I go first, and the enemy is stunned for a full turn).
Of course, you can’t just wipe out a bunch of enemies on a whim. When you attack a weaker group before combat to eliminate them, other groups will try to attack you – and if they succeed, you’ll end up stunned for a full round. To avoid this, you can dodge outside of combat.
All of this turns the non-combat dungeon map into a mini-game. You scan hordes of enemies for weaker ones and knock them down while dodging rolls to avoid stronger monsters. Then, when only the strong ones are left, attack them a few times, then join the fight while they’re all stunned.
©ATLUS. © Sega.
Granted, these are only minor changes to the status quo. Similar capabilities can be found in Persona 5. However, in Metaphor: ReFantazio These are handed to you early on – combined, they eliminate useless drudgery and replace it with something that respects your time. The older I get, the more I appreciate supplements like this.
Metaphor: ReFantazio will be game console 4. game console 5. Xbox Series X/S and PC will be launched on October 11, 2024.
