Metaphor: ReFantazio

It might be simpler to review this game by micro reviewing its "franchise" as a whole first.

Persona 3: Not the first game to mix dating sim time management with RPG, but certainly the defining flashpoint. What I adore about this game is that it has a strong sense of making your party separate characters from you as a player: you cannot give direct commands in combat, if you want to more easily grind in an area you can order them to run around the dungeon on their own and jump into any encounters if they get in trouble, they'll complain that they don't like how the equipment you gave them looks, etc. As an extension of this they're also far more distant from you than the rest of the series- rather than being your friend by default, they're more like co-workers. You can become friends only if you choose to.

The series would immediately move away from these elements because not having control over characters in a difficult turn based RPG is, in fact, a huge pain in the ass. But I also think it's the tip of an unexplored iceberg in games.

It also goes much harder on the time management element- fatigue is an unavoidable status effect that forces the player to take breaks from the dungeon. I actually think this part is rather unfortunate that they moved away from, because it gives the game a much better pacing- later entries instead just make MP recovery the limiting factor that eventually becomes irrelevant as the game goes on and gives you more options, turning the meta of time optimization into just doing every dungeon in one day, which can drag when dungeons are so long (though I have no idea what a perfect run of Persona 3 looks like, maybe it's a miserable exercise in doing dungeons in one day with sick party members so they removed it for the sake of perfectionists). 

Later remakes and ports would gradually remove these controversial elements, but as a result I see a lot of first time players wondering why the game was ever a big deal. And they're right to do so, without all the friction and the novelty of innovation all you're left with is a writing formula that the team got dramatically better at.

Persona 4: Summer nostalgia fiction seems to be a bit of a thing in Japan, the most defining one in video games being Boku no Natsuyasumi- a game that is strictly about a boy's one summer vacation and how you decide to spend it. While Persona 4 technically encompasses most of a year, its yellow color scheme, premise of the protagonist having to spend a year with relatives in small town Japan, and pop flavored music evokes summer way too hard for that not to be the intention. It also nails it.

In general it's a stone cold must play classic. The warm vibes you get from the cast of characters are second to none. I was too dumb to solve the murder mystery because my brain could not trust a story with supernatural elements not to introduce new rules out of nowhere, but the game does not actually betray your trust. Thematically it also has some interesting things to say.

Not necessarily flawless in that dungeons are still randomly generated empty corridors that are basically just there for battles to get in your way, but having theming that's relevant to the plot goes a long way. The battle system remains largely about using elemental weaknesses to prevent enemies from actually getting any turns, which can get repetitive in a long game, but it's still short enough at 60 hours that it isn't really a problem.

Persona 5: This game is an interesting case study. On paper it fixes every problem with Persona 4 while vastly increasing the production value. Every dungeon is now hand crafted with gimmicks and other variations. Bosses have more elaborate mechanics. The menus are not only the prettiest, slickest menus ever put in a video game, but they're also insanely snappy letting you button through battles as fast as you want. The plot has the supernatural elements interact more directly with the world than ever before and it's interesting in a way that raises the stakes. The same warmth in the main cast from Persona 4 appears again.

And yet it kind of falls short as a whole. That warmth feels like a hollow imitation of Persona 4 considering the drastically different city setting with the kids going through much harsher things. It also raises the length to 100 hours without actually adding much depth to the combat, so it really wears out its welcome. Perhaps the wait being so long that I beat the previous games after its announcement and still had years to go is part of too high of expectations. But it's kind of the best made yet also most disappointing game.

And so we reach Metaphor: ReFantazio. I didn't quite know what to expect with the announcement making it almost sound like they were creating a new team, along side the new fantasy setting. In practice, they made another Persona game. Unlike Persona 5, however, this one actually feels like a step forward: you can travel around the world and have to take travel time into account, the battle system has been replaced with the Press Turn System from its parent series Shin Megami Tensei 3 and onwards, instead of fixed party classes and a malleable player character everyone can change their class and inherit skills, there are multiple citites, encounter advantage is determined by a light action rpg system, and most of all the setting being a single place instead of split between real and magical worlds is a drastic narrative shift. Most merciful of all, it's only like 70 hours long if you do everything.

The actual benefit of all these changes varies. The class system is tied to plot and social progression, which makes switching classes feel quite painful for the first half of the game. It does offer some strong quality of life options like giving you class experience items rather than discarding class experience when a class is maxed out, but as a whole it feels like the system doesn't quite come together (frankly they just don't have abilities with the crazy synergy you get in other rpgs with inheritable skills- there are combinations that are extremely good, yes, but they stem more from boring stat calculation buffs rather than things bouncing off each other). There's also a new little wrinkle of the game allowing you to buy information on every dungeon's enemies and bosses ahead of time- essentially letting you party build before you reach the boss. I was skeptical at first, but ended up liking it in the same way that The Witcher series gives a feel of preparation. On the downside, my party's classes felt like an incoherent constantly changing mess rather than trying to craft a flexible team. It was nice doing something different, but I'm not sure I enjoyed it as much as carefully curating my personas in the other games. 

Combat fares similarly. The Press Turn System basically gives you extra turns (with some limitations) for hitting enemy weaknesses or criticals, but it also takes turns away for missing or being blocked. This is a system with heavy luck swings depending on who wins combat initiative, and the preceding light action RPG that determines that is quite a bit trickier to consistently get advantage with than the previous games. As a result, a single encounter can often either be done without taking any damage or kill you. It doesn't always feel great, even with drastic quality of life options like being able to restart a battle without penalty (though it didn't actually game over with bad luck more than once or twice). Worse, the class system is far less flexible than the Shin Megami Tensei games that it came from which offer nearly full party customization with very little work- Metaphor meanwhile makes it nearly impossible for a given party member to max out more than a few class families. As a result, it's better than the stagnate battle system the previous games have had, but it doesn't exactly fit together either.

The scope change of traveling the world ends up being unsurprisingly simplistic- these are 60-100 hour games, failure can't really be an option. But they still achieve flavor with them, most impressively where they actually created looping 3d terrain traversal when walking outside your ship. Having multiple towns also gives things more of a progression. I have rather mixed feelings that they ended up having to introduce a teleportation mechanic in order to make party member social events be able to function at any point in the story. Yes, it allows them to do more with those side stories. But it also weakens the globe trotting (well, country trotting)  flavor. I loved the new optional dungeons all being handcrafted, they felt like micro dungeon crawls (though I'm sure many will be less fond of their simplicity and repetition). As a whole it's a bunch of small changes that make it all feel fresh again.

Of course, the actual triumph is with the story. The previous three games split things between the real world and the secret magical worlds that most of the characters were unaware of. This format was incredibly refreshing at the time, since most games don't really touch on the mundane. But they also kind of ran into a wall with the limitations of it. Metaphor is a major break, the fantastical world is also the real world. All the characters are on the same page. While there is magic and elves and dungeons, the plot revolves around the first ever election for king. Vote counting might be magically powered, but most of the candidates are metaphors for actual political ideologies. So despite the fantastic, it still retains that sense of reality- and frankly it's a perfect choice because this is subject matter that's near impossible to cover without it.

 What steals the show as a result of this shift is actually just the primary antagonist. He doesn't just show up at the end, he's there from nearly the beginning of the game. You don't just come across him once in awhile either, he is a frequent presence and your understanding of him develops with each encounter. I was nervous the entire time they'd oversimplify him or have something upstage him and my fears ended up being mostly misplaced.

Of course, the reality is that this game is still clearly written for teenagers (or by people who have written too many games for them?). It touches on politics, but it tends to avoid more than light criticism of most ideologies. Some of the writing comes off pretty clunky when a character has to remind you about their dead kid every time they appear during a particular chapter. And at the end of the day, the power of friendship still wins the day (though perhaps given the subject matter maybe it's the one time the power of friendship, of collective action, actually makes sense). It makes for a slightly strange mix in between all the off-screen hangings, slavery, and racism in the background of the world. But there are interesting things in there. While it's about an election, it's actually deeply skeptical about democracy. The main characters never really treat winning the election as a serious solution to their problems so much as a secondary concern. The election isn't even won by popularity in the end. It makes sense in the context of a world that has never known it and the game is actually hopeful about it, but it is a stark contrast to the American way of thinking of it as the apex of governing. 

 There's a lot more I could talk about, like how each chapter of the game seems to be a tribute to common fantasy tropes and other Atlus games, or it basically being impossible to mess up the time management now that you can't make wrong choices in social events, or the endgame super bosses kind of bringing the battle system together. But lets cut to the chase: should you play Metaphor: ReFantazio? Yeah probably, if you're in the habit of playing long turn based RPGs. It evolves the formula, avoids the pacing pitfalls of Persona 5, has one of the greatest RPG villains of all time on top of a generally good story that doesn't get stuck in any ruts. The party and social characters aren't as good as other Personas and the battles are more of a sidegrade, but these are pretty minor things.

I'm not much of a quote guy, but this game actually had one that I really liked. It's during the RPG party critiques the final boss trope, and basically summarizes the theme of the game, so I guess stop reading if you don't want spoilers: 

"You refuse to believe in dreams. That's why you can't believe in anything that's gradual, complicated, and slow to change."