You already know the rhythm: Spot an enemy, sprint as much as it from behind, strike, achieve benefit, discover the weak spot, all-out assault. Rinse and repeat for anyplace from 75 to 150 hours and, growth, you have obtained a Persona. It is a time-tested technique and, by god, it really works. Or not less than it does if the a whole bunch upon a whole bunch of hours I’ve amassed 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 sport—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 situations at this 12 months’s Summer time Recreation Fest, I’ve additionally discovered myself shocked by the myriad methods wherein 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 situations I obtained had been all combat-focused: The primary was basically a brief tutorial space, the second was a meatier dungeon, and the final was a showdown in opposition to a many-tentacled boss that emerged from the ocean to menace my celebration’s cellular base.
Like I stated, plenty 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 shortly whack (or be whacked by) an enemy to transition to a battle, Metaphor desires you to hit them just a few instances in succession. Breaking their posture bar will provide you with a free assault in battle, probably ending issues as quickly as they start.
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 whenever you hit ’em—a bit like in Persona 5’s Mementos—sparing you the hassle of preventing them for actual to seize their XP and loot.
When you’re in a combat, 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” they’d remaining on-screen (in Nocturne, some strikes solely took half an icon, whereas failures may cost a couple of)? An identical if not an identical system seems in Metaphor, as does a system that sees your celebration members mix to carry out highly effective “synthesis” strikes which may command a excessive turn-icon price.
It is value 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, which means I did not fairly get to complete the combat. 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 sport drenched in a lot assured swagger it launched a thousand character artist careers. The sport’s UI specifically 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 celebration member portraits twisted throughout the display screen, all of them distinct and lovely. It is the identical inventive philosophy that noticed, as an example, Joker’s define current you pause-menu choices in Persona 5, however taken to a lavish, technicolour excessive.
It is nice, in case you could not inform from my gushing, and actually seems 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.
We have got 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 referred to as the elda. The enemies you combat are of a chunk with the emerged-from-the-collective-subconscious Jungian weirdness of the Persona video games, however even they nonetheless handle to look novel. I spent plenty of my time within the sport’s demos battling bipedal eggs pierced by arrows, whereas the bosses had been a gross mess of limbs and pustules and tentacles. Oh, and your enemies are referred to as “people,” by the by.
However most of all, it is British as hell. Bid farewell to Persona’s all-American voice casts, pals, as a result of Metaphor: ReFantazio guarantees to be the primary Atlus sport 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 probably the most potent cockney accent an individual’s vocal cords can muster had roughly the identical impact on me as being flashbanged.
It was a pleasure to play and to take a look at, and all of it of it combines to present 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 can not wait to play a bit extra, largely due to what I’ve simply spoken about, but in addition to search out out simply what the hell a ReFantazio even is.