Metaphor ReFantazio effortlessly nails fantasy world-building, and proves Atlus can go toe-to-toe with Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy… and maybe even out-do them

In my humble opinion, the mark of a good game is one that lets you obsess over food. If I can wander into a fantasy RPG and start salivating over the food assets, hearing the phantom voice of Anthony Bordain in my head as I go and sit with the locals in their caff of choice and chow down on some scrumptious-looking brunch, I’m going to have far more patience for the hours of grinding I’ll likely need to do to get into the meat of the experience.

Good news, then. Metaphor ReFantazio is obsessed with food. Smitten with it, maybe. In a recent demo, hosted by Sega and Atlus, I got to play the opening few hours of the game, and then another section of the game about 20 hours in (give or take). And yep, the food jumped out at me the most.

Metaphor doesn’t just use meals as an excuse to pass time or as a cheap mechanic to level your team up; it seems like a genuinely fleshed out, meaty part of the game. This is Atlus’ first fantasy world using the SMT/Persona formula, and the developer has even dedicated a member of staff to making sure the moment-to-moment feeling of the world is up to snuff.

Enter Azusa Kido, lead daily system planner. She’s pretty good at making the worlds of Atlus RPGs feel properly lived-in and cogent. She was the game director and scenario writer for Persona 3 Reload, the Social Link planner for Persona 4 (and Golden), and she was the confidant planner and scenario planner for Persona 5. Basically, if you’ve liked any of the Social Link stories in the modern Persona games, or any of the Beef Bowl Challenges or miscellaneous stat-increasing activities that make up the worlds, you’ve got Kido to thank.

And here she is, front and center in the world of Metaphor. This game has a lot of crossovers with the Persona series, but the most obvious one might be that interacting with friends and crewmates in the world will increase the power and level of your Archetypes (classes you can switch between for battles), and engaging with elements of the open world will increase your five ‘kingly virtues’: courage, wisdom, tolerance, eloquence, and imagination.

It works a little differently from upgrading your Social Links and traits in the mainstream series, but not by much. It’s the food that stands out to me. Cooking is a big part of the game. Once you’ve got your hub (a walking ship called a ‘Gauntlet Runner’) and you’ve amassed your crew, you start to see how it all comes together. Red-haired, stoic elf Hulkenberg just wants to eat everything she kills.

There are marks in the game – a la Final Fantasy 12, for example – and I dedicated some demo time to mopping those up. After hunting one, and wrapping up the day/night cycle by choosing to turn in in the evening, Hulkenberg cannot wait to tuck into the weird parasite worm I slayed earlier in the day. The other party members remark on how peculiar and off-putting that can be. It reminds me of Dungeon Meshi (or Delicious in Dungeon, in the West) quite a lot.

If you’re based in one of the world’s hub towns and want to go to a nearby village or outpost, you will have to spend a portion of your day traveling. This isn’t just dead time; you can choose to do one of many activities in this liminal time; read by the window, play games with your crew, or cook. I obviously chose to cook, every time. You gather ingredients during missions and whilst exploring, and you can use these to cook dishes whilst in motion.

My favorite instance of this was cooking with rabbit-like companion, Heismay (note to self: not a rabbit, but a very important former knight of the Eugief tribe). He talks, at length, about a special kind of bread his tribe likes, and why it’s important to their culture. As he explains, you make it together – he kneads it with his little definitely-not-rabbit feet! He rolls it out with his tiny little hands! The animations are wonderful, and the world-building is amazing. At the end, I had a rare food item that confers quite surprising bonuses and buffs in battle. The dirt of any fantasy world, they say, is under the fingernails – and Metaphor seems to understand and act on that with aplomb. That it combines that narrative flourish with actual battle mechanics – it’s proverbial icing on the cake.

Why am I writing this article? Because I think a lot of RPG worlds, lately, don’t have the depth and lived-in feeling that they seemed to when I was a kid. You can’t tell me that Forspoken had the accomplished and complete world-building that, say, Final Fantasy 8 did? But with Metaphor, I think Atlus is leaving no stone unturned when approaching how to make a fantasy world feel proper. It’s a premium experience, made by a team with an uncompromising vision, and budget to spare. It’s a rare trifecta these days, I think.

Food is just one aspect of how all this comes together. There’s also the Gauntlet Runner itself (which I reckon might give Mass Effect’s Normandy a run for its money in terms of a homely-feeling hub), the various pubs and taverns you will be visiting, and the general vibe of the overworld. I’m genuinely put in mind of 90s and 00s RPGs, for all the best reasons, but supplemented with all the creature comforts of RPGs that have launched in the decades since.

I haven’t even touched on the combat aspect of the game, here. But, if you’ve read me talking about how astoundingly dope the ‘Press Turn’ system is before, you know how I feel about that, anyway. Metaphor takes what SMT3: Nocturne built and expands on it, similarly to how SMT5 did, but with a ‘job’ system baked in.

Metaphor is appetizing, moreish, and satisfying. Just like a good meal should be. I think it’s going to be more than the sum of its MegaTen and Persona parts, and I pray that it’ll land with the gaming audience at large. I just worry that without a recognisable IP attached, it might struggle out of the gate. And that would be a crying shame.

Metaphor: ReFantazio launches October 11, 2024 for Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4/5 and Steam.

This piece was written based on gameplay and presentations given during a special preview event for the game in New York, USA. Travel and accommodation for VG247 was provided by Sega for the duration of the event.