5/5 ★ – DarrensTrashBag's review of Metaphor: ReFantazio.

Phenomenal experience with a very immersive and expansive world. Metaphor takes a bunch of mechanics from Persona and experiments to see what they can do for future titles. Some work and some do not. The Social links or Followers are incredibly well written. When considering Persona 3, 4, and 5, Metaphor contains some of my favorite links altogether. There are some issues with the game, I felt like the architypes just were not as fun as switching personas. The combat is really great, but the chances of getting absolutely destroyed in a battle because of bad RNG is exponentially higher. The first ten hours of the game can be slightly difficult to get through because you cannot combo your attacks easily and there is a lot of exposition to get the player used to the politics, culture, and mechanics of the game. All of the main characters are fantastically written with in-depth, well-directed, acting performances. If I had to choose one character that I did not enjoy as much as the others it would be Junah. I do like her but it just felt like they threw in her tragic backstory just to have a tragic backstory. Her story focusing around her singing just didn't intrigue me as much. What does fall flat in terms of characters are the antagonists. Apart from Luis, Joanna, Forden, and just barely Rella, the villains were kind of bland textbook villains. My final issue is with the final boss, why is the final boss ten levels higher than the final enemies of the game? This just required me to grind levels for three hours, which to me is very much unlike these developers to require grinding. The rest of the game is completely pristine, persona vibes. Once again the followers are very good, the social stats are improved so that you can see how close you are to ranking up, and I really like the way that you can insta kill enemies if you are leveled higher. This made grinding more like an inconvenience rather than torture. The ending is jaw-dropping, especially that *one* battle. The visuals are both grim and stylish. Like everything was drawn with coal. The friend group works well together. The mini dungeons weren't anything special but I will take it over doing mementos. Overall this game is very much worth going through as we wait for Persona 6, I recommend taking it slow and enjoy the follower ranks. Combat does take some time to get used to. Writing, characters, and performances are all amazing. 95/100