is Metaphor: ReFantazio Worth Your Time? No Spoilers | Varsona 

Yes 💪

Pro consumer demos should be more common! This and Unicorn Overlord really impressed me

I think there are more dungeons but smaller. The minotqurus one was not a big dungeon at all but felt like a labirinth but if you level yourself up at lvl 16 or higher you can breeze through the whole dungeon in less than 5 minutes.

@@fseiba6718 Hope so, because the cathedral dungeon part where you hunt the necromancer is annoying, I keep running out of mp I wish there was a better way to replenish it

@@fitforchrist1990 I didn't managed well my 3 days so i have not visited the cathedrall at all but a good tactic is to farm levels. The mage class can generate mp by defeating enemys btw.

I enjoyed the starts of Persona 4 and 5. However, they walk at a different cadence. The lack of character motivations in those games pair well with the slower pace as it let's the players create their own internal motivations and "self insert". For Joker's case, atlus used a lot of "kick the puppy" techniques to get you rooting for the MC. Getting drugged up and abused, getting into legal trouble for doing the "right thing". I was already in Joker's corner alittle bit because of the blatent relatable injustice that is actively impacting the story. This is similar to how the many tribes of metaphor hate the Elda but without the immediate impact (yet). What personally grounded me in Persona 5 was the very first major arc - power imbalance SA. It struck a cord a bit close to home and got me rooting for the MC's corner for the intrinsic good that they're doing. I'm still seeking that internal hook that'll get me rooting for our MC in Metaphor. As you've mentioned, all of Metaphor's party members so far have very easy motivations/backstories to digest and get behind. The straightforwardness of it may be the friction keeping me from clicking not because there is anything wrong with using tropes and archetypes, but I'm not afforded time to build up that connection. They really want me to like the character and they want me to like them fast! I do like hulkenberg and strohl a lot, though, so it worked! 🤣 As for FF7 Cloud's case, I think this one is harder to quantify. There is alot going on with FF7's prologue sequence that far and away supercede Cloud's multifaceted trauma. He's a merc supersoldier whose only in it for the money. Does it make sense? I have no idea this world is a bit alien, so maybe. Do I care about Cloud's story? Not yet, but he has a big sword and there's explosions everywhere! Do I care about Avalanche's plight? I care about as much as Cloud does in that moment. Then you get to know the Avalanche Crew at the same time as Cloud. Mix that in with hints of the past with Tifa and his inconsistencies to keep you moving forward. The curiousity on what makes Cloud ticks helped to engage me in the narrative. As the prologue's external factors die down, I started to form connections with the cast and that became my internal motivations; matching Cloud's internal motivations at least in the Midgar section. Do I hate Shinra and support terrorism? Naw. Not yet anyways. But i did get to know and form a connection with the Avalanche Crew before things really hit the fan. I could end up really vibing with the prince and the protag's goals, but need more time before that happens. Compared to Cloud's mystique and edge, the straightforwardness of the MC's motivations to save his childhood friend leaves less to the imagination. Nothing wrong with that at all, but with less mystery comes the need for that bond/connection for relatablity. This could also be done by amping why Louis needs to be stopped or giving us a more easy to hate villain. Someone who "kicks the puppy".

​@@VarsonaWow...what a good response with examples and even an effort to explain each point. Rarely see this kind of rational debate on nerd topics on the internet😅

@@patricknorris9334true

@@Varsona super valid and i feel that hard man

The main antagonist is allegedly behind the prince's attempted murder. But instead of murder, he is cursed instead (the why remains to be seen). We are told this - not shown. The mystery is intentional. It seems based on the cutscene we got if the assailant's group wanted the prince dead. They could have done it. A curse seems more difficult. If murder is enough to make someone irreprehensively evil no matter what, then the entire party we are following are all complicit in that. In the opening scene Hulkenberg kills a group of zealots right in front of your face and then you and the group do a whole bunch of murdering of the guards in the demo. Justified? Maybe. But it's still murder. Point is, it's not that simple. Does the main antagonist do morally bad things? Yes. Does the main antagonist do something to make me dislike them on a personal level? No. Not yet anyways. He does something that should have triggered that personal dislike, but the foreshadowing was so strong I didn't emotionally invest in that character knowing their inevitable fate as soon as they joined our party.

@@Varsona You are completely forgetting the mass murder committed by his zealots in the temple. Im not talking about 1 or 2 nobles. But scores of innocent civilians. It might be possible that the necromancer dude was not affiliated with the prices, but that seems highly unlikely.

No I am aware. Whether he knows of the atrocity or not, he is still responsible as they are under his command. I agree with you that he isn't a morally upstanding character. I'm not rooting for or against him. I don't know enough of the world setting to have a strong opinion either way. Same goes towards the protagonist's party.

100% this. Then p3 reload

I think the artstyle helps it. The mine dungeon was ugly as hell but i really dig the minotaurus dungeon and the cathedral and i blame it on the dungeons artstyle not the graphics. Graphics are good for a jrpg but i have played ff 7 rebirth which looks good but Metaphore is 10 times better- Ff7 has great graphics but everything else was so mid to the point i didnt have fun after a point. Persona games never gets boring even after 150 hours of gameplay for me. Ff7 remakes when i hit 20 hour i was bored out of the game- the padding was just that awful. Metaphore is just tics everthying for me even tho the graphics are not on ff7 level but i dont mind that if the game is this good.

Or Metaphor ReFantazio: Vengeance Royale Edition 🤔

​​@@Varsona They not doing it anymore- they sad dlc is the future of persona games. Like how they released the persona 3 reload dlc.

Yeh alot of Jap Devs woo U with kindness and they hope U enjoy there product.but imo they are less transparent then western Devs I ultimately don't pay attention to them.however I'm looking forward to the story and hopefully our reality becomes playable towards the end.

I would say it's for the better. Since the Press Turn system is one of the best "traditional" turn based JRPG systems out there.

the command battle borrows way more from mainline SMT press turn systems and common job/class based JRPGs (you can even argue that this is the etrian odyssey DNA sneaking in, since the row formation stuff is also there, though I think Atlus might've done those before EO as well? I am unsure) than it does anything specifically identifiable to Persona 5. Maybe the UI of directly mapping face buttons to commands instead of having immediate menus, but honestly a lot of other JRPGs do that too now. Trails Through Daybreak definitely did the "beat the crap out of the enemy in real time combat on the field before engaging turn-based mechanics" thing before this did though. This game feels like a celebration of ideas from multiple Atlus IPs as well as stuff traditionally found in fantasy JRPGs in general, and considering that this is apparently their 35th anniversary release title I can't say I'm not okay with this. The individual features might not be very novel, but from the demo so far they've been woven together and executed rather well. Here's hoping the rest of the game can maintain that quality.

Not every game has to do something brand new. We'd get one new game every five years if that was the case. Or none at all, frankly. Everything has been done, and now it's just about how you arrange those elements into a well presented new product.

@@rhythmicon6610 Not everything has been done.