After playing the opening hour of Altus' Metaphor: ReFantazio – with its October 11 launch just a few weeks away – I feel it's time to correct a game preview injustice. Namely, the fact that the vast majority of its pre-launch has revolved around its closeness to Persona, and that it lacks some of the most hilariously bizarre RPG enemy design beyond Elden Ring's horn-honking orb people.
I get it. Metaphor: ReFantazio doesn't just have Persona DNA; it has Persona's heart, lungs, bone marrow, and at least one of its legs. That thing where you can hit it in real time to get an advantage in a turn-based fight? Hey, that's like Persona. You and your party transform into much more powerful super beings? It's a bit like Persona. You hit an opponent's weak spot and buy yourself an extra turn? It reminds me of the Persona series of games.
It's all good. I'm actually more into the real-time provocation when Edwin plays, partly because he's able to pull it off, starting the fight with a strangely cute little animation of our hero grinning with bloodlust (probably me at the same time). But the similarities to Altus' previous work are, at this point, so well-done that you can see the boot prints in the dirt. I'd rather talk about the wonderfully weird monsters and creatures on the other side of these fights, because they're gross, and that's why I love them.
In ReFantazio’s Renaissance-esque fantasy setting, they’re called Humans, which is probably the most ironic name Altus could come up with. The ones with recognizable human features look like the big naked giants from Attack on Titan dressed up for a fun run, while others could have been designed by picking two random words from a dictionary. An egg in boots. A tooth with a face. A tooth with a face, really, and I lost a duel to one on the first hit, which made me cringe every time I saw a character’s teeth for the next thirty minutes. Crazy in concept, maybe, but only real art can evoke such an emotional response.
But these are mere scribbles compared to the Boschian nightmares that are the bosses. My demo's climactic enemy, Peril, is a giant quadrupedal, four-armed bird-man with swords for feet, wings for ears, and what appears to be a dangling pomegranate for a torso. He also has a bunch of mouths on his wings. And hands. And it's not just madness for madness's sake: during combat, Peril heals by munching on apples that grow from another vine-like appendage. This disturbing act of auto-cannibalism shows how some enemies' visual quirks can actually reflect their move sets in unexpected ways.
Frankly, after about four weeks of playing ReFantazio, there's probably something else important going on. Don't forget Peril and the tooth boys had been a blur until the hero cast reviewed them a few hours ago. I think it's partly the contrast between the crazy cryptids and the largely regular anime humans that makes the former seem so vivid and silly, but I expect that spending more time with your allies will reveal them to be more than the fantasy archetypes they initially appear to be. The young nobleman who sets out on his own, the cheerful fairy companion, etc.
To be fair, there are other qualities to Altus' new world. Exploring the fortress city of Grand Trad really does feel like being on the ground in a bustling metropolis, its wide streets filled with gossipy citizens. While it takes half an hour of walking and talking through these areas to get through your first round-based challenge, you rarely feel like you're drowning in a flood of drained information.
And my word is, elegance. It’s both another legacy of the P-word and something that Metaphor: ReFantazio previews always bring up, but it’s actually an intoxicating assault on the senses, with ornate menus flashing in and out of view and exciting musical motifs thrown in with impressively maximalist abandon. Even a brief flashback is introduced with a fancy rewinding clock graphic.
But if I buy Metaphor: ReFantazio, it won’t be because of the hyperactive user interface, but rather because I want to see, fight, and kill more of these unusual villains. I want a bestiary of anthropomorphic kraken, bipedal eggs with heart-shaped bagpipes on their heads, and all evidence suggests I’ll be getting that.