3/5 ★ – DeanGames's review of Metaphor: ReFantazio.

Mataphor Re:Fantazio DEMO REVIEW Not sure if I really want to invest the money and around 70-100 hours of playtime STORY - The story seems very basic, which isn’t a bad thing per se but I don’t feel intrigued by it all that much. It’s the classic super popular head of military that everyone loves but ends up being the bad guy. Seemingly weak main character but actually has crazy chosen one powers. I don’t see how this is going to hold for the (more or less) 60, 70 hours of story. (According to howlongtobeat stats that pretty much always line up with my play time stats) I’m sure there must be much more to discover in terms of lore. (the map has an intriguing giant human in the bottom right) POSITIVES - Character designs are GREAT 🌟 - Music is AMAZING ✨ - Gameplay is nice. I like how you can beat weaker MOBS dynamically during the free roaming but it switches to the turn based gameplay when you’re up against stronger opponents. A great modernized version of JRPG gameplay - The battle of who ends up being the new king represented by the 3 stone heads looks very cool and it is a good way of justifying doing side quests NEGATIVES - Being intercepted by either a good bunch of (redundant) dialogue or game mechanics explanation is somewhat annoying. (More the librarian) - Also while menus looks dynamic and pretty cool, they are overwhelming even unclear to some degree. (Looking at stats for weaponry for example or choosing the right archetype for a character) - Story doesn’t look intriguing to me. - Maybe it’s only an issue at the start of the game but I’m only ever using magic attacks during the fights. It’s so... well magic consuming. Close combat is super weak and there’s no variety (yet?) which causes the fights being quite slow and not too fun. Give the character designer a raise, Hunkelberg looks insanely cool! Reason why I'm interested to continue lol