Metaphor: ReFantazio is a 2024 fantasy JRPG and the debut title from Studio Zero, a development team made up of former Persona team members including director Katsura Hashino. The game will be published by Atlus for PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4 on October 11th, 2024.
Originally revealed as "Project Re Fantasy", Metaphor: ReFantazio is Atlus' first foray into a true High Fantasy setting in an original, constructed world, diverting from the Urban Fantasy of Shin Megami Tensei and Persona while retaining gameplay and stylistic elements from both.
Royal Magic that ignites a tournament for the throne… More than ten years have passed since the assassination of the prince, heir to the throne of the United Kingdom of Euchronia. And now with the king having succumbed to a fatal attack, the kingdom is in turmoil with no heir to set its course. Who will be the next king? Will it be the head of the state religion, the Sanctist Church? A lord of a neighboring principality, or perhaps the leader of the military? As expectations rise among influential figures with their eyes on the throne, a “spell” is cast during the king’s funeral that no one could have predicted.
Time is finite before my soul departs this benighted world… There shall come a reckoning—a Day of the Hero. Upon that October day, whosoever hath truly earned the greatest faith of the citizenry… shall ascend to throne and crown by right of kings.
The voice of the king, who all know to be dead, suddenly echoes in the sky. Upon the event of his death, he had arranged for a grand magic to allow all citizens to compete for the throne through his final, royal tournament. The people are cast into turmoil over this unprecedented event, unable to fathom a world where the people decide the next king. Amidst this chaos, the protagonist decides that in order to fulfill his mission, he must participate in the race.
Thus begins the grand tournament for the throne that takes the entire kingdom by storm. Along his journey, the protagonist will find himself surrounded by a diverse group of allies, and a grand adventure that will shape the future of the kingdom begins.
The game's gameplay is a culmination of Katsura Hashino's previous works and takes elements from all of them, featuring a mixture of social simulation and time management gameplay as well as dungeon exploration and party customization. The combat system is a mix of Action RPG and Turn-Based Combat: weaker enemies can be killed outright with real-time action combat, while stronger enemies will go into a staggered state that allows the player to take the advantage when switching into more tactical, turn-based combat at the press of a button.
Previews: PROJECT ReFANTASY Trailer #1
, PROJECT ReFANTASY Trailer #2, Announcement Teaser, The Royal Tournament, Creator's Voice, The King’s Trial.
Metaphor: ReFantazio includes examples of the following:
- Advertising by Association: The trailer states that the game is from the creators of Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5.
- Breaking Old Trends:
- A meta variant. Prior titles of Atlus were either set in a post-apocalyptic setting of some kind or dealing with the immediate aftermath of one, or in the case of the Persona series, a group of high school students combatting supernatural forces. As the trailer shows, Metaphor: ReFantazio is a rare game by Atlus to be set in a High Fantasy settingnote .
- Combination Attack: The announcement trailer shows a new battle mechanic called 'Synthesis', combination skills that use multiple turns (indicated by the star-shaped icons next to the attack) and are cast by multiple party members at once (indicated by their icons lighting up while selecting the skill).
- Creator Thumbprint: As the trailer shows, the game features many Atlus gameplay tropes and quirks, such as the day cycle and social elements from Persona, and the Press Turn battle system from the core Shin Megami Tensei games. Visually, it has anime cutscenes, portrait illustrations for conversations and a stylish, maximalist UI.
- Horned Humanoid: The Clemar Tribe are regular-looking people with ivory horns that point curve forward. One of the party members shown in the trailers, Strohl, is part of this tribe.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes:
- A core concept present throughout all of the trailers and promotional material of the game is that to the non-human inhabitants of the medieval fantasy world consider our world, with its technology and equality between people, as an utopistic fantasy only seen in story books.
- In-Universe Game Clock: Similar to Persona, the announcement teaser shows off a UI with a calendar to indicate the date and the time of day in-game.
- Irony: According to promotional materials in the December 2023 Famitsu magazine, our world is described as a "utopia" where there is only a single tribe living in an otherwise peaceful world. This could not be further from the truth about modern Earth between ongoing political crises, commercial failures, racism, and foreign disputes over things like religion and territory.
- Kingmaker Scenario: According to previews, the crown prince was cursed and presumed dead by the populace, with the king killed in his sleep ten years afterward. To prevent a succession crisis, the "royal magic" activates and declares that whoever earns the faith of the populace will become the new king of the United Kingdom of Euchronia. This causes all tribes in the world to enter the Royal Tournament in the hopes of claiming the crown. The protagonist also competes in the tournament, though his primary objective is to find a way to cure the prince of his curse.
- Knight in Shining Armor: One of the party members shown in the trailer, Hulkenberg, is an elvish lady knight who is seen wielding Archetypes like Knight, Magic Knight and Paladin.
- Magitek: According to "Creator's Voice", magic requires specialized equipment to use properly.
- No Name Given: The protagonist is referred to as Travelling Boy in the first trailer and screenshots.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: A good chunk of monsters shown in the announcement trailer look like surreal nightmares straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, like walking teeth with holes that form faces, but the grand prize goes to a monster shown in both the trailer and screenshots on the official website: Greatworm Homo Butera, which looks like a giant, Flower Mouth worm with human teeth, with a grotesque, gigantic, four-eyed human face with an extremely long tongue that ends in a flower...with an eye in the middle of the flower for good measure. The oddest part? Said creatures are called humans by the inhabitants of this world.
- Recurring Element: The announcement teaser alone shows several elements that it shares in common with previous Atlus games:
- The style of the menus is very reminiscent of Persona 5, right down to the combat UI featuring a similar menu for choosing actions.
- The calendar system from Persona makes a return, with specific (fantasy-themed instead of real) days of the week.
- Non-combat social attributes from the Persona games also make an appearance, in the form of Courage, Wisdom, Tolerance, Eloquence, and Imagination.
- Once again characters seem to summon (or become) humanoid beings to fight and use spells—this time in the form of 'Archetypes' that represent various fantasy classes.
- Battles and victory screens again have a character narrating the goings on in the fight.
- A secondary currency can be seen in the menus called 'MAG', a reference to the MAG currency in older Shin Megami Tensei games.
- The Press Turn system from mainline Shin Megami Tensei also seems to make a return, with the trailer showing four icons on top of the UI representing turns—a dragon boss can also be seen in the trailer obtaining a typical 'half-turn' upon critically hitting a player character, a recurring feature in the Press Turn System.
- Some of the magic seen in Shin Megami Tensei and Persona is reused here, such as the Seeker Archetype being able to learn Matarukaja and Tetrabreak.
- Sinister Silhouettes: At one point in the announcement trailer, there is a backlit shot of five regal-looking figures.
- "Wanted!" Poster: The "King's Trial" trailer shows that player can take on quests to hunt down monsters or criminals by looking through posters at a bulletin board.
