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.
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.
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...
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 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 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
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 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
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
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.
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.
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 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
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
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
So basically, you're advising us to wait for the Meraphor Monarch director's cut edition that comes with a better final part of the game.😂 Memes aside, good review Rata, will check this game out after I finish Royal. I am absolutely loving that game! It's my first persona game, and I'm excited to eventually play ALL the Atlus games before I die.
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.
Sucks to hear about how easy the resource management is. Guess I'll be passing on this one too. I really just want even one rpg to come out that takes this stuff seriously and doesn't allow you to bypass it. EDIT: Eww that story bit. While I think a small bit of that could be salvaged into a better message it just feels like such a weak and status-quo affirming cop out from the people that gave us SMT which is nothing if not idealist.
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.
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.
respect your opinion about the combat but disagree about its impacts on the dungeon quality. the way I see it, I think the action combat letting you bypass trash mobs and also have control over whether or not you ambush enemies that you can manage to critical hit on the field or dodge correctly in 1 on 1 combat, while yes, it removes a lot of the friction, I think it also serves as a justifiable reward for knowing how to play to your strengths and build a powerful team in a megaten game. it encourages you to engage with parts of the game outside of the barebones storylines and serves as a reflection of your hard work and progress. i wouldnt be opposed to a mechanic where, say, the game detects the amount of side dungeons you've completed and strengthens the enemies and level floor in the main dungeon on purpose to purposefully stop players from minmaxing their way outside of having to engage with the system at all, but i dont think they should remove the action combat nor the blitz ambush mechanic entirely. I don't have an intellectual reason for this take, I just simply think blitz ambushes are fun, and I also like that the game respects my time. Lastly, I think theres room to refine this system, both the action combat and the ambush system. Maybe make it so enemies aren't stunned UNLESS they are below your level, otherwise, you just get the bonus damage. I think this could work as a compromise. For the action combat, give the enemies higher guard bars, give them more difficult movesets and reduce the invincibility frames on dodge rolling. I think that could go a long way just on its own to make the dungeon pressure higher. None of the solutions/compromises I'm suggesting are going to be perfect, but I think it's a really interesting discussion that you brought up, and I want to participate in it so this is my way of doing that lol.
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.
Man do I hate the persona calendar system. When I found out I was going to be 1 day short of full clearing royal in one playthrough, I just stopped playing on the spot and have basically no desire to play another persona. Oh well, theres plenty of rpgs that don't have it. I guess it's good there are games like this for the people that like em.
Never saw so much hate comment in Metaphor review video before. Atlus is trying to compiles all the good thing from their previous games and I think its a success. I can understand with all the complaints but hate? idk man. Maybe you guys hater have better recommendation JRPG to play?
A agree final part of the game is stretched thin and late game you easily over lvl to the point I only had to fight in turn based against one enemy in some dungeons. Being able to insta kill at only 3 lvls above is way too low since some enemies start out low lvl to start with so a few minutes into dungeon you are able to insta kill. The optional dungeons themselves are worse than just having Mementos tbh at least it was all in one place. Doesn't seem like they put much effort into them at all and they are not that replayable either since they are all over the place and you need to take time to get to them again. Story felt like it was going too fast near the end as well didn't really get much time with some key characters like Forden and Rella. Overall I would say the game is 8/10 it overcorrected problems Persona 5 may have had with pacing by rushing everything instead.
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..
12:50 you forgot to mention retry (unless you do later, I have to leave for spoilers) i think its a good modern alternative to resetting and wasting adult leisure time. I'm relieved to hear you say it gets easier because I'm in the Grand Tack and the field combat is the only way this is possible. I don't like how weak regular attacks are. I think you're incredibly desensitized to the expectations the Tensei games have for their players. Think of the difference of a normie trying it out and not doing everything right. I agree that the press turn change is good but it's really a return to form from previous titles.
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 am on the fence between this and Dragon Age the Veilguard. The reviews for Dragon Age are phenomenal, even better than Metaphor. The lowest I've seen is 9/10 and I have seen plenty of review sites giving it a perfect 10/10. So I think I will wait and do the objectively superior game Dragon Age the Veilguard first and then maybe later do Metaphor, which has pretty good reviews but not nearly as good as Dragon Age.
I don’t think the “instantly kill enemies of significantly lower level than yourself” system is that much of an issue. Firstly, even in games that didn’t have this system (such as Persona 4 or SMT V), lower level enemies were never really a problem. If something was of low enough level that fighting it wasn’t worth the time and resources, you could just walk away from it. You only have to risk draining your resources if you actively make the choice to. Secondly, in most Persona/SMT games, if you were ambushed by a jobber enemy and couldn’t escape for whatever reason, you could just use normal melee attacks at no cost and that tended to work rather well. The reason why that isn’t generally viable in Metaphor is because the melee attacks are just kind of bad unless you’re hitting a weakness. Even compared to Persona 3 (whose melee attacks are almost identical to those in Metaphor), I find that Metaphor’s melee attacks are generally weaker and seem to crit less often. Edit: minor typo correction
The melee attacks being so weak is most definitely due to your stats having barely any impact outside of minor increase or decrease in damage, it's all based on your weapon and the skill's damage multiplier (which is based on the whole weak, medium, heavy, severe, extreme) But melee attacks don't have that multiplier, so no matter how high your stat is, you won't be dealing much damage. I'm not quite sure what the actual damage formula for basic attack is, but it seems to be along the kind of ATK + STR - the target's DEF + EN. You can easily see why your stats barely matter when you only get 1 every few levels when weapons and armour give you 30+ per change and skills add multipliers on top. Even at the highest, 99, it's still just a fifth of the highest ATK possible for a weapon which is 500, and that's something you will not get until the very end of the game, for the majority of the game you're nowhere near that additional fifth.
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.
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
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
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?
You have to be some kind of special if you take every fight in a jrpg as i run for most and if i get my ass beat gain some levels and do that all the way through. I love that i didnt have to fight enemies i wouldnt lose anything especially when you put everyone in the back as the defense buff is insanely good. Magic has no fall off. I dont see how you think it is a resource management when persona 4 was until you up the social link of the fox. persona 3 had the tower and persona 5 forces you to take 2 days to finish. It such a nonissue. Metaphor Refantazio suffers from the calender as it isnt needed and holds the story back for better moments as Persona even has everything at the end of the month. I feel like P Studio really stretch what they could for the follower stories as most arent 8 part worth. Persona suffers from this as well. I think its time to retool this system as it isnt a killer feature
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 accidentally watched the whole video without hearing the spoiler warnings, is the game kinda ruined for me now? Was really looking forward to it but now I don't see the point.
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.
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.
this game is so good i'm taking a mid section break because i don't want it to end lmao
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...
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
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.
I never played a persona game and the time management is a joke
@FelipeSantos-wu1uf If you say so
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 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.
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.
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.
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).
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 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 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 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.
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.
Finally the review!
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
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
This game is so good I literally haven't actually enjoyed a JRPG in so long this was a real surprise hit for me.
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.
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.
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 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
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
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.
Good review Rata, looking forward to playing this eventually. When you have a full time job and family a big RPG is a massive undertaking, haha.
I love Atlus games but I despise the calendar so much. This game is, however, incredible.
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.
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 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
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.
Thanks for explaining the improvement over P5 in social links. I was a guide user and very glad to not have to here
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.
Rata has returned to us!🙏
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.
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.
There’s also the issue with the mage lineage, you literately can fully refill your MP bar by just killing chaff over and over.
The calendar is too lenient? Alrighty, now I know it’s better than any persona game
Excellent review, in fact I wish you could make more videos but as a living person, I know how time works lol
This game actually uses an older version of the Press Turn system than SMTV does. It's the same in Nocturne and SMTIV.
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.
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.
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.
Activities = fetch quests, shit we’ve seen literally in every single rpg.
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.
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.
the overworld stun works on normal difficulty, in regicide it is really hard on higher level enemies.
Nice "Gamplay" review section 😂😂
Man, i totally think Rata would fall in love with Chained Echoes
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 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.
Love your videos, but man I had to look away several times when you showed mid to late game characters and areas.
So basically, you're advising us to wait for the Meraphor Monarch director's cut edition that comes with a better final part of the game.😂
Memes aside, good review Rata, will check this game out after I finish Royal. I am absolutely loving that game! It's my first persona game, and I'm excited to eventually play ALL the Atlus games before I die.
Art, Music and Voice acting are great. Gameplay is great with the caveats mentioned in the review. Story starts strong but ends weak.
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.
My tolerance is rank 2. Just like in real life
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.
The smashing of low level enemies is one of the only reasons I’m considering buying the game. Turn based battles are tedious and dull.
Sucks to hear about how easy the resource management is.
Guess I'll be passing on this one too.
I really just want even one rpg to come out that takes this stuff seriously and doesn't allow you to bypass it.
EDIT: Eww that story bit. While I think a small bit of that could be salvaged into a better message it just feels like such a weak and status-quo affirming cop out from the people that gave us SMT which is nothing if not idealist.
I tried the demo and was very dissapointed at first..Now iam 20 hours in and its already GOTY 😁🎉
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
Plan to play twice or more ( ps5 ver and ps4ver )
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.
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.
Bought it but was so disappointed it doesn't have proper controller support I won't bother playing it for now
Thought it was okay. Got a month to go but no desire to finish. Maybe later
respect your opinion about the combat but disagree about its impacts on the dungeon quality.
the way I see it, I think the action combat letting you bypass trash mobs and also have control over whether or not you ambush enemies that you can manage to critical hit on the field or dodge correctly in 1 on 1 combat, while yes, it removes a lot of the friction, I think it also serves as a justifiable reward for knowing how to play to your strengths and build a powerful team in a megaten game. it encourages you to engage with parts of the game outside of the barebones storylines and serves as a reflection of your hard work and progress.
i wouldnt be opposed to a mechanic where, say, the game detects the amount of side dungeons you've completed and strengthens the enemies and level floor in the main dungeon on purpose to purposefully stop players from minmaxing their way outside of having to engage with the system at all, but i dont think they should remove the action combat nor the blitz ambush mechanic entirely. I don't have an intellectual reason for this take, I just simply think blitz ambushes are fun, and I also like that the game respects my time.
Lastly, I think theres room to refine this system, both the action combat and the ambush system. Maybe make it so enemies aren't stunned UNLESS they are below your level, otherwise, you just get the bonus damage. I think this could work as a compromise. For the action combat, give the enemies higher guard bars, give them more difficult movesets and reduce the invincibility frames on dodge rolling. I think that could go a long way just on its own to make the dungeon pressure higher.
None of the solutions/compromises I'm suggesting are going to be perfect, but I think it's a really interesting discussion that you brought up, and I want to participate in it so this is my way of doing that lol.
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.
Man do I hate the persona calendar system. When I found out I was going to be 1 day short of full clearing royal in one playthrough, I just stopped playing on the spot and have basically no desire to play another persona.
Oh well, theres plenty of rpgs that don't have it. I guess it's good there are games like this for the people that like em.
Never saw so much hate comment in Metaphor review video before. Atlus is trying to compiles all the good thing from their previous games and I think its a success. I can understand with all the complaints but hate? idk man. Maybe you guys hater have better recommendation JRPG to play?
A agree final part of the game is stretched thin and late game you easily over lvl to the point I only had to fight in turn based against one enemy in some dungeons. Being able to insta kill at only 3 lvls above is way too low since some enemies start out low lvl to start with so a few minutes into dungeon you are able to insta kill.
The optional dungeons themselves are worse than just having Mementos tbh at least it was all in one place. Doesn't seem like they put much effort into them at all and they are not that replayable either since they are all over the place and you need to take time to get to them again.
Story felt like it was going too fast near the end as well didn't really get much time with some key characters like Forden and Rella. Overall I would say the game is 8/10 it overcorrected problems Persona 5 may have had with pacing by rushing everything instead.
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..
12:50 you forgot to mention retry (unless you do later, I have to leave for spoilers) i think its a good modern alternative to resetting and wasting adult leisure time. I'm relieved to hear you say it gets easier because I'm in the Grand Tack and the field combat is the only way this is possible. I don't like how weak regular attacks are. I think you're incredibly desensitized to the expectations the Tensei games have for their players. Think of the difference of a normie trying it out and not doing everything right. I agree that the press turn change is good but it's really a return to form from previous titles.
It can’t be hard to write a good 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 am on the fence between this and Dragon Age the Veilguard. The reviews for Dragon Age are phenomenal, even better than Metaphor. The lowest I've seen is 9/10 and I have seen plenty of review sites giving it a perfect 10/10. So I think I will wait and do the objectively superior game Dragon Age the Veilguard first and then maybe later do Metaphor, which has pretty good reviews but not nearly as good as Dragon Age.
Your thoughts on the ending sounds like how I felt about trying to complete ff16. The ending of 16 was a travesty too boot. Such a let down.
I don’t think the “instantly kill enemies of significantly lower level than yourself” system is that much of an issue.
Firstly, even in games that didn’t have this system (such as Persona 4 or SMT V), lower level enemies were never really a problem. If something was of low enough level that fighting it wasn’t worth the time and resources, you could just walk away from it. You only have to risk draining your resources if you actively make the choice to.
Secondly, in most Persona/SMT games, if you were ambushed by a jobber enemy and couldn’t escape for whatever reason, you could just use normal melee attacks at no cost and that tended to work rather well. The reason why that isn’t generally viable in Metaphor is because the melee attacks are just kind of bad unless you’re hitting a weakness. Even compared to Persona 3 (whose melee attacks are almost identical to those in Metaphor), I find that Metaphor’s melee attacks are generally weaker and seem to crit less often.
Edit: minor typo correction
The melee attacks being so weak is most definitely due to your stats having barely any impact outside of minor increase or decrease in damage, it's all based on your weapon and the skill's damage multiplier (which is based on the whole weak, medium, heavy, severe, extreme)
But melee attacks don't have that multiplier, so no matter how high your stat is, you won't be dealing much damage. I'm not quite sure what the actual damage formula for basic attack is, but it seems to be along the kind of ATK + STR - the target's DEF + EN.
You can easily see why your stats barely matter when you only get 1 every few levels when weapons and armour give you 30+ per change and skills add multipliers on top.
Even at the highest, 99, it's still just a fifth of the highest ATK possible for a weapon which is 500, and that's something you will not get until the very end of the game, for the majority of the game you're nowhere near that additional fifth.
Thx rata now sleep before wilds and I will see you there
Do they ever address the protagonist’s haircut?
Good ol' "Gamplay". Lol
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.
Atlus yet again fucking up another game's plot for fear of saying something meaningful about politics.
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.
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
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
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?
Game is way too easy and copy and paste side areas were a bummer. It’s a fine concept but needed more time in the oven. Still enjoyed the game though.
I was hoping since this game was class based we would get the levrl of complexity of something like etrian odyssey but nope
You have to be some kind of special if you take every fight in a jrpg as i run for most and if i get my ass beat gain some levels and do that all the way through. I love that i didnt have to fight enemies i wouldnt lose anything especially when you put everyone in the back as the defense buff is insanely good. Magic has no fall off. I dont see how you think it is a resource management when persona 4 was until you up the social link of the fox. persona 3 had the tower and persona 5 forces you to take 2 days to finish. It such a nonissue.
Metaphor Refantazio suffers from the calender as it isnt needed and holds the story back for better moments as Persona even has everything at the end of the month. I feel like P Studio really stretch what they could for the follower stories as most arent 8 part worth. Persona suffers from this as well. I think its time to retool this system as it isnt a killer feature
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 disagree with the resource constraint is less strenuous in this game, you are only feeling that because you use mages...
Story definitely took a nosedive during the entire opera house section.
Just in time.
So was there anything else about the story some people didn’t actually like?
i love playing gams
I accidentally watched the whole video without hearing the spoiler warnings, is the game kinda ruined for me now? Was really looking forward to it but now I don't see the point.