The pro of having a calandar system is having to activly participate in time management and make choices. The con of a calandar system is having to activly participate in time management, and therefore optimizing time.
@@consensus889 Just wait for them to put out Metaphor "Royal" or whatever they end up naming it. Original Persona 5 You feel like there is no way to get everything done. In Royal they made it almost a certainty.
@@circaen do you by chance know how Atlus approached Persona 5 Royale in terms of upgrade costs? I'm wondering if I'm gonna have to pay 70 dollars again whenever they make the Metaphor "Royal" version. I have no clue if they pulled something like this with P5 as I played it way after release.
Respectfully disagree about killing low level enemies. This is fun and rewards the player by allowing them to skip boring forced battles once you are strong enough
I kinda wish they did a mixture of the overworld combat like Strikers has but then also have the turn based afterwards on like bosses or bosses and such Red and yellow enemies
Agrees with you. But we are talking about a review from an Etrian Odyssey fan so obviously he was gonna defend long and slow grind through way too many random battles
Great review, if I had to criticize something is your take on the action combat diminishing the resource management. You compared it to persona where in those games you’d have to still engage with low level enemies which would eat up your MP. Which isnt true, youd just use basic attacks to defeat those, defeating them instantly in metaphor saves time.
Also in P5 if you level Ryuji (which you probably will really early since he is one of the very few you can do of the start) you also just get to sprint / drive into enemies for instakills aswel.
@@taku-rukiMementos was made way more enjoyable with this, and it still had a splash screen with the results that Metaphor has eliminated (another QoL improvement)
Wild he would say that about Persona which is an infinitely easier game that drains less resources (At least p5, p5r, and p3r all were MUCH easier than Metaphor)
The biggest issue is probably how easy it is to turn out MP positive in various encounters, and in the mage lineage's case, by repeatedly hitting trash mobs. Staying neutral while exploring is one thing, but MP positive fights equate to a fully sustainable clear.
Or use physical moves that normally just eat up HP in persona. Or hit them all with tge needed weakness and finish them with an all out attack. For metaphor you're kinda incentivized to use a full monk team and occasional use of medi to get through longer dungeons like Belega Corridor
I've played a bit of Persona 3, 4, and 5, but could never really get into them as I don't like the school setting the games have especially now as an adult that's twice these kids' ages. So Metaphor coming out with basically the same Persona formula except in a cool fantasy universe is great. Really loving the game so far.
Lmao, I'm currently playing P5 royal as my first persona game, and I agree the setting is a bit jarring. I guess it's a thing in Japan. Even older people really enjoy the high school settings there, not so much in the West. But it's really not a big deal if you don't self insert into the mc and just enjoy the characters and setting from a distance for what they are. At the end of the day, the game touches on some pretty universal themes, and the gameplay loop is really addictive so it's still worth a playthrough imo.
For me an integral part of enjoying the games set in Japan was keeping the voices in Japanese. It was too weird listening to people speaking English about Japanese norms and customs constantly.
@@---jt5wg Agreed, i'm playing MR in Japanese first but my ng+ playthrough is gonna be in English. Also a complaint that i have is that constantly hearing not just my party members but Gallica talking all at the same time with resets included made my brain want to pop. Love Gallica but she professionally yaps constantly and i have to put something else on while i grind. If i'm struggling with a boss or enemy encounter i will after a certain point take my headphones off and listen to other stuff while i play.
I understand your argument about the calendar giving you too much leeway, but I do feel like you're speaking from the perspective of someone who's played many of these sorts of games and thus has a much better idea of how to optimize your time. This was my first time playing a Persona-like, and I ended several days short of being able to complete all the quests. I feel a lot of less experienced players probably had a similar experience.
I think I only had 4 spare days when I played, and thats as someone whos 100%-ed P3, 4 and 5 etc Ratatoskr must just be really good at time management. I wouldnt have wanted it to be any more strict, as I was getting pretty stressed towards the end Pretty sure I did all but 2 dungeons in 1 day aswell
I'm surprised to hear takes like this, because I had an incredibly similar experience to what ratataskor described. The game was incredibly linear/enabling with all quests per area appearing at the same time, week-agonistic social link availability, etc. I think the difference boils down to tuning, and specifically how main story dungeons can eat up days for less experienced players. More experienced ones, comfortable with MP management and the combat, tackled every dungeon in just one day. The devs naturally create magla hollows and such so you DON'T have to do this, and suddenly differentials in available time emerge because of this.
@@Minizor27 I dunno. Call me crazy but I kind of prefer that approach? It was gratifying to be able to clear out all of the sidequests in a single trip around the region, then earing a tonne of rewards when I cash them all in. Social links threw me a litte though, as some ranks are ship only, and some are town only. I think I just got unlucky, as there were quite a few days I couldnt talk to anyone, and had to use my time fishing etc. Despite the free time I had, I still didnt get much chance to use the shrine function or cleaning for HP and MP boosts etc. I feel like if I was a newcomer to these sorts of games, idve struggled. I imagine their calendar isnt as refined as it couldve been because its their first time balancing it around 6 months, rather than 9-10 months like in Persona, and there are far less stretches of time (like during exams) where you cant do anything. You can be productive on pretty much every day of the calendar. EDIT: Just managed to 100% P3 Reload at long last and get Orpheus Telos after all these years, and it only reaffirms how I feel about Metaphors calendar. P3s calendar was stressful. Unfun. Wayy too strict. Way too many unpredictable bits where you dont get access to anything, summer vacation being one of the biggest issues. Only clendar kindness they give you is Mitsuru being available in the exam periods. The number of times I had to reset my month and write sh*t down was disgusting. And having to save scum social links for maximum affinity points, because god forbid youre allowed to be honest when roleplaying. I 100% do not understand how people can prefer that approach to Metaphor and P5R. I'll take a schedule that gives me more spare days than I need, rather than one where you only get maybe 2-3 days worth of mistakes when use a PERFECT guide. And yes. I 'could' have just used guides to know what the optimal schedule is, because I know there are day by day guides out there, but...I SHOULDNT HAVE TO! TL:DR - I might just be bitter that I maxed all but 1 social link in P3R (Rank 9 Bebe goddamn you.) earlier in the year and had to redo my playthrough >_>
On your comment about the Calendar leeway, I'd have to disagree. With Metaphor being a standalone title in the greater catalogue of Atlus games - I feel like its an absolutely wonderful starting point for new gamers into the genre that is "Atlus RPG's, and that these players will definitely be cutting it close yet still just barely completing all the activities there is to offer and that they'd want to do. This is an issue for established fans who have a complete understanding of the social stat raising and social link min-maxing we've all come to know and love. Which now in the moment is a bit of a tongue bitter and something that we'll just have to raise our arms in defeat saying, "Oh well." Yet even still, I found the casual approach of actually getting everything done without having to stress out over if what I'm doing is the right decision, only to find out several hours later that I could have done it better, was an absolute breath of fresh air and a nice tide over before we get that next award winning Persona title that will inevitably have us back in the trenches trying to get everything done. ------ Really well made review 😊
yeah i agree. the extra leeway was really nice, when i got to the last dungeon i only had to finish the links of the people that were timegated till then so i had basicly a whole month with nothing to do which, while honestly a bit of a drag to get trough that month, gave me a huge amount of satisfaction because i felt that i perfected my playtrough which was a way better feeling than when i played p5 for the first time where i was had 2 confidants 1 convo away from completing making me feel misserable about it for a while. it also gave me time to max out the colliseum which i tought would be ng+ purely because of time and allowed for some extra exchanges and getting some achievements like doing the bungie jump enough to get the max courage jump achievement. And it gave me a few extra days to grind MAG and A-exp to max out the royal archetypes for the whole team without making it all a single resource draining nightmare trying to squeeze an insane amount of grind in one day.
This exactly. Metaphor is my first "Atlus RPG", and I wound up being a few days short of being able to complete everything. I just barely finished every Follower link, and didn't have enough time to do the Colosseum or the very last "Trial of the Dragon" quest. I think it's hard for more experienced players like Ratatoskr to understand just how much of a "leg up" their preexisting knowledge of the calendar gives them when it comes to optimizing their playthroughs. I don't blame him, because he can only talk about his own perspective. But my experience was different.
New player here and I really enjoyed my time and still am. Currently at the end game. I like to get as much out of a playthrough as possible but I didn't wanna use a guide, so with the calendar system I put a lot of pressure on myself to not miss out on something. After being able to return to past locations I relaxed and just played how I wanted to. It's very fair in my opinion especially with so many options.
I always disagree with the argument that ‘this is good for new players’ when discussing any gameplay aspect. I don’t understand why people are so convinced that new players need help getting into a game, as I myself was once a new player to many genres I’d never normally try and found them enjoyable without these ‘friendly to new players’ additions. I don’t mind if I don’t play the game perfectly the first couple times I try a new genre, as I enjoy them infinitely more when I figure out how to optimize them on my own, and don’t have lots of extra cushion or hand holding.
@@---jt5wg I don't know, I've played multiple Persona games and the old Atelier time-limit games and personally I think Metaphor has a pretty decent balance for the time mechanics. There's possibly too much time in the last month, but given the amount of combat side-content in the game that eats days there really isn't a ton of extra time if you want to max your archetypes, finish the Arena, Trials super-bosses, etc. Like, I one-day'd all of the dungeons and, after doing all the ranked arena fights, and Trial quests, I only had I think 4 days left. The big difference, in my opinion, between Persona and Metaphor is that in Metaphor the presumption is that you *should* max all confidants in a reasonable play-through. The stuff that a moderate-efficiency play-through might miss would be the optional combat content, as that content is very time-inefficient. In my opinion, that's a good decision. It prevents players from being gated from interesting Archetypes and it allows the player to not miss character stories which are relatively core to the appeal of the game.
Imo the best part of the calendar system is not the time restrictions, it's the freedom to shape your playthrough. If you want to do the dungeons right away you can, or if you don't feel like fighting enemies right now you can spend your time focusing on more story moments through social links or just chill by upgrading your social stats.
The problem is that you think there is a freedom, but there actually isn't imo. There is actually a "most efficient" way to play the game. Considering there are storms barring you from dungeons as well, there is a "right answer" in the order you must do things to get the most out of your game
@@mykehawke6701 Sure you can minmax your time in these games but what i mean is that the system allows you to pick which things to prioritize, like for example you can choose to completely ignore Ryuji or Ann in P5 and do their social link during the last month of the game, of course most people won't do that but the choice is there
@@mykehawke6701 The problem is that what you said isn't a real problem, it's a fabricated one. We love to ruin the things we like, even I am guilty of that and I caught myself wondering why Persona 5 didn't feel as good and as fun as P3, then I played P3 remake and felt the same thing. The answer is simple, the more you play these games by metagaming, the less fun they are. They are fun when you hang out with a character because you like them, not because they raise a number in your stat sheet. And to me the "most efficient" and "right way to play a game" is a lame argument because if you really think about it, there is a right and most optimal way to play any game and that way is probably displayed in most speedruns strats out there.
@Ocean5ix Agree with you. I do believe I focused to much on the "meta" when playing this game. However, when I'm playing on hard, I also do want the most optimal results for all my fights, which leads me down the path of min maxing all my moves I take which is not a great way to play
@@mykehawke6701 I would say that to avoid this they should find a way to make Archetype unlocks something else other than social links and maybe reward social links with the item to level up archetypes, this way you have an incentive to do them but which ones you do are up to you. I'm also playing on hard and it feels great to me and while I do sometimes pick which social link to do based on which Archetype it'll unlock, most of the time I min max/theorycraft with what I have unlocked, know what I mean? Instead of planning an entire month of the calendar dedicated to unlock the 3rd Warrior Archetype I just take it slow and find solutions to combat that involves what I already have, and I haven't faced a challenge in the game that made me think "man I really need to rush that social link to unlock that class". Actually Metaphor gives the player much easier access to block, repel, buffs and debuff skills than other SMT games, the Sync system gives you access to what would be late game spells in SMT, for example.
The last quarter or so of the game definitely felt rushed. I won't name it to avoid any spoilers but there's a point where you go somewhere that really seemed like it should have been a dungeon and should have had a proper build up to it but it has neither of those things. You get there, have some dialogue, then immediately have a boss fight outside of the place and that's it. You never set foot inside of the place, not even for a sidequest. Unless I missed one and I really don't think I did. Felt like there had to be cut content there. I was overall pretty pleased with the game but that last stetch was lacking.
I do think it maybe should have been a short dungeon, but on the other hand it's already a very long game as it is so I'm not sure if it really needed another full dungeon runtimewise. But yes the pacing of the story around that time all of a sudden goes to mach 10 for some time which is a bit jarring compared to the pacing of all the rest of the game.
Yeah, the last couple of months were clearly rushed. I think the final stretch feels so drawn-out because the dungeon was probably cut due to time constraints. Despite that, this is still my personal game of the year
Yeah, this interaction was very strange- and after how built this particular plot point was too, some more organic exploration/revelation (similar to the 4th main story dungeon) would've been incredible. I feel we could benefitted a lot from less exposition dumps in general.
I genuinely think there was supposed to be a chapter in the last city before the final act. They put so much work into a HUGE city you have almost no reason to go to, and one of the characters, its set up that their family basically runs it, and it's just not explored beyond a passing statement. I think I have a pretty good guess of what the dungeon was supposed to be, but it might have been redundant with the one before it
17:04 I can’t stand this take of things not being fun if the bad choices you make don’t produce a severe enough consequence. This fundamentally assumes the choices players make regarding time management can be bad. A new player who isn’t familiar with atlus games shouldn’t feel any pressure from the time management beyond completing main dungeons quests on time. If a player gets virtue gated for a social link then they can go do activities until they can clear the check. Its not Atlus’s fault that players decide to optimize or follow guides to do everything in a single run. That was never the intent. The intent was play as you like as long as you meet the main quest deadline. If you miss stuff thats okay because these games were intended for multiple play throughs and your stats carrying over into new game + makes the transition easier. Unoptimized choices ≠ Bad choices. Optimization is self imposed constraint.
It's kinda disingenuous to assume the majority of the player base will even complete the game, let alone run through an 80+ hr game multiple times. The calendar system in the past created friction. I do agree that optimization inerts a lot of that, but I think Atlus realized that a using guides and optimizing was making the game less accessible. We've seen them slowly try to figure out how to combat it, whether its the online "what everyone else did" system, or highlight and directing players "this social link or activity is recommended today" with map icons and helpers etc.
There needs to be a middle ground between being able to do everything everytime and being so strict you need a guide. I'm one of those persons who doesn't care about doing 100% as long as I am able to complete the game and I like the calendar system because it "forces" me to plan what I want to do. In Persona I feel that there are too many instances of "today is xyz national holyday therefore you can only do this" that tend to ruin your planning. Here on the other hand very few of the side quests / hunts even have a deadline and it doesn't take a genius to be able to do everything with days (if not weeks) to spare, especially if social links only go to 8 and when you're able to talk with your companions the link increases no matter what removing some extra padding. The calendar system in Metaphor is almost useless if it wasn't for the global timeline and marginally for the weather system...
wack ass take, the optimization was a classic part of the games, removing that game feel absolutely affects peoples perceptions of it. "you problem" is the worst argument and its everywhere in game analysis criticism, get over yourself
This, I'm by no means inexperienced to this calendar system, however as soon as I found out that follower rank up events weren't tied to any point system like the social links, I dropped the idea of following a guide I didn't manage my time super effectively, I ended every activity, side quest, follower rank up event and coloseum battle around 5 days before the final deadline But I have to say, it was great not having to check a guide everytime I did a follower rank up event, it was nice to not have to spend time going to the park with my followers to get some extra points and just stright up continuing their story if I wanted/could, I hope the persona series uses this system because it feels much better tbh
I think you could have better elaborated how exactly the story was not a good delivery vehicle to the themes here explored. I couldn't quite grasp your thoughts on the ending without that.
Honestly in my opinion (im 40 hours in atm) the dialogue is just too on the nose - yes before anyone says ik the game is literally called metaphor. The characters just communicate the themes so bluntly and plainly it doesnt really stop the player and make them think. To me it feels like this game is trying to explain politics and social issues as if the player was a 10 year old, its not presented in an actually thought provoking way, more like stating the obvious. That being said i really like the actual plot of the game and the setting/ characters - louise is js fking cool as hell
@@goonic I agree to some extent. I feel they managed to explore their themes in a really interesting way (mostly), and I do also enjoy plot, characters, setting, etc. However, I think they really mishandled how they explored the anxiety theme. I don't think it is an issue of simply being to explicit, but it feels like every single character repeatedly comes to the same conclusions and presents very similar monotonous opinions about "facing anxiety, overcoming anxiety". Like, from vastly different contexts, all characters end up saying the same "we need to be strong and face fear and anxiety", and it comes off a bit silly I feel. P5 was very explicit too, but I never felt that they were always talking in the same way about the need to spark change you know. (I vastly prefer Metaphor over P5).
Massive Spoiler: I think the Game depicts a lot of politic and social viewpoints. There is not only „one“ „metaphor“ in the Game, it has many. A strong emphasis also lies in using fear as a weapon. Also, remember More‘s first and last words: can a fantasy have power? It is a two way question: the Book in the story for the protagonist and the story for you the Player. Had it an impact on you? I think that delivery was very strong.
I think the endgame point of the story was still strong and powerful. Especially with a certain plot twist that just absolutely elevated the experience for me. The conclusion before rolling ending credits is satisfying enough cause it holds on to the belief that being the King is just the mere first step. And it's cool seeing that even if you're the king, you still havent swayed from your ideals and pretty much don't care about the crown but more the people. The game even in its ending, is still so strongly commited in its vision. And thats something worth respecting. In regards to the story, I think they pretty much fumbled a bit with Louis. Louis was my main issue when it comes to the game.
I feel like we all agree the thesis of the story is great and the world is compelling, but I had similar dips in interest as ratataskor. There were a lot of genuinely great setpieces and build, but I'd say a majority of resolutions did fall flat/were unsatisfying for me. A lot of personal enjoyment likely hinges on how willing someone is willing to look past that- in my case, I struggle to.
@@Minizor27 For me it was a slow buildup, but kept getting better and better. The characters and worldbuilding amplified the story so much for me once we got the pacing going. The Memorandium also helped me alot in understanding the story better. It's just that fighting Louis 5 times within the game was exhausting and his character writing being extremely slow made it feel like he only had a little say within the story. Its weird the direction Atlus took him. Not a big fan of it. Rather than becoming a Villain i care about, he just started to become annoying and frustrating. The game has been mostly directed by the main cast wich was beautiful. Louis just needed to have been done better.
@@Minizor27i agree, game had a lot to mess around with so when it ends in such an expected and safe way, without exploring many potentially interesting points, it really sucks. the first 60 hours for me was magical, but when it came time to wrap things up, the game really fell flat for me.
The way press turn works with the passing is actually the same as in the SMT games before SMT5. SMT5 is the only one that always goes to make half turns if there are full turns left.
I took about 84 hours to beat the game and another 20 to finish regicide for my second playthrough. I found this to be a 10/10 game with a little bit of a lull in the midgame with the island. The game has its issues and regicide wasn't well done imo however I really think this is my GOTY and truly an amazing game
I disagree that optimizing the calendar is where the fun comes in from a system like that. What I personally like is its verisimilitude. The fact that the days are tracked adds a similative aspect that makes the game more immersive.
I gotta disagree about the low-level enemies bit. They add a nice level of "oh, I'm more poweful now", especially when you turn an enemy from a squad battle-level enemy to an action combat one in a dungeon by leveling up, it feels great. That aside though, I still definitely feel the mp attrition in most of the dungeons I'm doing on normal difficulty, with me having to use 3-5 mp restoration items per dungeon
On the soundtrack, my biggest gripe is that they did not have enough unique battle tracks. I get that reusing the menu theme can be sorta cool but they really should have had more unique music for the final battles. Theres nothing that reaches tge heights of new world fool, the nyx boss music, or rivers in the desert. The closest was the almost argumentative chanting in one of the final dungeons
I played 98 hrs and finished everything except NG+ boss lmao. Loved it! All the bonds were good. I did all dungeons in one day but i didnt have a whole month of leeway lmao
Why did you think the change to half-turn on passing was better? I found the one in SMT5 to be a lot more flexible to try strategies, but curious to hear your thoughts
half turn on pressing is the norm with all smt ganes. SMT 5 made the change, and it was a bad one because guard and pass turn should not be equal. Makes passing a pointless function. May as well guard instead. Passing as a half turn adds strategy to passing, much better and the way the series will continue to function.
I believe the metaphor is that overcoming your anxiety allows you to change things in the real world. In other words, you can turn your ideas (fantasy) into reality through determination. Unfortunately, the political elements are not well executed IMO. The book at the center of the story paints our world as a utopia, but in the game's narrative, this world got destroyed. All we fight for is to restore the previous status quo, because equality is awesome (unless its Louis' interpretation). But why would it end differently this time? What are the issues with Socialism, Neoliberalism, etc.? The only concepts we fight against are Corruption, Social Darwinism and (systemic) Racism. I really enjoyed the game, but it doesn't take 70+ hours to explore why these are bad ATLUS.
Game adresses your issue with the book. It's not our world, it's our world viewed by author's lenses, he ideolized our version of society. World ended, but society moves on. Like it always does. And for me it was not "equality is awesome", but more like "equally acceptable social lifts are awesome". Game has a thing or two about how real equality is unobtainable without erasing individuality.
@FlynnFromTaiga Exactly, and in fact most of the later characters that read it with you also point out how the wonderful ideals of the utopia also intrinsically lead to other issues. It's far more nuanced than just Louis bad book good, especially with the lens of the destroyed world.
@@DragonEdge10 Yes, you're right. Characters react sceptically to the book, because it sounds like fantasy to them. That doesn't change the fact that the book's world is the one our party tries to (re-)create. But my main criticism with the game is the way it handles politics. Instead of focusing on ideas and solutions, its just a big popularity contest devoid of any concrete plans to create a better future. Hold up, they might be onto something...
Personally one of the points that I took away from the story is that a true utopia is a world where there are heroes actively fighting for change and improvement towards a better one. A reset or chaos/order approach simply won't do. It is up to you to heal and forge a brighter future. This is not rather a status quo or complacency, but rather a perpetual forward movement towards a brighter future sparked by change. As for the whole fiction empowering your change thing, I think it's a very open situation. I think you took away a very valid interpretation about the book. I personally also saw it as a message of letting media affect who we are. All of the heroes and themes of books, films, games are allowed to empower us in very real ways that we take into our "real" lives. It worked for the prince and the guy typing a lengthy comment of a game he really likes.
About the leeway of the calendar, it's worth nothing that some people really REALLY REALLY REALLY HATE timers in games, for some reason. Even though that's what makes things fun, usually. A shame about the story, at least for me so far the writing is way better than P5's at least, so it's really disappointing to hear they blew it at the end..
I disagree on the MP management being a fun mechanic (~12:30). The calendar system heavily promotes you do dungeons in the minimal amount of time required. This means running out of MP is disincentivized and therefore you will play in a way to not run out of MP. In both Persona 5 the solution was either avoiding fights or using MP regenerating accessories. In metaphor, early on it promotes using Mage on chaff and later on specific MP regen passives (i.e. Wizard 11). I consider both of these as degenerative game design AS LONG AS the MP is too heavily constrained. This was not the case in Metaphor because of the auto-kill of low lvl + ambush. But this was an issue in Persona 5 because it heavily incentivized you to use the MP regen accessories, play in silly ways (avoid fights, only use HP attacks + heal using items, etc.), or make the game much harder.
Respectfully disagree on most the negative aspects you bring up minus the end game stuff as im not quite there yet and i will say that maybe it would have helped had they enabled you to pick the Regicide difficulty off jump as opposed to restricting it till new game plus and beyond. Still at 50 hours (Also on hard) easy 10/10 unless something drastically changes.
I don't quiet get his negative points to be honest. Everything he mentioned as negative was the reason why i liked the game. Calendar system don't have to be the same as in personas and i liked how managable was compared to persona games and i like both but it suited this game more. The is story nothing ground breaking i mean it is easy to understand but it is compelling, interesting and exciting just like other persona games. I don't know how it ends but i heard more positives about the ending than negatives yet. This review feels like comes from a person who rushed to the end so i can make a review on it type while im at 62 hours into the game and just did Louses soriee mission which is like half of the game. This game has it's flaws just like any games but the positives outweights the negatives so much that i can't mention any negative yet that is worth to mention. I always say if a game is made for everyone than it is not made for anyone and this review comes from a person who was nowhere near the main target audience yet he still loved it so its a win.
My opinion on Metaphor us nit that it is a bad story, in fact I would say its good, but it had the potential to be one of the greats, and that held back potential is what causes the warts. Ultimately the story does not want to compromise on the fantasy of the noble king and noble ideals, unfortunately i just feel like that holds the story back from true narrative greatness.
It sounds like Rat wants an even tighter schedule, and more punishing resource management. To each their own, but I personally would like the game a lot less if that were the case. Tbf, I'm not exactly an Atlus rpg pro though. I firmly stick to normal difficulty (lest i rip my hair out) ,and find myself having to take frequent breaks just to not burnout my brain from all the thinking and planning. Idek how you could placate both sides, but I felt like they struck a healthy middle
I personally align with his wants, as someone who enjoys pushing difficulty in games, and I'd say all that was a sticking point because it really hurts replayability. Wanting to do a re-run, optimize, and come out with a greater sense of accomplishment is a natural sense for a lot of players, and the surface level leniency provided, while not bad, does diminish this aspect. I think the easy solution is just to have a better tuned difficulty selection (that isn't tied to ng+) so we can all play around the numbers we enjoy. Unfortunately, this usually isn't a priority for atlus.
@Minizor27 Sounds valid to me man. I like pushing difficulty too, but I'm not very good at turn-based games myself so it was perfect for me. Though I guess that probably isn't ideal for some of the long-term fans. Give me an action combat game though and I'm down to get real sweaty lol I also could never be a critic bc if I have fun watching or playing something I don't tend to have much criticism to give unless something is reeeeeaaaal bad or annoying
Good review. I agree that the music and art in this game was spectacular. The VA was phenomenal. I particularly love Stewart Clark as Strohl (I also liked him as Dion in FF16). I disagree about the action combat making mp management too easy. I don't see how its that much different from Ryuji's confidant bonus in P5 which would kill low level enemies instantly. This just adds an action combat system to it and I like that. Its a step in the right direction and I'd like to see a more developed system in future games. Biggest disagreement I have is the difficulty. I understand this is rather subjective and you might just play more rpg's than me. But I've played my fair share of Atlus games, and I found the challenge in this game to be satisfying (I also played on hard mode). Sure, getting advantage in combat could trivialize some battles, but I found that was balanced by how if you get ambushed on hard mode enemies can just annihilate your entire party if you aren't careful. That kept a nice tension to combat for most of my playthrough and made earning an advantage feel satisfying. Maybe I'm just not great in the action combat, but that was my experience and I enjoyed it.
Action combat and instakill weak enemies is coming a lot from personal preference really. I think there are lots of people complain about mp and think how Metaphor handle repeated combat to be more enjoyable. I think a lot of time when i try to full clear p5 palaces, the majority of the time is just avoid enemies to preserve mp most of the time. Its like not a big deal but i still enjoy Metaphor a lot more. And also i saw many people complain about Dragonshrine dungeon being so long but like compare to p5 palaces, its nothing really. So yeah, its heavily personal preference, but i think Metaphor got its own pace of combat which different from other games is very cool.
I remember in persona 4, one of the first checks in the game requires you to have 3 courage, before you've even unlocked the ability to level courage up. This says to the player, hey in new game plus you will have new opportunities that will not be available even if you optimize your first run. (Whether on not P4 delivered on this idea is definitely questionable) But in fantazio, virtues only exist to gate off social bonds. In persona, at least having a high personality score would let you get new jobs
I think that it's very relevant. I live in America and this whole game really spoke to me. It feels like because people are in fact afraid and scared and they'll listen to anybody who says they'll make everything better. This is happening on both sides.
@@Foogi9000 Yeah. It's also neat how straightforward the writing about these subjects matter was. It was very believable. I think it's hard to gauge the plot in the light of what we are used to with movies. But if we see it as a fable or fairy tale, it's pretty much a fundamental type of cautionary tale we need to start telling for our generations. I was going to play gow ragnarok next and the game left me in a state of wanting to take a break for a bit lol it made me think.
@dasaen Agreed, i knew what type of game this would be whenever the first fight is literally named as a Human lol. Not that i mind, this game is flawed but goated as well imo.
Hey man, great video as always, but as a poli Sci dork, I would point out that actually all of the other candidates for the throne at least at face value represent different forms of governing or revolutionary philosophy. -Hythlodeous V represents the enlightened monarch -Forden represents theocratic rule -Louis represents Darwinian society or the concept of might makes right -Catherine represents the revolutionary communist ideology -Rogier is a stand in for Libertarianism -Loveless represents hedonism as a form of governance -Rudolph represents the concept of a military state/Junta, or coup d’etat -Milo is narcissistic governance, literally rule by the beautiful -Jin represents republicanism, or contemporary politics And actually you could make an argument that the MC ends up with an anarchosocialist philosophy but then he becomes king so I guess he’s a monarchist in the end.
I had 3 days left in the game when I finished all of the follower ranks and finished the colliseum fights. You either looked up a guide, or are really good at time management, but I think this brings a good balance between not finishing all links on your first run, and having too much leeway.
to each their own, but your criticisms are literal improvements over other Atlus games. Looser schedule and easily killing low level enemies is a great change. I agree about your overall rating for the game, but my negatives are more about the kind of boring writing Atlus does. Been playing Ace Attorney trilogy, and it's unbelievable how much better the writing is. Gallica and Grius are the only good characters in my first 20 hrs.
@@critical_6164 and its laughable that they couldnt have good writing for the first 20 hours of the game, being a 100 hours long is n excuse. also, i dont care at all for the characters in this game, i dont know, i feel like the character writing is typical generic fantasy fiction, and the entire games themes and story could be summarized as "racism is bad yall". persona 5 and especially 3 handled far more themes and far better too imo.
@@flamingmanure The writing was good during the first 20 hours, it's just that the writing was generic. A game with generic but good writing doesn't make the story bad. Besides this is an atlus game, they don't reveal key story aspects during the first couple hours out of hundreds, it's not until much much later where everything unravels and becomes less generic.
Eh I disagree I think p4 did character very well and p5 (in third sem specifically) had probably the best atlus story to date with great character dynamics
@@Sephirothkingdom782 Agree entirely on P4's characters, some of the best Atlus has done, but I disagree about P5's story. It wrapped me up in the first 15 hours and ended up disappointing to me, less than p3 and p4 overall story-wise for me. DDS1/2 together is better than all 3 for me tho tbh. P3 is the best of the persona modern games, maybe p4, but I have p4 as a close second and p5 well behind those two.
I completely disagree about the stress of dungeons not being there. Maybe you're an expert player, but I'm at Virgo Island dungeon and I'm struggling on normal. I literally am out of MP and the enemies are too strong for me. I'm having to dodge enemies and barely made it to the final boss. The "kill lower level enemies instantly" feature also to me not only is a well done QoL feature which reduces the annoyance and grind of usual JRPGs where you get stuck in useless battles against trash mobs, but also adds an action/reflex element where you need to dodge attacks and can clear trash mobs quickly. But if anything I find the game to be relatively hard compared to anything I've played before. I mainly played Square Enix games and Final Fantasy games are nowhere as hard as this, I never struggled in Rebirth for example but Metaphor is definitely not easy. I find the difficulty just right for normal JRPG fans (maybe not experts but regicide probably fixes this). Honestly I think Atlus designed this game PERFECTLY in terms of difficulty. My only gripe is precisely MAGLA (magic point) management in dungeons. I don't play Persona games but find the idea and concept of running out of MP and having to leave the dungeon to finish it another day, to be more dumb and annoying than exciting. The key in JRPGs is strategy in battles, and going back to town to replenish MPs is not a useful or fun mechanic. It's a waste of time.
Getting ambushed *by* enemies on hard was typically devastating, if they didnt kill your party outright, youd be in a very bad predicament with low chance to escape. That's the risk/reward of the combat. I agree another tier of higher difficulty from start would be nice (regicide being new game plus).
The only reason I kind of dislike Persona 5 is the Calendar System. But in Metaphor I was proven that this system when done right, makes the game so much better. I could not return to Persona 5 now that I have played Metaphor and hopefully they learned a thing or two from Metaphor moving forward with future Persona games.
Persona 5's calendar system was good though? What makes metaphors any better I love metaphor but persona 5 is a better game in nearly every way still. The dungeon stress felt a lot more existent with how massive the dungeons are compared to metaphor, the gameplay felt a lot more quippier and satisfying, and the level design in the dungeons is still the best in the entire series of atlus games. The social links are also incomparably better, they're by far the most consistent in the series aside from p4's.
SPOILER Thank you for pointing out the ending! But the thing that bothered me in it is the part in the game (eupha dungeon) that implied that our reality exists in this game by showing the party phones and buses, it gave me high expectations that the game will do twists and turns like most Atlus games, fighting the god of fantasy I don’t know. I just find it strange how a lot of foreshadowing hasn’t led to anything, just a simple guy with “collective consciousness” rod turned into a 2 phase monster. At the end i was glad I played it, it’s an amazing game. but like, i really believe it could have been so much more deep with little simple adjustments to the story.
Hey! This video seemed more of a overview + critique instead of a review. Maybe I'm not picking up on something, but I'm still not sure if you liked this game or not.
This review was weird tbh. The game is super fun amd not really too much negative about it yet he mentioned negatives about tge game that are not exatly negatives for most people. The combat system is great, the art direction is great, calendar system is different enough from personas and it is great as well, the story is amazing and great - i don't know about the ending yet but i heard it is very good at least- he speaks of it as negative but surely it is not that negative as he says or just everybody lies on the internet or i dunno. I like that the menaging system is not that hard cus it do not forces you to use guides. Persona 5 royal was a very guide heavy game and without it you can't do everything. Out of the two this approach is better cus you can still miss some stuff at the end if you not menage in a certain way and requires some thinking but doesn't feel like a chore. Red dead redemption 2 is one of my favourite game of all time yet it got the same treatment like it is too slow, boring etc- those people just don't know how to immerse yourself into a game amd they want immediate action punch like what Elden ring gives.
I greatly disagree with your comments about resource management. The worst part of every persona game imo is the start where you have no real access to ways to restore your MP. The games all get infinitely better when MP stops being a concern.
Respectfully, I think the resource management is crazy, I constantly use up most of my mp and have to grind with the exception of the third dungeon which doesnt really have many fights anyway, the second dungeon was not bad but the third dungeon was resource intensive for me, although that may partially be because I was stubborn in raising my weaker archetypes to get the good skills then
12:34 dude what ? I hope this trend keeps happening it’s one of the best new mechanics in the game it’s genius. Who wants too fight weak enemies it sooo boring & waste of time. Your opinion is so weird dude. I hope they keep it P6
Couldn’t agree more regarding the resource management in the dungeons. To add on top of that, my time management is also tied to grinding. Because I want to finish a dungeon in a day, I find and abuse a section of most dungeons to replenish my mana with the mage overworld passive which also inadvertently makes me over leveled and rich. There’s also always a suspiciously perfect spot to do this. I loved the idea in theory, but in execution it’s hurting the core gameplay. I get that this is an issue with how I’m playing and if I just didn’t do that it would be less of an issue, but I think it should just be balanced better. If they opt to keep this in P6 I hope they can at least refine it a bit. Maybe add incentives to the turn based combat rather than making it strictly a resource drain.
I feel you assume way too much, mate. A couple of yout complains stem from the idea that players have already played some of the persona games which, from the developers' point of view would be utterly dumb. Moreover, the fact that this is a new ip should make you consider that it would attract more new players than any other game from thos team. I get your point, but you seem to complain about the game not being tailored to veterans which... Ok, no it is not. Why would it be?
I loved the fight encounters in 1st Darkest Dungeon game. Everything could kill you if you chose wrong especially if you went in without a torch. High risk, high reward. Edit: Also, there is only one song I want to hear at the game awards. “The Promised Consort” Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.
I skipped around but did you talk about how after 5hrs I had 99 of most healing items… also if u fight low levels, you’ll just melee bc u heal with items. Thus the real time insta kills..
As someone who went into the game completely blind and didn't get spoiled by anything I think my enjoyment of the game went up by 50-100% Especially the opening and the whole kings tournament reveal really got me pumped for the rest of the game. Definitely GOTY for me even with a few minor rough parts. I also played on hard and had a good week or 2 at the end just skipping days for the final battle.
One of the reasons why there is so much half assed and negative reviews like this cus they are rushing through it cus they want to do other rewievs as well and games like this require you to invest time to fully engage with the story/characters and immerse yourself into the world so bad reviews like this for an extremely good game are exists for this rush through it cus i have to review Dragon age veilgurd assap and at the end they get a wrong impression for the game cus of the rush. I just farmed in a dungeon for like 3 hours and i have got a pretty great time and loved the game even more cus of how badass i am and i did like 3 overworld dungeon without going back to city so it felt like i came back from a loong and rewarding journey- i felt amazed ngl. This guy would shit on the game if he tried to farm for 1 hour even cus he try to rush the review aka he wont immerse himself into the game like how i do--- so in my mind this game is amazing cus i dont rush anything while he made the game worse cus he try to rush it and failed to immerse himself into the game---- which is always the main point and attraction in every persona/life sim game.
On the leeway, I feel like a major part of that is just that follower lines are so much more important than social links have ever been in persona. You dont finish a social link in persona games and its not a huge deal. You miss out on an ultimate persona and in five some extra goodies, not the end of the world. In Metaphor you can miss out on entire archetypes and skill trees, some of them obtain and level up within that final month ( i didnt agree with this choice i dont think follower ranks should be gated by the final month). Personally i only had about 5 days of leeway after doing everything. What i decided to do was talk to virtua trainers I had originally ignored, and it was actually kind of fun the dialogue you get is relevant to the setting.
Dawg what you can miss maruki's social link and miss out on a whole ass ending and 15 hours of extra content They're mainly character driven in persona games and I'd argue are done better in persona than metaphor
@@Sephirothkingdom782 I never played Royal and that's one example in the whole series vs All the follower lines having significant effects on the gameplay
@@Sephirothkingdom782 Nothing in the persona series is as significant as missing out on entire battle strategies like unlocking new archetypes allows. The closest is unlocking the evolved party personas.
You are the second reviewer I hear saying that the combat and the dungeons are too easy, and I don't get it. I just beat the first major dungeon (cathedral) and this was the first time since the original Persona 3 on PS2 that I was not able to beat a dungeon in one in-game day, because I completely ran out of magic restoring items and ran low of healing items. The Boss of that dungeon, also for the first time in ages, took me three tries to beat him (the bullsh*t Okomura fight from P5R doesn't count). I suppose later dungeons are easier, since I started the first one without the ability to change classes from the menu and you get one crucial class to make it easier (brawler) only during the run. So I don't know... did everybody get easier copies of the game, does it get easier later on, or did I start sucking so hard playing these games since P3R? oO
Rata has played a ton of these games so he's good at min-maxing everything. My guess is that the game is still on the harder end of the scale compared to say, Persona 5.
@@Zoombeanie132 The game feels easier than Persona 5 since grinding up your archetypes is way easier with all those crystalls spawning infinite enemies. You had to make more of an effort to grind up in P5 but Metaphor makes it as convenient as possible to lvl up. MP management was never an issue even in first dungeon with the mage hero passive. Take that along with having way more free time in Metaphor even while doing all the followers and maxing social stats it was just really hard to make the game feel hard. Also back row is broken you take almost 3 times less dmg just sitting in the back row and theres almost never a reason to go in the front row unless the boss goes berserk if you stay in a certain row which most bosses only went berserk if you stayed in the front row. When you surprise attack enemies in metaphor you get 2 whole rounds of turns instead of one in Persona 5. Being able to change your party members skills, resistances and weaknesses also makes things a lot easier since P5 party members felt like a liability if enemy spammed there weakness. Like imagine if everybody was the Wild Card in Persona thats basically what Metaphor does so now even though the enemies get extra turns you can deny them by blocking their attacks. All the difficulty increases were balanced out with even more overpowered features.
Interesting, I haven't played it yet, but I didn't see a lot of people say the game was too easy before Rata. I'm looking forward to checking it out myself. Edit* I have now played a chunk of the game and I stand by my initial statement. The game is way harder than p5 for me, I breezed through that game on hard, its much easier to exploit weaknesses compared to Metaphor. Part of the reason is that Joker is ridiculously OP if you cover all your bases with the right personas. Metaphor has challenging battles even on normal, and resource management is way more brutal imo. Sure there are some exploits, but no where near P5 level. Maybe its because I avoid grinding, its how I always do my first playthroughs in JRPG's. I honestly don't get the "too easy" criticism at all, its just the right amount of difficulty imo. @kennethyoung7457
I loved Metaphor ReFantazio ,great ost,characters,story,combat. It's hard to decide the spot in my goty 2024 ,nr2-3 Metaphor/Persona 3 Reload The Jp VA cast is amazing and I'm a huge fan of them , a lot of them do VA for Anime
I found the calendar system in persona quite stressful given the amount of missables... Is it relatively easy to not miss content if you play without a guide?
thank you! the first 2/3 of the game was the goat! but then during the last 1/3 fell off hard and never reached the same heights. The Twists I felt didn't really matter that much and felt a little backwards or just revealed too late to be relevant or really story changing.
On the combat i feel like you might just be a morre experienced RPG player than most people. I played on normal and found the combat very feast or famine. Sure if you were prepared the enemies wont be too much of a problem, however the enemies consistently have tools to turn things around if you in turn lack the tools to deal with them. For any player that is not super experienced in turn based RPGs or even just unfamiliar with SMT lineage games i can see this system being brutal even on normal for them. Especially if you attempt a dungeon during inclement weather. This is even more compounded by the lack of a bestiary so you have to rely on pure memory to prepare your party for certain events. That being said i do agree that at times it felt like too many enemies were dealt with the overworld melee, but i feel like this is somewhat lessened by the enemy kits, perhaps there should have been special variants of enemies that always required squad combat.
I would say there are much greater resource management issues in Metaphor than just the action combat instantly defeating weak enemies. Indeed, in the late game engaging weak enemies in turn-based combat is the way to never run out of MP due to various regeneration tricks. Something like Shield Blessing has no business being a rank 31 skill, especially with Marakukaja being available as easily as Commander rank 1. Between that and the calendar lenience (masked by short mission durations until the very end) the game fails to play up the Persona-like aspects of its design, which is disappointing after the way the original release of Persona 5 squashed most SP recovery that doesn't require spending time. It's a good entry point to that set of mechanics, and the way days of the week don't really matter certainly makes it more approachable, but it does feel like a step back from Persona 5 in that regard. As for the story, I would say that it's the middle that felt the weakest for me. While the events there made sense to me as an Atlus fan and were major revelations, they didn't really interact with the main themes the way the ending did. It was, at the risk of spoilers, just an SMT plot to some extent. It's only in going back to the main story that the material from that point ties back into the game's main theme of overcoming anxiety through solidarity, and Louis represents it much better than anything found in the midgame. And, to go even further into spoilers, it should be noted that in the end Louis not only played his part in the old king's scheme brilliantly, but he actually accomplished a measure of justice that our hero couldn't, defeating Forden and striking a mortal blow against his moral authority. He did ultimately succeed in destroying the things that really needed to be destroyed, even if he was ultimately planning to throw the baby-monster out with the bathwater. His violence was not the whole answer, but it was a necessary part of it.
I'm surprised you didnt go on a tangent complaining about Gallica holding your hand and yelling into our ear about everything that happens in the combat. Dissapointing review anyway, i think you barely said any actual opinions and just listed what the game is about.
I have to agree. The last forth of the game is such a slog. The game really went downhill storywise after the opera imo. And after that the side content felt really stretched out. Im at the end now with like 6 days with nothing to do except grinding mag for archetypes but there isnt really a good place to farm even so it just kinda sucks at the end. At the Beginning i really was flashed how much better it was then the persona games but at this point I prefer p3 and p5 tbh. Even some Social links where lacking and all that unvoiced dialog did not help with making the side content engaging. Other than that everything else like the main cast of characters, combat and music where peak.
4:00 Hate to tell you, but your answers absolutely do matter during events. Say you're playing chess. A wrong answer might give you only +2 to the stat, while a right answer will give you +3. Save scum and you will see this for yourself easily enough. This indeed is a matter of time optimization and is no different from the recent Persona titles.
I see no issue with quick killing low level monsters on the map. Despite their weakness, they can still hit you and hurt you in the overworld. I think that making them stunned for squad battles is overkill. I would have preferred just the extra initial damage and going first. Maybe cause the enemies to be debuffed at the start by 1 stage if you really wanted to give the player that edge.
I agree with pretty much all of your criticism of the game. It's actually significantly bothered me with how many people are selling the story to this as the best thing since sliced bread when I saw where it was going from the opening scenes, but I'm not going to pin me being underwhelmed by it as some kind of massive flaw when it's just me being overly familiar with this type of story. That said, it's not groundbreaking nor is it anything other than novel. It also bothers me that the overwhelming majority of players either do not understand its message despite it hitting you over the head with it constantly, or misinterpret certain aspects of the story and its characters. Ultimately I think it delivered on what it was trying to do, and something I disagree with you on is what the game is offering in terms of its word building with regards to - at this point - sequels and its relation to other Atlus properties. Mechanically, I echo your issues with the game. I found it absurdly easy after a few hours, and the ability to make it so is a real con to allowing the player as much freedom as the game offers. A lot of people will praise this aspect of a game, but if you've played enough you're going to be able to break it with relative ease and without having to think too deeply about it. Even the Regicide difficulty is barely what I would want out of a "Normal" difficulty setting, but I understand - again - that that's a "me" thing and a wider audience would reject that kind of JRPG. I have a big problem with the game's design for its dungeons. Atlus has always had this problem, and its clear to me that its development teams simply don't care enough to work on it. It is what it is. Also standard for Atlus is its music being great, but unlike their other games it's lacking in both size and variation. I've got no problems with the calendar system as is. I do slightly side with you in that the player is given too much time, but I can also admit that I've never actually _finished_ a Persona game because I wind up screwing something minor up in the last month or two weeks that I had to have realized two months earlier and Metaphor completely resolves that issue. The QoL improvements on the calendar and bond systems are not insignificant for most people, I'd imagine. It's a great game, on the whole, with some significant issues in design and execution that make it feel sort of pedestrian for me. While compared to the other GOTY contenders, it stands head and shoulders over most of them, FFVII Rebirth is simply a much better overall package and Erdtree is DLC and - for me - that disqualifies it from conversation despite it being a major accomplishment in and of itself. Rebirth also was able to deliver a major shift in both how an open world is utilized as well as a legitimate paradigm shift with its battle system. No other game this year has done anything close to that.
I think persona 5 was their best shot at dungeons, it was amazing in terms of its level design, its visual variety, AND their stories especially the first dungeon, the pyramid, casino, and epilogue ones. Metaphors dungeons were fine but nowhere near that good. It's probably still atlus's magnum opus and one of the greatest games ever made. I disagree about rebirth being better. I'd argue the story of rebirth is worse than metaphor's and significantly more convoluted than it needs to be. I also don't think the characters in that game are nearly as good as metaphors. I also prefer metaphors combat over rebirth, that game feels like it could just be better in every game if it was a pure action game instead of trying to make it an action AND turn based game in a weird way, it kills the combat pacing. I also think metaphor is good with its difficulty, I don't think a game being harder inherently makes it any better or worse, so that's barely an issue for me. The characters also feel needlessly less mature compared to the OG ff7. I also love SOTE but I can't look past how empty most of its world is even compared to the base game, and that deducts a bunch of points for me personally. Also when people refer to story, I'm assuming most people to the character writing which is consistently great in metaphor. The actual plot itself is fine I'd say, not anything special but not bad. The worst part of metaphor is the ending, it feels a little underwhelming but the rest of the game is so good that I'd still say it's a very solid 9/10.
@@Sephirothkingdom782 Like I was alluding to in my critique of Metaphor, a lot of this stuff boils down to simple personal opinion. However, when I look at a GoTY I try to evaluate that based on a more objective look at the games as a whole. From that perspective, the ones at the Game Awards were all deserving with the major exception of Wukong (and SotE, but for previously stated reasons. Though I also agree that the world was incredibly empty and lacking in quite a few areas) who's only reason for being there was it being Chinese - a significant accomplishment, but overall the game was not up to snuff critically by any measure as it was very clearly the studio's first foray into full game design and that came with clear shortcomings. That said, everyone's personal GoTY could be any number of things that aren't "critically acclaimed", and it all boils down to how much fun you had with it which I think is how we should define these things in the first place. I enjoyed Metaphor enough to Platinum the game and max out stats. I wouldn't do that if the mechanics didn't appeal to me. In fact, I haven't even done that for Rebirth which I consider a more mechanically sound game. Its dungeons lack substance, but its combat is more than fulfilling enough to make up for that kind of thing despite being easy to break. And while you may find the combination of turn-based and action in Rebirth to be detrimental, from a mechanical standpoint it is unparalleled in design and function - specifically for a JRPG with the kind of battle options being offered in that type of game. You aren't required to play the game as instructed, you _can_ choose either turn-based or pure action and the fact that you can do so is a testament to its design. Something I didn't mention before was Rebirth's use of the open world for the first time in Final Fantasy since..well..the OG. FFXV didn't have the towns, and was mostly just empty space. Like a proof-of-concept that never got off the ground properly. The tower climbing mechanic can be a turn-off, but it isn't nearly as intrusive as what Ubisoft gives gamers and I personally think the dislike is massively overblown and based almost entirely on gamers' predisposition to these types of things. To be able to do what the Rebirth team did took _real_ work and innovation and they managed to pull it off better than anyone thought they could when it was announced. In contrast, Metaphor is the first Persona-led studio game to give us a real world to travel around in, but they used game development shortcuts to cut out both on development time and costs. Something you can't really fault them for, but it does stick out when the conceit is there that you're supposed to be travelling around and what you're really doing is hopping from menu to menu. In particular, there are several towns that are literally _just_ menus. In terms of characters, I simply think Rebirth was better at utilization. Both have the best casts of the year, but I didn't click with Metaphor's cast as much as what seems to be most everybody. Heismay, as the prime example of this, is a great character, but his story is just not as impactful as Barret's who is his parallel in this context. They share identical roles in their respective games, but - to me - Barret just comes out as a more relatable story despite myself identifying more with Heismay's. But this is, again, all subjective and I can't really put any real criticism of this aspect of either game on blast since it all comes down to how one sympathizes with them. Ultimately, though, Astro Bot won the actual award, which I expected given its near-universal acclaim from the critics. I'm perfectly happy with that result, but the RPG award should have gone to Rebirth in my opinion. Metaphor has a better narrative, but as an RPG it's - plain and simply - pretty pedestrian. It stuck with the Atlus game design formula, refined it to the point of making it their magnum opus (which I absolutely agree with), but it didn't really do any more than that and so I dock it for that reason. Rebirth just did more with what was available to it from a qualitative standpoint, and it feels as if it's being punished for being what it is and where it's come from while Metaphor is being unabashedly praised for the exact same reasons. Just my opinion, but I appreciate you sharing yours with me.
@@ojisankusai I agree with most of what you said My main issues with rebirth boils down to the characters feeling worse than their og counterparts. I don't mind barret but I'd argue he's one of the weakest characters in the main cast, his arc was just the one in the original game but it feels somehow much less mature and impactful in comparison, he feels a lot more "shonen-y" which is funny when comparing it to metaphor of all things but Heismay is one of the few characters that feels consistently great and I'd argue is a much more mature version than Barret in rebirth. I agree the combat is deep but I just don't like the flow of it, it feels half baked at times despite its complexity to the point where I prefer more simple combat systems that have "impact" like persona 5's and metaphor's to an extent if that makes any sense. Like dark souls 1 is a game with very simple combat but it flows well enough that it's consistently enjoyable if that makes any sense. I think the general atlus gameplay loop is good and I think the closest they've reached to perfect is with persona 5, it has dungeons that are so incredibly good I'm shocked they didn't try the same gameplay formula in metaphor. There was really only one bad dungeon in p5 and even that is one of the most visually unique looking dungeons in any atlus game and has some really good puzzles. i think that's probably their magnum opus still in terms of gameplay and combat, it felt consistently great and it had "sauce" if that makes any sense. The social links I thought were overall better in that game too. I still think atlus's best cast of characters is persona 4's, I think they hit a lightning in a bottle with that cast. I don't know how to explain it but they feel "real", dojima is one of the most emotionally nuanced characters I've ever seen in a videogame and that really says something when a lot of atlus's writing is definitely flawed, his and nanako's relationship is something that I think anyone can see the quality in no matter if you like persona 4 as a game or not, it's a high I don't think metaphor reaches unfortunately even if I consider it an extremely good game. I think metaphor's biggest issue is wasted potential or rushed content, and I hope they fix most of the issues with the inventiable rerelease it's going to have like it did with persona 5 royal.
@@Sephirothkingdom782 Metaphor's characters, in my view, are far more in the vein of anime-style characterization than Rebirth. Not really saying that as a negative, but if you're saying Barret is "shonen-y" it's just something JRPGs do across the board since, y'know, they're Japanese and those are their tropes. I don't personally feel Barret's character comes across as nearly as "anime" as that, but there's no denying certain beats are hit. Metaphor hits those beats far more often, and ultimately I just feel that they come across as imitations of other versions of genuine characters I've personally come across. That may be where Metaphor loses me: my own experiences with the same types of characters in other stories. In that sense, I agree with you wholeheartedly that P4's cast is - far and away - the best group of characters Atlus has created. There's just no contest, it's one of the best collection of personalities in both gaming and even wider fiction. Also, the P4 Golden anime is hilarious. Kumachi/Beary can be annoying, but it's just a mascot character to me and I can easily ignore characters like that and Morgana. Chie is one of the flat-out best developed women in gaming, and that goes for all the others in P4 as well. When compared to that, Metaphor falls incredibly flat on that front despite giving us a compelling overall narrative. It felt as though the devs were trying to slot in character types to fill in story elements and not the other way around. They're still good for what they are, but FFVII did the opposite and placed characters in an already developed story and we got to see how those types would react to that instead of feeling like they're there just to take up a story quota. It makes them far more grounded as a result. I didn't get around to it previously, but, specifically talking about P5's dungeon design, I do think P5 is the best designed game in Atlus' catalogue. Now, I don't think their design is something to really write home about - they're still lacking in truly unique territory - but you really can't get much better for Atlus. I was very surprised with their depth the first time I played when comparing it to P4, which felt downright minimalist in comparison. My biggest complaint with those two and P3, though, are the leveling dungeons like Mementos. Metaphor certainly improved on that aspect, leveling became much more fluid with the addition of making mobs killable outside of combat, but most of the dungeons simply felt hollow and intentionally under-designed for whatever reason. It's by far the biggest detriment to the overall game, and I really hope the studio does something different with a sequel though I'm not holding my breath with these guys and that aspect of design. Rebirth did something somewhat novel with their approach in giving each individual party member a dungeon to flex in. I think with party-oriented design, this needs to be implemented far more often as it gives each dungeon a feeling of variation as opposed to the repetition you can sometimes feel with this type of progression. And it's also pretty easy to slide in as a change-up so long as the characters themselves have well-defined features, which Rebirth stumbled with Tifa. Just adding this aspect of design to their dungeons, Metaphor would have brought so much more attention to them as opposed to the otherwise tepid response I've seen. Also, dungeon design to me isn't purely how something looks but how it plays, especially when you're seemingly doing the same kind of pattern-recognition over and over again. Shaking things up won't solve all the problems with RPG dungeons, but it adds a particular kind of style that does pay off in spades. More party-related gamification of generally standard events always adds depth and flavor regardless of success or failure. Persona already does a lot of this outside of dungeons, so I don't see why they wouldn't. It does irk me more than I'd thought that Metaphor didn't lean into their development team's strengths more. Especially considering some of the more longer-tenured members are talking about bowing out. I mentioned it before, but the music selection - while excellent in quality - just didn't have any robustness to it. Whereas Persona gives you so many tracks you can forget what's what, there are only a few Metaphor tracks that are truly memorable. The same is true of artistic design. The monsters in particular are mostly devoid of any flair outside of Humans, and almost all of _those_ are directly copy-pasted from Hieronymus Bosch. I'm pretty sure the regular monsters are AI-assisted, as the credits only list an AI program and one other person as the "designers". And I don't like where this is going if even the Persona team is leaning into using AI for artistic design.
@ once again I agree with most of what you said lol: I think my dislike for rebirth mainly comes from me not liking the direction they took the characters. It’s less about them being objectively bad or anything and more me not liking them as much as their original counterparts. Sephiroth for example appears so often in rebirth/remake that it kind of takes away from his legendary status of being this extremely powerful ominous villain, this was portrayed in the original game very well with his little screentime he has so when he DOES appear, it feels like an extremely powerful moment each and every time. I also don’t really like the multiverse but that’s mainly in part due to me being fatigued with so many stories, just in general, taking a multiverse route for its characters. It made aeriths death in rebirth feel less impactful than it should’ve been for example. Metaphors characters definitely felt shonen-y but they also felt quite mature at times despite their dialogue. Most of them weren’t really as good as say kanji or futaba but it was solid overall in my experience. I think Louis was pretty great overall and probably the best character in the game and I hope they continue that level of quality for their future games. I agree about the monster designs and music, they don’t hit as hard as they should. The battle theme is excellent and incredibly unique, but the other tracks don’t hit as hard. A great reference would be the first time you hear “life will change” lyrics before fighting sae in the casino, it’s one of the coolest things in any atlus game and it gives an incredibly good sense of conclusion especially with how Morgana deems it the final heist for the phantom thieves, and it gets even better when you realize it’s the most recent event that happened before joker gets captured so it adds even more suspense. It’s an excellent usage of music that I don’t really think metaphor ever hit. As for monster designs, I don’t think they were bad, infact I think most of them were good, but none were really as cool as izanagi no okami or satanael, seeing joker pull out the gun and then it zooming out to show satanael’s even bigger gun was extremely cool. I haven’t watched the p4 anime, I’ll have to do that for sure because I heard it’s very good from other people too. That game is lowkey carried so hard by its cast and social links that I’d say it’s a 9/10 game purely because of how good both are. I think the main benefit metaphor has is that it feels really fresh and a good direction for future atlus games in terms of formula and gives it a lot of points in terms of quality. If they did a remake for 4, I would love to have the level of exploration that metaphor had for inaba, because I think even to date that’s the best setting in the series. Metaphor was my GOTY mainly because of that reason but it definitely has its issues, I think the ending was pretty weak compared to p4 and 5 all things considered because 5 has the excellent third semester and 4’s felt very emotional. I do like how metaphor defied the classic rpg troupe of literally going up against a 9th dimensional god by the end and it felt like fighting og sephiroth with how the final boss is just Louis, so that was refreshing. All in all I still think it’s a great game and I do prefer it over rebirth overall because I felt the moment to moment gameplay felt a bit better (I had a big issue with how many filler actions you had to do like vacuuming toxic gas or pressing B to turn a wheel, it felt like padding sometimes). The combat was also just not my cup of tea but I’ll acknowledge it’s mechanically good for sure.
also, learn from sakura episode about game design, you need to squeeze but also release. if everything has to align with the goal, then it would be squeezing too much, able to kill lower level enemies quickly in the overworld makes it easier on the player and I don't think it reduces the fun of resource management in the dungeon.
As someone who might play the game and doesn't want to be spoiled I was interested in your final verdict on the game, but I don't think you gave it in the spoiler free version. Do you think it's a must play? Good but not great? How would you rank it against other games this year?
I loved Metaphor the characters ,ost ,story ,combat are all great I'm a big Persona fan, my first one was P4G then P5R,P3,P3R and I've replayed P4G,P5R 3 times. The Jp VA cast is top tier and I'm a huge fan of them, a lot them do VA for Anime My goty 2024(this is for pc releases) nr1 Like a Dragon infinite wealth,nr2/3 Metaphor/Persona 3 Reload nr4 FF16 ,Ghost of Tsushima ,Black Myth: Wukong,Dragon's Dogma 2
Around 10 hours in, idk it's really not for me it seems. One thing however that i can give my two cents about is that one major theme seems to be about fantasy worlds being something that we create in order to transcend our current world. This is a good theme but it's really not supported by the quality and freshnes of the world. This fantasy as someone who read decent amount of fantasies (books mostly but i have read 200+ mangas as well) this world is just soo derivative of traditional fantasy, it doesn't really seem to bring too much originality as far as world building goes. Was quite disappointed by it, feels quite generic.
That’s because you’re comparing it to hundreds of stories you’ve read til now, i’ve personally seen like what? 450+ anime titles, where a quarter of them are isekai. If i just compared all of the stories ive watched to the game then i wouldn’t find it interesting. Instead see it from a fresh perspective, changes a whole lot of the experience. Besides you’re very early in the game, atlus games tend to switch up in terms of the story…
Actually curious when the last time you saw something TRULY unique was, like incomparable to anything else. All art is derivative or inspired by something and games are no exceptions.
Great review. Probably the best story I have seen in a video game. Though, I am someone who has always been upset at how powerful we have allowed governments to become in the name of "saving us". I found the combat actually more difficult than Persona 5. Especially at the high end. Though you can for sure cheese this game by grinding crystals.
I agree with you about the last part of the game dragging as I dropped the game just before the last dungeon and watched the rest on RUclips as the gameplay got repetitive for me and story wasn't enough to keep me going. My main issue with story was nothing surprised me apart the one dungeon with the dragon but even then I was disappointed there wasn't more like that.
wow the combat section really took me down a peg. i would have never personally described the combat as easy, and it did take me for some of the dungeons multiple days to complete because of the lack of resources. further, some of the overworld enemies killed me multiple times because they can, also, hit you if youre not fast enough in killing them. i admit im not very good at real time combat or great at video games in general (evidently! geez) but i do think this review is a bit blinded by the point of view of someone who is very good a video games and not everyone playing this game will be.....
Great game. But while it takes steps forward to improve from persona, it also takes several steps back. My biggest gripe is that main party followers dont get much in unique abilities when Ranking up. Only characters with major abilities is hulkenburg who has a chance to protect the mc, Eupha who pretty much gets rid of the anxiety mechanic, and Gallica who occasionally gives you 2 extra actions. Side characters this time around are where all the strong abilities are.
Great review and video, good summary of your critiques and compliments to the game. I will have to disagree on a couple of points though. From the perspective of someone who has replayed persona games, the first experience with the calendar when I first started was stressful and left me feeling somewhat inadequate, like I could have done so much better, I should have talked to X and Y instead of Z. This isn't necessarily a strong suit of the games. It's at best contentious in how it makes casual/first timers feel when approaching the calendar system, and as a standalone game, I think it does a good job introducing the system in a relatively harmless way. You can easily accomplish everything, but you can get to the end and still have an idea that you could have done it better without the added stress. Also, instantly killing enemies is just an improvement over previous titles in ny opinion, it adds an action game esque element that enriches the experience and does away with the repetitiveness of persona grinding, which when you were overleveled was simply spamming basic attacks until the enemy died.
The pro of having a calandar system is having to activly participate in time management and make choices. The con of a calandar system is having to activly participate in time management, and therefore optimizing time.
wish there was a separate difficulty option for how tight the deadlines are
The Pro is that it allows for tons of role playing mechanics that only work with true opportunity cost.
@@consensus889 Just wait for them to put out Metaphor "Royal" or whatever they end up naming it. Original Persona 5 You feel like there is no way to get everything done. In Royal they made it almost a certainty.
@@circaen do you by chance know how Atlus approached Persona 5 Royale in terms of upgrade costs? I'm wondering if I'm gonna have to pay 70 dollars again whenever they make the Metaphor "Royal" version. I have no clue if they pulled something like this with P5 as I played it way after release.
@@circaen I played 80% and dropped it and looked up the ending so won't be returning for any re release
Respectfully disagree about killing low level enemies. This is fun and rewards the player by allowing them to skip boring forced battles once you are strong enough
It also rewards your for being overleved and doing side content
I would actually be happy if they expanded on the system a bit more
I kinda wish they did a mixture of the overworld combat like Strikers has but then also have the turn based afterwards on like bosses or bosses and such
Red and yellow enemies
Agrees with you.
But we are talking about a review from an Etrian Odyssey fan so obviously he was gonna defend long and slow grind through way too many random battles
@@NiaTheMilkTankthat sounds terrible
I agree. Feeling of " this fella wiped floor with my team before, BUT WHO IS LAUGHING NOW, STUPID MINOTAUR" is incredible.
Great review, if I had to criticize something is your take on the action combat diminishing the resource management. You compared it to persona where in those games you’d have to still engage with low level enemies which would eat up your MP. Which isnt true, youd just use basic attacks to defeat those, defeating them instantly in metaphor saves time.
Also in P5 if you level Ryuji (which you probably will really early since he is one of the very few you can do of the start) you also just get to sprint / drive into enemies for instakills aswel.
@@taku-rukiMementos was made way more enjoyable with this, and it still had a splash screen with the results that Metaphor has eliminated (another QoL improvement)
Wild he would say that about Persona which is an infinitely easier game that drains less resources (At least p5, p5r, and p3r all were MUCH easier than Metaphor)
The biggest issue is probably how easy it is to turn out MP positive in various encounters, and in the mage lineage's case, by repeatedly hitting trash mobs. Staying neutral while exploring is one thing, but MP positive fights equate to a fully sustainable clear.
Or use physical moves that normally just eat up HP in persona. Or hit them all with tge needed weakness and finish them with an all out attack. For metaphor you're kinda incentivized to use a full monk team and occasional use of medi to get through longer dungeons like Belega Corridor
The typo at 7:01 🤦♂
Gamplay is knig.
Miyazaki slop contagion confirmd 🧐
it made me laugh so hard i thought it was on purpose at first dude
•_O
It’s all good Rata, we knew you meant Gāmplay
I've played a bit of Persona 3, 4, and 5, but could never really get into them as I don't like the school setting the games have especially now as an adult that's twice these kids' ages. So Metaphor coming out with basically the same Persona formula except in a cool fantasy universe is great. Really loving the game so far.
Lmao, I'm currently playing P5 royal as my first persona game, and I agree the setting is a bit jarring. I guess it's a thing in Japan. Even older people really enjoy the high school settings there, not so much in the West.
But it's really not a big deal if you don't self insert into the mc and just enjoy the characters and setting from a distance for what they are.
At the end of the day, the game touches on some pretty universal themes, and the gameplay loop is really addictive so it's still worth a playthrough imo.
High school is something most grown adults would like to forget, at least in the US.
For me an integral part of enjoying the games set in Japan was keeping the voices in Japanese. It was too weird listening to people speaking English about Japanese norms and customs constantly.
@@---jt5wg Agreed, i'm playing MR in Japanese first but my ng+ playthrough is gonna be in English. Also a complaint that i have is that constantly hearing not just my party members but Gallica talking all at the same time with resets included made my brain want to pop. Love Gallica but she professionally yaps constantly and i have to put something else on while i grind. If i'm struggling with a boss or enemy encounter i will after a certain point take my headphones off and listen to other stuff while i play.
I understand your argument about the calendar giving you too much leeway, but I do feel like you're speaking from the perspective of someone who's played many of these sorts of games and thus has a much better idea of how to optimize your time. This was my first time playing a Persona-like, and I ended several days short of being able to complete all the quests. I feel a lot of less experienced players probably had a similar experience.
I think I only had 4 spare days when I played, and thats as someone whos 100%-ed P3, 4 and 5 etc
Ratatoskr must just be really good at time management. I wouldnt have wanted it to be any more strict, as I was getting pretty stressed towards the end
Pretty sure I did all but 2 dungeons in 1 day aswell
I'm surprised to hear takes like this, because I had an incredibly similar experience to what ratataskor described. The game was incredibly linear/enabling with all quests per area appearing at the same time, week-agonistic social link availability, etc.
I think the difference boils down to tuning, and specifically how main story dungeons can eat up days for less experienced players. More experienced ones, comfortable with MP management and the combat, tackled every dungeon in just one day. The devs naturally create magla hollows and such so you DON'T have to do this, and suddenly differentials in available time emerge because of this.
@@Minizor27 I dunno. Call me crazy but I kind of prefer that approach? It was gratifying to be able to clear out all of the sidequests in a single trip around the region, then earing a tonne of rewards when I cash them all in.
Social links threw me a litte though, as some ranks are ship only, and some are town only. I think I just got unlucky, as there were quite a few days I couldnt talk to anyone, and had to use my time fishing etc.
Despite the free time I had, I still didnt get much chance to use the shrine function or cleaning for HP and MP boosts etc.
I feel like if I was a newcomer to these sorts of games, idve struggled.
I imagine their calendar isnt as refined as it couldve been because its their first time balancing it around 6 months, rather than 9-10 months like in Persona, and there are far less stretches of time (like during exams) where you cant do anything.
You can be productive on pretty much every day of the calendar.
EDIT:
Just managed to 100% P3 Reload at long last and get Orpheus Telos after all these years, and it only reaffirms how I feel about Metaphors calendar.
P3s calendar was stressful. Unfun. Wayy too strict. Way too many unpredictable bits where you dont get access to anything, summer vacation being one of the biggest issues. Only clendar kindness they give you is Mitsuru being available in the exam periods. The number of times I had to reset my month and write sh*t down was disgusting. And having to save scum social links for maximum affinity points, because god forbid youre allowed to be honest when roleplaying.
I 100% do not understand how people can prefer that approach to Metaphor and P5R. I'll take a schedule that gives me more spare days than I need, rather than one where you only get maybe 2-3 days worth of mistakes when use a PERFECT guide.
And yes. I 'could' have just used guides to know what the optimal schedule is, because I know there are day by day guides out there, but...I SHOULDNT HAVE TO!
TL:DR - I might just be bitter that I maxed all but 1 social link in P3R (Rank 9 Bebe goddamn you.) earlier in the year and had to redo my playthrough >_>
I never played a persona game and the time management is a joke
@FelipeSantos-wu1uf If you say so
On your comment about the Calendar leeway, I'd have to disagree. With Metaphor being a standalone title in the greater catalogue of Atlus games - I feel like its an absolutely wonderful starting point for new gamers into the genre that is "Atlus RPG's, and that these players will definitely be cutting it close yet still just barely completing all the activities there is to offer and that they'd want to do.
This is an issue for established fans who have a complete understanding of the social stat raising and social link min-maxing we've all come to know and love. Which now in the moment is a bit of a tongue bitter and something that we'll just have to raise our arms in defeat saying, "Oh well."
Yet even still, I found the casual approach of actually getting everything done without having to stress out over if what I'm doing is the right decision, only to find out several hours later that I could have done it better, was an absolute breath of fresh air and a nice tide over before we get that next award winning Persona title that will inevitably have us back in the trenches trying to get everything done.
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Really well made review 😊
yeah i agree. the extra leeway was really nice, when i got to the last dungeon i only had to finish the links of the people that were timegated till then so i had basicly a whole month with nothing to do which, while honestly a bit of a drag to get trough that month, gave me a huge amount of satisfaction because i felt that i perfected my playtrough which was a way better feeling than when i played p5 for the first time where i was had 2 confidants 1 convo away from completing making me feel misserable about it for a while. it also gave me time to max out the colliseum which i tought would be ng+ purely because of time and allowed for some extra exchanges and getting some achievements like doing the bungie jump enough to get the max courage jump achievement.
And it gave me a few extra days to grind MAG and A-exp to max out the royal archetypes for the whole team without making it all a single resource draining nightmare trying to squeeze an insane amount of grind in one day.
This exactly. Metaphor is my first "Atlus RPG", and I wound up being a few days short of being able to complete everything. I just barely finished every Follower link, and didn't have enough time to do the Colosseum or the very last "Trial of the Dragon" quest.
I think it's hard for more experienced players like Ratatoskr to understand just how much of a "leg up" their preexisting knowledge of the calendar gives them when it comes to optimizing their playthroughs. I don't blame him, because he can only talk about his own perspective. But my experience was different.
New player here and I really enjoyed my time and still am.
Currently at the end game.
I like to get as much out of a playthrough as possible but I didn't wanna use a guide, so with the calendar system I put a lot of pressure on myself to not miss out on something.
After being able to return to past locations I relaxed and just played how I wanted to. It's very fair in my opinion especially with so many options.
I always disagree with the argument that ‘this is good for new players’ when discussing any gameplay aspect. I don’t understand why people are so convinced that new players need help getting into a game, as I myself was once a new player to many genres I’d never normally try and found them enjoyable without these ‘friendly to new players’ additions. I don’t mind if I don’t play the game perfectly the first couple times I try a new genre, as I enjoy them infinitely more when I figure out how to optimize them on my own, and don’t have lots of extra cushion or hand holding.
@@---jt5wg I don't know, I've played multiple Persona games and the old Atelier time-limit games and personally I think Metaphor has a pretty decent balance for the time mechanics. There's possibly too much time in the last month, but given the amount of combat side-content in the game that eats days there really isn't a ton of extra time if you want to max your archetypes, finish the Arena, Trials super-bosses, etc. Like, I one-day'd all of the dungeons and, after doing all the ranked arena fights, and Trial quests, I only had I think 4 days left.
The big difference, in my opinion, between Persona and Metaphor is that in Metaphor the presumption is that you *should* max all confidants in a reasonable play-through. The stuff that a moderate-efficiency play-through might miss would be the optional combat content, as that content is very time-inefficient. In my opinion, that's a good decision. It prevents players from being gated from interesting Archetypes and it allows the player to not miss character stories which are relatively core to the appeal of the game.
Heismay's follower line has one of the best final parts of any social link honestly. It had me teary eyed which rarely happens.
Imo the best part of the calendar system is not the time restrictions, it's the freedom to shape your playthrough. If you want to do the dungeons right away you can, or if you don't feel like fighting enemies right now you can spend your time focusing on more story moments through social links or just chill by upgrading your social stats.
The problem is that you think there is a freedom, but there actually isn't imo. There is actually a "most efficient" way to play the game. Considering there are storms barring you from dungeons as well, there is a "right answer" in the order you must do things to get the most out of your game
@@mykehawke6701 Sure you can minmax your time in these games but what i mean is that the system allows you to pick which things to prioritize, like for example you can choose to completely ignore Ryuji or Ann in P5 and do their social link during the last month of the game, of course most people won't do that but the choice is there
@@mykehawke6701 The problem is that what you said isn't a real problem, it's a fabricated one. We love to ruin the things we like, even I am guilty of that and I caught myself wondering why Persona 5 didn't feel as good and as fun as P3, then I played P3 remake and felt the same thing. The answer is simple, the more you play these games by metagaming, the less fun they are. They are fun when you hang out with a character because you like them, not because they raise a number in your stat sheet.
And to me the "most efficient" and "right way to play a game" is a lame argument because if you really think about it, there is a right and most optimal way to play any game and that way is probably displayed in most speedruns strats out there.
@Ocean5ix Agree with you. I do believe I focused to much on the "meta" when playing this game. However, when I'm playing on hard, I also do want the most optimal results for all my fights, which leads me down the path of min maxing all my moves I take which is not a great way to play
@@mykehawke6701 I would say that to avoid this they should find a way to make Archetype unlocks something else other than social links and maybe reward social links with the item to level up archetypes, this way you have an incentive to do them but which ones you do are up to you.
I'm also playing on hard and it feels great to me and while I do sometimes pick which social link to do based on which Archetype it'll unlock, most of the time I min max/theorycraft with what I have unlocked, know what I mean? Instead of planning an entire month of the calendar dedicated to unlock the 3rd Warrior Archetype I just take it slow and find solutions to combat that involves what I already have, and I haven't faced a challenge in the game that made me think "man I really need to rush that social link to unlock that class". Actually Metaphor gives the player much easier access to block, repel, buffs and debuff skills than other SMT games, the Sync system gives you access to what would be late game spells in SMT, for example.
The last quarter or so of the game definitely felt rushed. I won't name it to avoid any spoilers but there's a point where you go somewhere that really seemed like it should have been a dungeon and should have had a proper build up to it but it has neither of those things. You get there, have some dialogue, then immediately have a boss fight outside of the place and that's it. You never set foot inside of the place, not even for a sidequest. Unless I missed one and I really don't think I did. Felt like there had to be cut content there. I was overall pretty pleased with the game but that last stetch was lacking.
I do think it maybe should have been a short dungeon, but on the other hand it's already a very long game as it is so I'm not sure if it really needed another full dungeon runtimewise. But yes the pacing of the story around that time all of a sudden goes to mach 10 for some time which is a bit jarring compared to the pacing of all the rest of the game.
Yeah, the last couple of months were clearly rushed. I think the final stretch feels so drawn-out because the dungeon was probably cut due to time constraints. Despite that, this is still my personal game of the year
Yeah, this interaction was very strange- and after how built this particular plot point was too, some more organic exploration/revelation (similar to the 4th main story dungeon) would've been incredible. I feel we could benefitted a lot from less exposition dumps in general.
I genuinely think there was supposed to be a chapter in the last city before the final act. They put so much work into a HUGE city you have almost no reason to go to, and one of the characters, its set up that their family basically runs it, and it's just not explored beyond a passing statement. I think I have a pretty good guess of what the dungeon was supposed to be, but it might have been redundant with the one before it
P5 also get like this till it got royal, which is some of the best content in any jrpg
17:04 I can’t stand this take of things not being fun if the bad choices you make don’t produce a severe enough consequence. This fundamentally assumes the choices players make regarding time management can be bad. A new player who isn’t familiar with atlus games shouldn’t feel any pressure from the time management beyond completing main dungeons quests on time. If a player gets virtue gated for a social link then they can go do activities until they can clear the check. Its not Atlus’s fault that players decide to optimize or follow guides to do everything in a single run. That was never the intent. The intent was play as you like as long as you meet the main quest deadline. If you miss stuff thats okay because these games were intended for multiple play throughs and your stats carrying over into new game + makes the transition easier. Unoptimized choices ≠ Bad choices. Optimization is self imposed constraint.
It's kinda disingenuous to assume the majority of the player base will even complete the game, let alone run through an 80+ hr game multiple times. The calendar system in the past created friction. I do agree that optimization inerts a lot of that, but I think Atlus realized that a using guides and optimizing was making the game less accessible. We've seen them slowly try to figure out how to combat it, whether its the online "what everyone else did" system, or highlight and directing players "this social link or activity is recommended today" with map icons and helpers etc.
There needs to be a middle ground between being able to do everything everytime and being so strict you need a guide. I'm one of those persons who doesn't care about doing 100% as long as I am able to complete the game and I like the calendar system because it "forces" me to plan what I want to do. In Persona I feel that there are too many instances of "today is xyz national holyday therefore you can only do this" that tend to ruin your planning. Here on the other hand very few of the side quests / hunts even have a deadline and it doesn't take a genius to be able to do everything with days (if not weeks) to spare, especially if social links only go to 8 and when you're able to talk with your companions the link increases no matter what removing some extra padding. The calendar system in Metaphor is almost useless if it wasn't for the global timeline and marginally for the weather system...
wack ass take, the optimization was a classic part of the games, removing that game feel absolutely affects peoples perceptions of it. "you problem" is the worst argument and its everywhere in game analysis criticism, get over yourself
This, I'm by no means inexperienced to this calendar system, however as soon as I found out that follower rank up events weren't tied to any point system like the social links, I dropped the idea of following a guide
I didn't manage my time super effectively, I ended every activity, side quest, follower rank up event and coloseum battle around 5 days before the final deadline
But I have to say, it was great not having to check a guide everytime I did a follower rank up event, it was nice to not have to spend time going to the park with my followers to get some extra points and just stright up continuing their story if I wanted/could, I hope the persona series uses this system because it feels much better tbh
I think you could have better elaborated how exactly the story was not a good delivery vehicle to the themes here explored. I couldn't quite grasp your thoughts on the ending without that.
Honestly in my opinion (im 40 hours in atm) the dialogue is just too on the nose - yes before anyone says ik the game is literally called metaphor. The characters just communicate the themes so bluntly and plainly it doesnt really stop the player and make them think. To me it feels like this game is trying to explain politics and social issues as if the player was a 10 year old, its not presented in an actually thought provoking way, more like stating the obvious. That being said i really like the actual plot of the game and the setting/ characters - louise is js fking cool as hell
@@goonic I agree to some extent. I feel they managed to explore their themes in a really interesting way (mostly), and I do also enjoy plot, characters, setting, etc.
However, I think they really mishandled how they explored the anxiety theme. I don't think it is an issue of simply being to explicit, but it feels like every single character repeatedly comes to the same conclusions and presents very similar monotonous opinions about "facing anxiety, overcoming anxiety". Like, from vastly different contexts, all characters end up saying the same "we need to be strong and face fear and anxiety", and it comes off a bit silly I feel.
P5 was very explicit too, but I never felt that they were always talking in the same way about the need to spark change you know. (I vastly prefer Metaphor over P5).
Massive Spoiler:
I think the Game depicts a lot of politic and social viewpoints. There is not only „one“ „metaphor“ in the Game, it has many. A strong emphasis also lies in using fear as a weapon. Also, remember More‘s first and last words: can a fantasy have power? It is a two way question: the Book in the story for the protagonist and the story for you the Player. Had it an impact on you? I think that delivery was very strong.
Oh, forgot the point „what makes a good leader“ this aspect also gets a lot of room.
I think the endgame point of the story was still strong and powerful. Especially with a certain plot twist that just absolutely elevated the experience for me. The conclusion before rolling ending credits is satisfying enough cause it holds on to the belief that being the King is just the mere first step. And it's cool seeing that even if you're the king, you still havent swayed from your ideals and pretty much don't care about the crown but more the people. The game even in its ending, is still so strongly commited in its vision. And thats something worth respecting. In regards to the story, I think they pretty much fumbled a bit with Louis. Louis was my main issue when it comes to the game.
i still think final part is the best for me even tho ending conclude a bit too happy high note for me but it great
I feel like we all agree the thesis of the story is great and the world is compelling, but I had similar dips in interest as ratataskor. There were a lot of genuinely great setpieces and build, but I'd say a majority of resolutions did fall flat/were unsatisfying for me. A lot of personal enjoyment likely hinges on how willing someone is willing to look past that- in my case, I struggle to.
@@Minizor27 For me it was a slow buildup, but kept getting better and better. The characters and worldbuilding amplified the story so much for me once we got the pacing going. The Memorandium also helped me alot in understanding the story better. It's just that fighting Louis 5 times within the game was exhausting and his character writing being extremely slow made it feel like he only had a little say within the story. Its weird the direction Atlus took him. Not a big fan of it. Rather than becoming a Villain i care about, he just started to become annoying and frustrating. The game has been mostly directed by the main cast wich was beautiful. Louis just needed to have been done better.
@@Minizor27i agree, game had a lot to mess around with so when it ends in such an expected and safe way, without exploring many potentially interesting points, it really sucks. the first 60 hours for me was magical, but when it came time to wrap things up, the game really fell flat for me.
The way press turn works with the passing is actually the same as in the SMT games before SMT5. SMT5 is the only one that always goes to make half turns if there are full turns left.
this game is so good i'm taking a mid section break because i don't want it to end lmao
I took about 84 hours to beat the game and another 20 to finish regicide for my second playthrough. I found this to be a 10/10 game with a little bit of a lull in the midgame with the island.
The game has its issues and regicide wasn't well done imo however I really think this is my GOTY and truly an amazing game
I disagree that optimizing the calendar is where the fun comes in from a system like that. What I personally like is its verisimilitude. The fact that the days are tracked adds a similative aspect that makes the game more immersive.
I finished yesterday, literal perfect timing Rat! 78 hours to complete on hard, but my wife and dogs make me have a few hours of idle time.
This game is so good I literally haven't actually enjoyed a JRPG in so long this was a real surprise hit for me.
Shadow of the erdtree released recently bro
@@hellogoodbye3786 That is not a JRPG just because it's a RPG that comes from Japan doesn't make it a JRPG as weird as that sounds.
I gotta disagree about the low-level enemies bit. They add a nice level of "oh, I'm more poweful now", especially when you turn an enemy from a squad battle-level enemy to an action combat one in a dungeon by leveling up, it feels great. That aside though, I still definitely feel the mp attrition in most of the dungeons I'm doing on normal difficulty, with me having to use 3-5 mp restoration items per dungeon
On the soundtrack, my biggest gripe is that they did not have enough unique battle tracks. I get that reusing the menu theme can be sorta cool but they really should have had more unique music for the final battles. Theres nothing that reaches tge heights of new world fool, the nyx boss music, or rivers in the desert. The closest was the almost argumentative chanting in one of the final dungeons
yea none came close to even last surprise or take over
I played 98 hrs and finished everything except NG+ boss lmao. Loved it! All the bonds were good. I did all dungeons in one day but i didnt have a whole month of leeway lmao
Finally the review!
Why did you think the change to half-turn on passing was better? I found the one in SMT5 to be a lot more flexible to try strategies, but curious to hear your thoughts
absolutely, the guy just said "which i like" and moved on without explanation
half turn on pressing is the norm with all smt ganes. SMT 5 made the change, and it was a bad one because guard and pass turn should not be equal. Makes passing a pointless function. May as well guard instead.
Passing as a half turn adds strategy to passing, much better and the way the series will continue to function.
@@codyb.3015 guard takes a full turn, not a half turn though in smt5, not sure what you mean
I believe the metaphor is that overcoming your anxiety allows you to change things in the real world. In other words, you can turn your ideas (fantasy) into reality through determination.
Unfortunately, the political elements are not well executed IMO. The book at the center of the story paints our world as a utopia, but in the game's narrative, this world got destroyed. All we fight for is to restore the previous status quo, because equality is awesome (unless its Louis' interpretation). But why would it end differently this time? What are the issues with Socialism, Neoliberalism, etc.?
The only concepts we fight against are Corruption, Social Darwinism and (systemic) Racism. I really enjoyed the game, but it doesn't take 70+ hours to explore why these are bad ATLUS.
Game adresses your issue with the book. It's not our world, it's our world viewed by author's lenses, he ideolized our version of society. World ended, but society moves on. Like it always does. And for me it was not "equality is awesome", but more like "equally acceptable social lifts are awesome". Game has a thing or two about how real equality is unobtainable without erasing individuality.
@FlynnFromTaiga Exactly, and in fact most of the later characters that read it with you also point out how the wonderful ideals of the utopia also intrinsically lead to other issues. It's far more nuanced than just Louis bad book good, especially with the lens of the destroyed world.
@@DragonEdge10 Yes, you're right. Characters react sceptically to the book, because it sounds like fantasy to them. That doesn't change the fact that the book's world is the one our party tries to (re-)create.
But my main criticism with the game is the way it handles politics. Instead of focusing on ideas and solutions, its just a big popularity contest devoid of any concrete plans to create a better future. Hold up, they might be onto something...
I think you misunderstood it. The destroyed world is not our world
Personally one of the points that I took away from the story is that a true utopia is a world where there are heroes actively fighting for change and improvement towards a better one. A reset or chaos/order approach simply won't do. It is up to you to heal and forge a brighter future. This is not rather a status quo or complacency, but rather a perpetual forward movement towards a brighter future sparked by change.
As for the whole fiction empowering your change thing, I think it's a very open situation. I think you took away a very valid interpretation about the book. I personally also saw it as a message of letting media affect who we are. All of the heroes and themes of books, films, games are allowed to empower us in very real ways that we take into our "real" lives. It worked for the prince and the guy typing a lengthy comment of a game he really likes.
About the leeway of the calendar, it's worth nothing that some people really REALLY REALLY REALLY HATE timers in games, for some reason. Even though that's what makes things fun, usually. A shame about the story, at least for me so far the writing is way better than P5's at least, so it's really disappointing to hear they blew it at the end..
still a lot better of a ending through and through than persona 5's (yaldaboath i mean, Royal's is great)
i think climax part is best part but i think conclusion still jrpg type and i dont think it bad thing
better than base p5 writing but worse than royal
I disagree on the MP management being a fun mechanic (~12:30). The calendar system heavily promotes you do dungeons in the minimal amount of time required. This means running out of MP is disincentivized and therefore you will play in a way to not run out of MP.
In both Persona 5 the solution was either avoiding fights or using MP regenerating accessories. In metaphor, early on it promotes using Mage on chaff and later on specific MP regen passives (i.e. Wizard 11). I consider both of these as degenerative game design AS LONG AS the MP is too heavily constrained.
This was not the case in Metaphor because of the auto-kill of low lvl + ambush. But this was an issue in Persona 5 because it heavily incentivized you to use the MP regen accessories, play in silly ways (avoid fights, only use HP attacks + heal using items, etc.), or make the game much harder.
Pff, maaaan, you are just that good. I was playing on normal, I was struggling af and I haven’t been able to max out all of my confidants
There’s also the issue with the mage lineage, you literately can fully refill your MP bar by just killing chaff over and over.
Respectfully disagree on most the negative aspects you bring up minus the end game stuff as im not quite there yet and i will say that maybe it would have helped had they enabled you to pick the Regicide difficulty off jump as opposed to restricting it till new game plus and beyond. Still at 50 hours (Also on hard) easy 10/10 unless something drastically changes.
I don't quiet get his negative points to be honest.
Everything he mentioned as negative was the reason why i liked the game.
Calendar system don't have to be the same as in personas and i liked how managable was compared to persona games and i like both but it suited this game more.
The is story nothing ground breaking i mean it is easy to understand but it is compelling, interesting and exciting just like other persona games.
I don't know how it ends but i heard more positives about the ending than negatives yet.
This review feels like comes from a person who rushed to the end so i can make a review on it type while im at 62 hours into the game and just did Louses soriee mission which is like half of the game.
This game has it's flaws just like any games but the positives outweights the negatives so much that i can't mention any negative yet that is worth to mention.
I always say if a game is made for everyone than it is not made for anyone and this review comes from a person who was nowhere near the main target audience yet he still loved it so its a win.
My opinion on Metaphor us nit that it is a bad story, in fact I would say its good, but it had the potential to be one of the greats, and that held back potential is what causes the warts. Ultimately the story does not want to compromise on the fantasy of the noble king and noble ideals, unfortunately i just feel like that holds the story back from true narrative greatness.
It sounds like Rat wants an even tighter schedule, and more punishing resource management. To each their own, but I personally would like the game a lot less if that were the case. Tbf, I'm not exactly an Atlus rpg pro though. I firmly stick to normal difficulty (lest i rip my hair out) ,and find myself having to take frequent breaks just to not burnout my brain from all the thinking and planning. Idek how you could placate both sides, but I felt like they struck a healthy middle
I personally align with his wants, as someone who enjoys pushing difficulty in games, and I'd say all that was a sticking point because it really hurts replayability. Wanting to do a re-run, optimize, and come out with a greater sense of accomplishment is a natural sense for a lot of players, and the surface level leniency provided, while not bad, does diminish this aspect. I think the easy solution is just to have a better tuned difficulty selection (that isn't tied to ng+) so we can all play around the numbers we enjoy. Unfortunately, this usually isn't a priority for atlus.
@Minizor27 Sounds valid to me man. I like pushing difficulty too, but I'm not very good at turn-based games myself so it was perfect for me. Though I guess that probably isn't ideal for some of the long-term fans. Give me an action combat game though and I'm down to get real sweaty lol I also could never be a critic bc if I have fun watching or playing something I don't tend to have much criticism to give unless something is reeeeeaaaal bad or annoying
Good review. I agree that the music and art in this game was spectacular. The VA was phenomenal. I particularly love Stewart Clark as Strohl (I also liked him as Dion in FF16).
I disagree about the action combat making mp management too easy. I don't see how its that much different from Ryuji's confidant bonus in P5 which would kill low level enemies instantly. This just adds an action combat system to it and I like that. Its a step in the right direction and I'd like to see a more developed system in future games.
Biggest disagreement I have is the difficulty. I understand this is rather subjective and you might just play more rpg's than me. But I've played my fair share of Atlus games, and I found the challenge in this game to be satisfying (I also played on hard mode). Sure, getting advantage in combat could trivialize some battles, but I found that was balanced by how if you get ambushed on hard mode enemies can just annihilate your entire party if you aren't careful. That kept a nice tension to combat for most of my playthrough and made earning an advantage feel satisfying. Maybe I'm just not great in the action combat, but that was my experience and I enjoyed it.
Action combat and instakill weak enemies is coming a lot from personal preference really. I think there are lots of people complain about mp and think how Metaphor handle repeated combat to be more enjoyable. I think a lot of time when i try to full clear p5 palaces, the majority of the time is just avoid enemies to preserve mp most of the time. Its like not a big deal but i still enjoy Metaphor a lot more. And also i saw many people complain about Dragonshrine dungeon being so long but like compare to p5 palaces, its nothing really. So yeah, its heavily personal preference, but i think Metaphor got its own pace of combat which different from other games is very cool.
I remember in persona 4, one of the first checks in the game requires you to have 3 courage, before you've even unlocked the ability to level courage up. This says to the player, hey in new game plus you will have new opportunities that will not be available even if you optimize your first run. (Whether on not P4 delivered on this idea is definitely questionable) But in fantazio, virtues only exist to gate off social bonds. In persona, at least having a high personality score would let you get new jobs
Yeah the royal virtues should have had more effect
Wow you didnt enjoy the delivery vehicle? What would you have done differently or preferred?
Saying the game is easy is kinda wild for me tbh, I really don't think is on the easier side by any means.
I agree. I think the story was not as strong, but very refreshing opinion on how to stop focusing on despair.
I think that it's very relevant. I live in America and this whole game really spoke to me. It feels like because people are in fact afraid and scared and they'll listen to anybody who says they'll make everything better. This is happening on both sides.
@@Foogi9000 Yeah. It's also neat how straightforward the writing about these subjects matter was. It was very believable. I think it's hard to gauge the plot in the light of what we are used to with movies. But if we see it as a fable or fairy tale, it's pretty much a fundamental type of cautionary tale we need to start telling for our generations. I was going to play gow ragnarok next and the game left me in a state of wanting to take a break for a bit lol it made me think.
@dasaen Agreed, i knew what type of game this would be whenever the first fight is literally named as a Human lol. Not that i mind, this game is flawed but goated as well imo.
Hey man, great video as always, but as a poli Sci dork, I would point out that actually all of the other candidates for the throne at least at face value represent different forms of governing or revolutionary philosophy.
-Hythlodeous V represents the enlightened monarch
-Forden represents theocratic rule
-Louis represents Darwinian society or the concept of might makes right
-Catherine represents the revolutionary communist ideology
-Rogier is a stand in for Libertarianism
-Loveless represents hedonism as a form of governance
-Rudolph represents the concept of a military state/Junta, or coup d’etat
-Milo is narcissistic governance, literally rule by the beautiful
-Jin represents republicanism, or contemporary politics
And actually you could make an argument that the MC ends up with an anarchosocialist philosophy but then he becomes king so I guess he’s a monarchist in the end.
I had 3 days left in the game when I finished all of the follower ranks and finished the colliseum fights. You either looked up a guide, or are really good at time management, but I think this brings a good balance between not finishing all links on your first run, and having too much leeway.
Bro just says the story stumbles at the end and then doesn't elaborate whatsoever lol.
to each their own, but your criticisms are literal improvements over other Atlus games.
Looser schedule and easily killing low level enemies is a great change.
I agree about your overall rating for the game, but my negatives are more about the kind of boring writing Atlus does.
Been playing Ace Attorney trilogy, and it's unbelievable how much better the writing is. Gallica and Grius are the only good characters in my first 20 hrs.
You’re 20 hours in out of 100.
@@critical_6164 and its laughable that they couldnt have good writing for the first 20 hours of the game, being a 100 hours long is n excuse.
also, i dont care at all for the characters in this game, i dont know, i feel like the character writing is typical generic fantasy fiction, and the entire games themes and story could be summarized as "racism is bad yall". persona 5 and especially 3 handled far more themes and far better too imo.
@@flamingmanure The writing was good during the first 20 hours, it's just that the writing was generic. A game with generic but good writing doesn't make the story bad. Besides this is an atlus game, they don't reveal key story aspects during the first couple hours out of hundreds, it's not until much much later where everything unravels and becomes less generic.
Eh I disagree I think p4 did character very well and p5 (in third sem specifically) had probably the best atlus story to date with great character dynamics
@@Sephirothkingdom782 Agree entirely on P4's characters, some of the best Atlus has done, but I disagree about P5's story. It wrapped me up in the first 15 hours and ended up disappointing to me, less than p3 and p4 overall story-wise for me. DDS1/2 together is better than all 3 for me tho tbh. P3 is the best of the persona modern games, maybe p4, but I have p4 as a close second and p5 well behind those two.
I completely disagree about the stress of dungeons not being there.
Maybe you're an expert player, but I'm at Virgo Island dungeon and I'm struggling on normal.
I literally am out of MP and the enemies are too strong for me. I'm having to dodge enemies and barely made it to the final boss.
The "kill lower level enemies instantly" feature also to me not only is a well done QoL feature which reduces the annoyance and grind of usual JRPGs where you get stuck in useless battles against trash mobs, but also adds an action/reflex element where you need to dodge attacks and can clear trash mobs quickly. But if anything I find the game to be relatively hard compared to anything I've played before. I mainly played Square Enix games and Final Fantasy games are nowhere as hard as this, I never struggled in Rebirth for example but Metaphor is definitely not easy. I find the difficulty just right for normal JRPG fans (maybe not experts but regicide probably fixes this). Honestly I think Atlus designed this game PERFECTLY in terms of difficulty. My only gripe is precisely MAGLA (magic point) management in dungeons. I don't play Persona games but find the idea and concept of running out of MP and having to leave the dungeon to finish it another day, to be more dumb and annoying than exciting. The key in JRPGs is strategy in battles, and going back to town to replenish MPs is not a useful or fun mechanic. It's a waste of time.
Getting ambushed *by* enemies on hard was typically devastating, if they didnt kill your party outright, youd be in a very bad predicament with low chance to escape. That's the risk/reward of the combat. I agree another tier of higher difficulty from start would be nice (regicide being new game plus).
The only reason I kind of dislike Persona 5 is the Calendar System. But in Metaphor I was proven that this system when done right, makes the game so much better. I could not return to Persona 5 now that I have played Metaphor and hopefully they learned a thing or two from Metaphor moving forward with future Persona games.
Persona 5's calendar system was good though? What makes metaphors any better
I love metaphor but persona 5 is a better game in nearly every way still. The dungeon stress felt a lot more existent with how massive the dungeons are compared to metaphor, the gameplay felt a lot more quippier and satisfying, and the level design in the dungeons is still the best in the entire series of atlus games. The social links are also incomparably better, they're by far the most consistent in the series aside from p4's.
SPOILER
Thank you for pointing out the ending! But the thing that bothered me in it is the part in the game (eupha dungeon) that implied that our reality exists in this game by showing the party phones and buses, it gave me high expectations that the game will do twists and turns like most Atlus games, fighting the god of fantasy I don’t know.
I just find it strange how a lot of foreshadowing hasn’t led to anything, just a simple guy with “collective consciousness” rod turned into a 2 phase monster.
At the end i was glad I played it, it’s an amazing game. but like, i really believe it could have been so much more deep with little simple adjustments to the story.
Hey! This video seemed more of a overview + critique instead of a review. Maybe I'm not picking up on something, but I'm still not sure if you liked this game or not.
This review was weird tbh.
The game is super fun amd not really too much negative about it yet he mentioned negatives about tge game that are not exatly negatives for most people.
The combat system is great, the art direction is great, calendar system is different enough from personas and it is great as well, the story is amazing and great - i don't know about the ending yet but i heard it is very good at least- he speaks of it as negative but surely it is not that negative as he says or just everybody lies on the internet or i dunno.
I like that the menaging system is not that hard cus it do not forces you to use guides.
Persona 5 royal was a very guide heavy game and without it you can't do everything.
Out of the two this approach is better cus you can still miss some stuff at the end if you not menage in a certain way and requires some thinking but doesn't feel like a chore.
Red dead redemption 2 is one of my favourite game of all time yet it got the same treatment like it is too slow, boring etc- those people just don't know how to immerse yourself into a game amd they want immediate action punch like what Elden ring gives.
16:57 As someone who's busy, i'd rather not having to deal with that BS. People rarely replay long JRPGs anyway
I greatly disagree with your comments about resource management. The worst part of every persona game imo is the start where you have no real access to ways to restore your MP. The games all get infinitely better when MP stops being a concern.
Respectfully, I think the resource management is crazy, I constantly use up most of my mp and have to grind with the exception of the third dungeon which doesnt really have many fights anyway, the second dungeon was not bad but the third dungeon was resource intensive for me, although that may partially be because I was stubborn in raising my weaker archetypes to get the good skills then
12:34 dude what ? I hope this trend keeps happening it’s one of the best new mechanics in the game it’s genius.
Who wants too fight weak enemies it sooo boring & waste of time.
Your opinion is so weird dude.
I hope they keep it P6
Couldn’t agree more regarding the resource management in the dungeons. To add on top of that, my time management is also tied to grinding. Because I want to finish a dungeon in a day, I find and abuse a section of most dungeons to replenish my mana with the mage overworld passive which also inadvertently makes me over leveled and rich. There’s also always a suspiciously perfect spot to do this. I loved the idea in theory, but in execution it’s hurting the core gameplay. I get that this is an issue with how I’m playing and if I just didn’t do that it would be less of an issue, but I think it should just be balanced better. If they opt to keep this in P6 I hope they can at least refine it a bit. Maybe add incentives to the turn based combat rather than making it strictly a resource drain.
My tolerance is rank 2. Just like in real life
I feel you assume way too much, mate. A couple of yout complains stem from the idea that players have already played some of the persona games which, from the developers' point of view would be utterly dumb. Moreover, the fact that this is a new ip should make you consider that it would attract more new players than any other game from thos team. I get your point, but you seem to complain about the game not being tailored to veterans which... Ok, no it is not. Why would it be?
I loved the fight encounters in 1st Darkest Dungeon game. Everything could kill you if you chose wrong especially if you went in without a torch. High risk, high reward.
Edit: Also, there is only one song I want to hear at the game awards. “The Promised Consort” Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.
Easy?? Are we playing the same game?? Getting ambushed can get you wiped
Ik right that’s cap. One ambush or misjudging your party comp for a boss fight is grounds for a reset
@@MonsterhunterFTWWTF Enemies don't screw around if they catch you lacking bro. Shit is brutal for a novice like myself. 😭💀
I skipped around but did you talk about how after 5hrs I had 99 of most healing items… also if u fight low levels, you’ll just melee bc u heal with items. Thus the real time insta kills..
As someone who went into the game completely blind and didn't get spoiled by anything I think my enjoyment of the game went up by 50-100% Especially the opening and the whole kings tournament reveal really got me pumped for the rest of the game. Definitely GOTY for me even with a few minor rough parts. I also played on hard and had a good week or 2 at the end just skipping days for the final battle.
I liked the gamplay in Metphor. Probably my gam of the yer.
Thanks for explaining the improvement over P5 in social links. I was a guide user and very glad to not have to here
i was already planing to wait for a sale to get this game. But i havent even finished persona 5 so il buy it in a year or two.
Beginning of the end of atlus with their eat the bug goy kun
how tf are you guys finishing games so fast
They're paid to do it
Me personally I don’t have a social life lmao
One of the reasons why there is so much half assed and negative reviews like this cus they are rushing through it cus they want to do other rewievs as well and games like this require you to invest time to fully engage with the story/characters and immerse yourself into the world so bad reviews like this for an extremely good game are exists for this rush through it cus i have to review Dragon age veilgurd assap and at the end they get a wrong impression for the game cus of the rush.
I just farmed in a dungeon for like 3 hours and i have got a pretty great time and loved the game even more cus of how badass i am and i did like 3 overworld dungeon without going back to city so it felt like i came back from a loong and rewarding journey- i felt amazed ngl.
This guy would shit on the game if he tried to farm for 1 hour even cus he try to rush the review aka he wont immerse himself into the game like how i do--- so in my mind this game is amazing cus i dont rush anything while he made the game worse cus he try to rush it and failed to immerse himself into the game---- which is always the main point and attraction in every persona/life sim game.
On the leeway, I feel like a major part of that is just that follower lines are so much more important than social links have ever been in persona. You dont finish a social link in persona games and its not a huge deal. You miss out on an ultimate persona and in five some extra goodies, not the end of the world. In Metaphor you can miss out on entire archetypes and skill trees, some of them obtain and level up within that final month ( i didnt agree with this choice i dont think follower ranks should be gated by the final month). Personally i only had about 5 days of leeway after doing everything. What i decided to do was talk to virtua trainers I had originally ignored, and it was actually kind of fun the dialogue you get is relevant to the setting.
Dawg what you can miss maruki's social link and miss out on a whole ass ending and 15 hours of extra content
They're mainly character driven in persona games and I'd argue are done better in persona than metaphor
@@Sephirothkingdom782 I never played Royal and that's one example in the whole series vs All the follower lines having significant effects on the gameplay
@@PregnantAdamSandler Depends what you consider "significant effects"
@@Sephirothkingdom782 Nothing in the persona series is as significant as missing out on entire battle strategies like unlocking new archetypes allows. The closest is unlocking the evolved party personas.
the overworld stun works on normal difficulty, in regicide it is really hard on higher level enemies.
This game actually uses an older version of the Press Turn system than SMTV does. It's the same in Nocturne and SMTIV.
You are the second reviewer I hear saying that the combat and the dungeons are too easy, and I don't get it.
I just beat the first major dungeon (cathedral) and this was the first time since the original Persona 3 on PS2 that I was not able to beat a dungeon in one in-game day, because I completely ran out of magic restoring items and ran low of healing items. The Boss of that dungeon, also for the first time in ages, took me three tries to beat him (the bullsh*t Okomura fight from P5R doesn't count).
I suppose later dungeons are easier, since I started the first one without the ability to change classes from the menu and you get one crucial class to make it easier (brawler) only during the run.
So I don't know... did everybody get easier copies of the game, does it get easier later on, or did I start sucking so hard playing these games since P3R? oO
Rata has played a ton of these games so he's good at min-maxing everything. My guess is that the game is still on the harder end of the scale compared to say, Persona 5.
@@Zoombeanie132 The game feels easier than Persona 5 since grinding up your archetypes is way easier with all those crystalls spawning infinite enemies. You had to make more of an effort to grind up in P5 but Metaphor makes it as convenient as possible to lvl up. MP management was never an issue even in first dungeon with the mage hero passive. Take that along with having way more free time in Metaphor even while doing all the followers and maxing social stats it was just really hard to make the game feel hard.
Also back row is broken you take almost 3 times less dmg just sitting in the back row and theres almost never a reason to go in the front row unless the boss goes berserk if you stay in a certain row which most bosses only went berserk if you stayed in the front row. When you surprise attack enemies in metaphor you get 2 whole rounds of turns instead of one in Persona 5.
Being able to change your party members skills, resistances and weaknesses also makes things a lot easier since P5 party members felt like a liability if enemy spammed there weakness. Like imagine if everybody was the Wild Card in Persona thats basically what Metaphor does so now even though the enemies get extra turns you can deny them by blocking their attacks. All the difficulty increases were balanced out with even more overpowered features.
Interesting, I haven't played it yet, but I didn't see a lot of people say the game was too easy before Rata. I'm looking forward to checking it out myself.
Edit* I have now played a chunk of the game and I stand by my initial statement. The game is way harder than p5 for me, I breezed through that game on hard, its much easier to exploit weaknesses compared to Metaphor. Part of the reason is that Joker is ridiculously OP if you cover all your bases with the right personas. Metaphor has challenging battles even on normal, and resource management is way more brutal imo. Sure there are some exploits, but no where near P5 level. Maybe its because I avoid grinding, its how I always do my first playthroughs in JRPG's. I honestly don't get the "too easy" criticism at all, its just the right amount of difficulty imo.
@kennethyoung7457
I loved Metaphor ReFantazio ,great ost,characters,story,combat. It's hard to decide the spot in my goty 2024 ,nr2-3 Metaphor/Persona 3 Reload
The Jp VA cast is amazing and I'm a huge fan of them , a lot of them do VA for Anime
I found the calendar system in persona quite stressful given the amount of missables... Is it relatively easy to not miss content if you play without a guide?
thank you! the first 2/3 of the game was the goat! but then during the last 1/3 fell off hard and never reached the same heights. The Twists I felt didn't really matter that much and felt a little backwards or just revealed too late to be relevant or really story changing.
On the combat i feel like you might just be a morre experienced RPG player than most people. I played on normal and found the combat very feast or famine. Sure if you were prepared the enemies wont be too much of a problem, however the enemies consistently have tools to turn things around if you in turn lack the tools to deal with them. For any player that is not super experienced in turn based RPGs or even just unfamiliar with SMT lineage games i can see this system being brutal even on normal for them. Especially if you attempt a dungeon during inclement weather. This is even more compounded by the lack of a bestiary so you have to rely on pure memory to prepare your party for certain events. That being said i do agree that at times it felt like too many enemies were dealt with the overworld melee, but i feel like this is somewhat lessened by the enemy kits, perhaps there should have been special variants of enemies that always required squad combat.
I love Atlus games but I despise the calendar so much. This game is, however, incredible.
the calendar really works for persona tho
I would say there are much greater resource management issues in Metaphor than just the action combat instantly defeating weak enemies. Indeed, in the late game engaging weak enemies in turn-based combat is the way to never run out of MP due to various regeneration tricks. Something like Shield Blessing has no business being a rank 31 skill, especially with Marakukaja being available as easily as Commander rank 1. Between that and the calendar lenience (masked by short mission durations until the very end) the game fails to play up the Persona-like aspects of its design, which is disappointing after the way the original release of Persona 5 squashed most SP recovery that doesn't require spending time. It's a good entry point to that set of mechanics, and the way days of the week don't really matter certainly makes it more approachable, but it does feel like a step back from Persona 5 in that regard.
As for the story, I would say that it's the middle that felt the weakest for me. While the events there made sense to me as an Atlus fan and were major revelations, they didn't really interact with the main themes the way the ending did. It was, at the risk of spoilers, just an SMT plot to some extent. It's only in going back to the main story that the material from that point ties back into the game's main theme of overcoming anxiety through solidarity, and Louis represents it much better than anything found in the midgame.
And, to go even further into spoilers, it should be noted that in the end Louis not only played his part in the old king's scheme brilliantly, but he actually accomplished a measure of justice that our hero couldn't, defeating Forden and striking a mortal blow against his moral authority. He did ultimately succeed in destroying the things that really needed to be destroyed, even if he was ultimately planning to throw the baby-monster out with the bathwater. His violence was not the whole answer, but it was a necessary part of it.
Rata has returned to us!🙏
Plan to play twice or more ( ps5 ver and ps4ver )
I'm surprised you didnt go on a tangent complaining about Gallica holding your hand and yelling into our ear about everything that happens in the combat. Dissapointing review anyway, i think you barely said any actual opinions and just listed what the game is about.
I kinda get what you mean. When i re did a dungeon and came back stronger, kinda took the point of it away by mot battling lol
Love your videos, but man I had to look away several times when you showed mid to late game characters and areas.
I have to agree. The last forth of the game is such a slog. The game really went downhill storywise after the opera imo. And after that the side content felt really stretched out. Im at the end now with like 6 days with nothing to do except grinding mag for archetypes but there isnt really a good place to farm even so it just kinda sucks at the end. At the Beginning i really was flashed how much better it was then the persona games but at this point I prefer p3 and p5 tbh. Even some Social links where lacking and all that unvoiced dialog did not help with making the side content engaging. Other than that everything else like the main cast of characters, combat and music where peak.
4:00 Hate to tell you, but your answers absolutely do matter during events. Say you're playing chess. A wrong answer might give you only +2 to the stat, while a right answer will give you +3. Save scum and you will see this for yourself easily enough. This indeed is a matter of time optimization and is no different from the recent Persona titles.
I was talking about the social link conversations.
I see no issue with quick killing low level monsters on the map. Despite their weakness, they can still hit you and hurt you in the overworld. I think that making them stunned for squad battles is overkill. I would have preferred just the extra initial damage and going first. Maybe cause the enemies to be debuffed at the start by 1 stage if you really wanted to give the player that edge.
I agree with pretty much all of your criticism of the game. It's actually significantly bothered me with how many people are selling the story to this as the best thing since sliced bread when I saw where it was going from the opening scenes, but I'm not going to pin me being underwhelmed by it as some kind of massive flaw when it's just me being overly familiar with this type of story. That said, it's not groundbreaking nor is it anything other than novel. It also bothers me that the overwhelming majority of players either do not understand its message despite it hitting you over the head with it constantly, or misinterpret certain aspects of the story and its characters. Ultimately I think it delivered on what it was trying to do, and something I disagree with you on is what the game is offering in terms of its word building with regards to - at this point - sequels and its relation to other Atlus properties.
Mechanically, I echo your issues with the game. I found it absurdly easy after a few hours, and the ability to make it so is a real con to allowing the player as much freedom as the game offers. A lot of people will praise this aspect of a game, but if you've played enough you're going to be able to break it with relative ease and without having to think too deeply about it. Even the Regicide difficulty is barely what I would want out of a "Normal" difficulty setting, but I understand - again - that that's a "me" thing and a wider audience would reject that kind of JRPG.
I have a big problem with the game's design for its dungeons. Atlus has always had this problem, and its clear to me that its development teams simply don't care enough to work on it. It is what it is. Also standard for Atlus is its music being great, but unlike their other games it's lacking in both size and variation.
I've got no problems with the calendar system as is. I do slightly side with you in that the player is given too much time, but I can also admit that I've never actually _finished_ a Persona game because I wind up screwing something minor up in the last month or two weeks that I had to have realized two months earlier and Metaphor completely resolves that issue. The QoL improvements on the calendar and bond systems are not insignificant for most people, I'd imagine.
It's a great game, on the whole, with some significant issues in design and execution that make it feel sort of pedestrian for me. While compared to the other GOTY contenders, it stands head and shoulders over most of them, FFVII Rebirth is simply a much better overall package and Erdtree is DLC and - for me - that disqualifies it from conversation despite it being a major accomplishment in and of itself. Rebirth also was able to deliver a major shift in both how an open world is utilized as well as a legitimate paradigm shift with its battle system. No other game this year has done anything close to that.
I think persona 5 was their best shot at dungeons, it was amazing in terms of its level design, its visual variety, AND their stories especially the first dungeon, the pyramid, casino, and epilogue ones. Metaphors dungeons were fine but nowhere near that good. It's probably still atlus's magnum opus and one of the greatest games ever made.
I disagree about rebirth being better. I'd argue the story of rebirth is worse than metaphor's and significantly more convoluted than it needs to be. I also don't think the characters in that game are nearly as good as metaphors. I also prefer metaphors combat over rebirth, that game feels like it could just be better in every game if it was a pure action game instead of trying to make it an action AND turn based game in a weird way, it kills the combat pacing. I also think metaphor is good with its difficulty, I don't think a game being harder inherently makes it any better or worse, so that's barely an issue for me. The characters also feel needlessly less mature compared to the OG ff7. I also love SOTE but I can't look past how empty most of its world is even compared to the base game, and that deducts a bunch of points for me personally.
Also when people refer to story, I'm assuming most people to the character writing which is consistently great in metaphor. The actual plot itself is fine I'd say, not anything special but not bad. The worst part of metaphor is the ending, it feels a little underwhelming but the rest of the game is so good that I'd still say it's a very solid 9/10.
@@Sephirothkingdom782 Like I was alluding to in my critique of Metaphor, a lot of this stuff boils down to simple personal opinion. However, when I look at a GoTY I try to evaluate that based on a more objective look at the games as a whole. From that perspective, the ones at the Game Awards were all deserving with the major exception of Wukong (and SotE, but for previously stated reasons. Though I also agree that the world was incredibly empty and lacking in quite a few areas) who's only reason for being there was it being Chinese - a significant accomplishment, but overall the game was not up to snuff critically by any measure as it was very clearly the studio's first foray into full game design and that came with clear shortcomings. That said, everyone's personal GoTY could be any number of things that aren't "critically acclaimed", and it all boils down to how much fun you had with it which I think is how we should define these things in the first place.
I enjoyed Metaphor enough to Platinum the game and max out stats. I wouldn't do that if the mechanics didn't appeal to me. In fact, I haven't even done that for Rebirth which I consider a more mechanically sound game. Its dungeons lack substance, but its combat is more than fulfilling enough to make up for that kind of thing despite being easy to break. And while you may find the combination of turn-based and action in Rebirth to be detrimental, from a mechanical standpoint it is unparalleled in design and function - specifically for a JRPG with the kind of battle options being offered in that type of game. You aren't required to play the game as instructed, you _can_ choose either turn-based or pure action and the fact that you can do so is a testament to its design.
Something I didn't mention before was Rebirth's use of the open world for the first time in Final Fantasy since..well..the OG. FFXV didn't have the towns, and was mostly just empty space. Like a proof-of-concept that never got off the ground properly. The tower climbing mechanic can be a turn-off, but it isn't nearly as intrusive as what Ubisoft gives gamers and I personally think the dislike is massively overblown and based almost entirely on gamers' predisposition to these types of things. To be able to do what the Rebirth team did took _real_ work and innovation and they managed to pull it off better than anyone thought they could when it was announced.
In contrast, Metaphor is the first Persona-led studio game to give us a real world to travel around in, but they used game development shortcuts to cut out both on development time and costs. Something you can't really fault them for, but it does stick out when the conceit is there that you're supposed to be travelling around and what you're really doing is hopping from menu to menu. In particular, there are several towns that are literally _just_ menus.
In terms of characters, I simply think Rebirth was better at utilization. Both have the best casts of the year, but I didn't click with Metaphor's cast as much as what seems to be most everybody. Heismay, as the prime example of this, is a great character, but his story is just not as impactful as Barret's who is his parallel in this context. They share identical roles in their respective games, but - to me - Barret just comes out as a more relatable story despite myself identifying more with Heismay's. But this is, again, all subjective and I can't really put any real criticism of this aspect of either game on blast since it all comes down to how one sympathizes with them.
Ultimately, though, Astro Bot won the actual award, which I expected given its near-universal acclaim from the critics. I'm perfectly happy with that result, but the RPG award should have gone to Rebirth in my opinion. Metaphor has a better narrative, but as an RPG it's - plain and simply - pretty pedestrian. It stuck with the Atlus game design formula, refined it to the point of making it their magnum opus (which I absolutely agree with), but it didn't really do any more than that and so I dock it for that reason. Rebirth just did more with what was available to it from a qualitative standpoint, and it feels as if it's being punished for being what it is and where it's come from while Metaphor is being unabashedly praised for the exact same reasons. Just my opinion, but I appreciate you sharing yours with me.
@@ojisankusai I agree with most of what you said
My main issues with rebirth boils down to the characters feeling worse than their og counterparts. I don't mind barret but I'd argue he's one of the weakest characters in the main cast, his arc was just the one in the original game but it feels somehow much less mature and impactful in comparison, he feels a lot more "shonen-y" which is funny when comparing it to metaphor of all things but Heismay is one of the few characters that feels consistently great and I'd argue is a much more mature version than Barret in rebirth. I agree the combat is deep but I just don't like the flow of it, it feels half baked at times despite its complexity to the point where I prefer more simple combat systems that have "impact" like persona 5's and metaphor's to an extent if that makes any sense. Like dark souls 1 is a game with very simple combat but it flows well enough that it's consistently enjoyable if that makes any sense.
I think the general atlus gameplay loop is good and I think the closest they've reached to perfect is with persona 5, it has dungeons that are so incredibly good I'm shocked they didn't try the same gameplay formula in metaphor. There was really only one bad dungeon in p5 and even that is one of the most visually unique looking dungeons in any atlus game and has some really good puzzles. i think that's probably their magnum opus still in terms of gameplay and combat, it felt consistently great and it had "sauce" if that makes any sense. The social links I thought were overall better in that game too. I still think atlus's best cast of characters is persona 4's, I think they hit a lightning in a bottle with that cast. I don't know how to explain it but they feel "real", dojima is one of the most emotionally nuanced characters I've ever seen in a videogame and that really says something when a lot of atlus's writing is definitely flawed, his and nanako's relationship is something that I think anyone can see the quality in no matter if you like persona 4 as a game or not, it's a high I don't think metaphor reaches unfortunately even if I consider it an extremely good game.
I think metaphor's biggest issue is wasted potential or rushed content, and I hope they fix most of the issues with the inventiable rerelease it's going to have like it did with persona 5 royal.
@@Sephirothkingdom782 Metaphor's characters, in my view, are far more in the vein of anime-style characterization than Rebirth. Not really saying that as a negative, but if you're saying Barret is "shonen-y" it's just something JRPGs do across the board since, y'know, they're Japanese and those are their tropes. I don't personally feel Barret's character comes across as nearly as "anime" as that, but there's no denying certain beats are hit. Metaphor hits those beats far more often, and ultimately I just feel that they come across as imitations of other versions of genuine characters I've personally come across. That may be where Metaphor loses me: my own experiences with the same types of characters in other stories.
In that sense, I agree with you wholeheartedly that P4's cast is - far and away - the best group of characters Atlus has created. There's just no contest, it's one of the best collection of personalities in both gaming and even wider fiction. Also, the P4 Golden anime is hilarious. Kumachi/Beary can be annoying, but it's just a mascot character to me and I can easily ignore characters like that and Morgana. Chie is one of the flat-out best developed women in gaming, and that goes for all the others in P4 as well. When compared to that, Metaphor falls incredibly flat on that front despite giving us a compelling overall narrative. It felt as though the devs were trying to slot in character types to fill in story elements and not the other way around. They're still good for what they are, but FFVII did the opposite and placed characters in an already developed story and we got to see how those types would react to that instead of feeling like they're there just to take up a story quota. It makes them far more grounded as a result.
I didn't get around to it previously, but, specifically talking about P5's dungeon design, I do think P5 is the best designed game in Atlus' catalogue. Now, I don't think their design is something to really write home about - they're still lacking in truly unique territory - but you really can't get much better for Atlus. I was very surprised with their depth the first time I played when comparing it to P4, which felt downright minimalist in comparison. My biggest complaint with those two and P3, though, are the leveling dungeons like Mementos. Metaphor certainly improved on that aspect, leveling became much more fluid with the addition of making mobs killable outside of combat, but most of the dungeons simply felt hollow and intentionally under-designed for whatever reason. It's by far the biggest detriment to the overall game, and I really hope the studio does something different with a sequel though I'm not holding my breath with these guys and that aspect of design.
Rebirth did something somewhat novel with their approach in giving each individual party member a dungeon to flex in. I think with party-oriented design, this needs to be implemented far more often as it gives each dungeon a feeling of variation as opposed to the repetition you can sometimes feel with this type of progression. And it's also pretty easy to slide in as a change-up so long as the characters themselves have well-defined features, which Rebirth stumbled with Tifa. Just adding this aspect of design to their dungeons, Metaphor would have brought so much more attention to them as opposed to the otherwise tepid response I've seen. Also, dungeon design to me isn't purely how something looks but how it plays, especially when you're seemingly doing the same kind of pattern-recognition over and over again. Shaking things up won't solve all the problems with RPG dungeons, but it adds a particular kind of style that does pay off in spades. More party-related gamification of generally standard events always adds depth and flavor regardless of success or failure. Persona already does a lot of this outside of dungeons, so I don't see why they wouldn't.
It does irk me more than I'd thought that Metaphor didn't lean into their development team's strengths more. Especially considering some of the more longer-tenured members are talking about bowing out. I mentioned it before, but the music selection - while excellent in quality - just didn't have any robustness to it. Whereas Persona gives you so many tracks you can forget what's what, there are only a few Metaphor tracks that are truly memorable. The same is true of artistic design. The monsters in particular are mostly devoid of any flair outside of Humans, and almost all of _those_ are directly copy-pasted from Hieronymus Bosch. I'm pretty sure the regular monsters are AI-assisted, as the credits only list an AI program and one other person as the "designers". And I don't like where this is going if even the Persona team is leaning into using AI for artistic design.
@ once again I agree with most of what you said lol:
I think my dislike for rebirth mainly comes from me not liking the direction they took the characters. It’s less about them being objectively bad or anything and more me not liking them as much as their original counterparts. Sephiroth for example appears so often in rebirth/remake that it kind of takes away from his legendary status of being this extremely powerful ominous villain, this was portrayed in the original game very well with his little screentime he has so when he DOES appear, it feels like an extremely powerful moment each and every time. I also don’t really like the multiverse but that’s mainly in part due to me being fatigued with so many stories, just in general, taking a multiverse route for its characters. It made aeriths death in rebirth feel less impactful than it should’ve been for example. Metaphors characters definitely felt shonen-y but they also felt quite mature at times despite their dialogue. Most of them weren’t really as good as say kanji or futaba but it was solid overall in my experience. I think Louis was pretty great overall and probably the best character in the game and I hope they continue that level of quality for their future games.
I agree about the monster designs and music, they don’t hit as hard as they should. The battle theme is excellent and incredibly unique, but the other tracks don’t hit as hard. A great reference would be the first time you hear “life will change” lyrics before fighting sae in the casino, it’s one of the coolest things in any atlus game and it gives an incredibly good sense of conclusion especially with how Morgana deems it the final heist for the phantom thieves, and it gets even better when you realize it’s the most recent event that happened before joker gets captured so it adds even more suspense. It’s an excellent usage of music that I don’t really think metaphor ever hit. As for monster designs, I don’t think they were bad, infact I think most of them were good, but none were really as cool as izanagi no okami or satanael, seeing joker pull out the gun and then it zooming out to show satanael’s even bigger gun was extremely cool.
I haven’t watched the p4 anime, I’ll have to do that for sure because I heard it’s very good from other people too. That game is lowkey carried so hard by its cast and social links that I’d say it’s a 9/10 game purely because of how good both are. I think the main benefit metaphor has is that it feels really fresh and a good direction for future atlus games in terms of formula and gives it a lot of points in terms of quality. If they did a remake for 4, I would love to have the level of exploration that metaphor had for inaba, because I think even to date that’s the best setting in the series. Metaphor was my GOTY mainly because of that reason but it definitely has its issues, I think the ending was pretty weak compared to p4 and 5 all things considered because 5 has the excellent third semester and 4’s felt very emotional. I do like how metaphor defied the classic rpg troupe of literally going up against a 9th dimensional god by the end and it felt like fighting og sephiroth with how the final boss is just Louis, so that was refreshing. All in all I still think it’s a great game and I do prefer it over rebirth overall because I felt the moment to moment gameplay felt a bit better (I had a big issue with how many filler actions you had to do like vacuuming toxic gas or pressing B to turn a wheel, it felt like padding sometimes). The combat was also just not my cup of tea but I’ll acknowledge it’s mechanically good for sure.
The calendar is too lenient? Alrighty, now I know it’s better than any persona game
brother what the average dungeon in p4 takes like a day to complete and in p5 you get like 20 extra days
Excellent review, in fact I wish you could make more videos but as a living person, I know how time works lol
Man, i totally think Rata would fall in love with Chained Echoes
also, learn from sakura episode about game design, you need to squeeze but also release. if everything has to align with the goal, then it would be squeezing too much, able to kill lower level enemies quickly in the overworld makes it easier on the player and I don't think it reduces the fun of resource management in the dungeon.
Do they ever address the protagonist’s haircut?
As someone who might play the game and doesn't want to be spoiled I was interested in your final verdict on the game, but I don't think you gave it in the spoiler free version. Do you think it's a must play? Good but not great? How would you rank it against other games this year?
I loved Metaphor the characters ,ost ,story ,combat are all great
I'm a big Persona fan, my first one was P4G then P5R,P3,P3R and I've replayed P4G,P5R 3 times.
The Jp VA cast is top tier and I'm a huge fan of them, a lot them do VA for Anime
My goty 2024(this is for pc releases) nr1 Like a Dragon infinite wealth,nr2/3 Metaphor/Persona 3 Reload nr4 FF16 ,Ghost of Tsushima ,Black Myth: Wukong,Dragon's Dogma 2
Around 10 hours in, idk it's really not for me it seems. One thing however that i can give my two cents about is that one major theme seems to be about fantasy worlds being something that we create in order to transcend our current world. This is a good theme but it's really not supported by the quality and freshnes of the world. This fantasy as someone who read decent amount of fantasies (books mostly but i have read 200+ mangas as well) this world is just soo derivative of traditional fantasy, it doesn't really seem to bring too much originality as far as world building goes. Was quite disappointed by it, feels quite generic.
That’s because you’re comparing it to hundreds of stories you’ve read til now, i’ve personally seen like what? 450+ anime titles, where a quarter of them are isekai. If i just compared all of the stories ive watched to the game then i wouldn’t find it interesting. Instead see it from a fresh perspective, changes a whole lot of the experience. Besides you’re very early in the game, atlus games tend to switch up in terms of the story…
Actually curious when the last time you saw something TRULY unique was, like incomparable to anything else. All art is derivative or inspired by something and games are no exceptions.
Great review. Probably the best story I have seen in a video game. Though, I am someone who has always been upset at how powerful we have allowed governments to become in the name of "saving us". I found the combat actually more difficult than Persona 5. Especially at the high end. Though you can for sure cheese this game by grinding crystals.
I agree with you about the last part of the game dragging as I dropped the game just before the last dungeon and watched the rest on RUclips as the gameplay got repetitive for me and story wasn't enough to keep me going. My main issue with story was nothing surprised me apart the one dungeon with the dragon but even then I was disappointed there wasn't more like that.
7:08 Gamplay?
So was there anything else about the story some people didn’t actually like?
wow the combat section really took me down a peg. i would have never personally described the combat as easy, and it did take me for some of the dungeons multiple days to complete because of the lack of resources. further, some of the overworld enemies killed me multiple times because they can, also, hit you if youre not fast enough in killing them. i admit im not very good at real time combat or great at video games in general (evidently! geez) but i do think this review is a bit blinded by the point of view of someone who is very good a video games and not everyone playing this game will be.....
It was definitely not easy,
Nice "Gamplay" review section 😂😂
Great game. But while it takes steps forward to improve from persona, it also takes several steps back. My biggest gripe is that main party followers dont get much in unique abilities when Ranking up. Only characters with major abilities is hulkenburg who has a chance to protect the mc, Eupha who pretty much gets rid of the anxiety mechanic, and Gallica who occasionally gives you 2 extra actions. Side characters this time around are where all the strong abilities are.
Great review and video, good summary of your critiques and compliments to the game.
I will have to disagree on a couple of points though.
From the perspective of someone who has replayed persona games, the first experience with the calendar when I first started was stressful and left me feeling somewhat inadequate, like I could have done so much better, I should have talked to X and Y instead of Z. This isn't necessarily a strong suit of the games. It's at best contentious in how it makes casual/first timers feel when approaching the calendar system, and as a standalone game, I think it does a good job introducing the system in a relatively harmless way. You can easily accomplish everything, but you can get to the end and still have an idea that you could have done it better without the added stress.
Also, instantly killing enemies is just an improvement over previous titles in ny opinion, it adds an action game esque element that enriches the experience and does away with the repetitiveness of persona grinding, which when you were overleveled was simply spamming basic attacks until the enemy died.
Bought it but was so disappointed it doesn't have proper controller support I won't bother playing it for now
My first playthrough I cleared most dungeon in 2 days the 4th main dungeon is the only one I clear in 1 day was the fourth main one.