Metaphor ReFantazio: Narrative Game Design Analysis & Review
Take a deep dive into Metaphor's narrative and gameplay systems, and see whether this game's themes and design philosophy intrigue you.
“...if fantasy is born from hope… a desire to make the world better than it is… Then that hope can be made manifest. Thus does change come, and thus is fantasy forged into a new reality.” — Narrator
A metaphor refers to something regarded as representative or suggestive of something else. We use metaphors as hyperbole to explain an event or an action unexplainable in fantasy. What about a utopia? Is the idea of a perfect world impossible to achieve that it can only live within the confines of imagination? Does fantasy only live in fiction or can it be reality? These questions inspired ATLUS’s latest video game release, Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Metaphor: ReFantazio is a narrative-driven Japanese Role-Playing Game released for Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 4 and 5, and PC. It is developed by Studio Zero, the third development division within ATLUS, led by Katsura Hashino. Metaphor is their second project as a division, while Catherine: Full Body was their first, officially introducing their newest IP and moving away from the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei franchises.
Metaphor: ReFantazio’s story follows a young boy and his fairy companion Gallica. They travel across vast lands toward the Royal Capital of Euchronia, Grand Trad, to break the curse placed on the prince that the kingdom believes to be dead.
Arriving on the outskirts of the Royal Capital Grand Trad, our protagonist, and Gallica discover the assassination of the King of the United Kingdom of Euchronia, leading the land into chaos and unrest. The throne sits empty, with no ‘heirs’, except for the will of the late king: the next monarch will be elected by the people.
Welcome to this extensive review and narrative game design analysis of Metaphor: ReFantazio. If you want to learn more about the game and are unsure if you want to play it, read the following section (Quick Review).
The goal is to show you how to perceive certain systems through the lens of narrative game design and philosophy. If you’re interested in playing Metaphor, I hope this article helps you look at game systems from a different angle and understand certain design decisions from a developer’s point of view.
After the following section, there will be story spoilers. You’ll see sections tagged with SPOILERS, so you’ll know what to expect when reading it. Don’t expect major spoilers since this article is for gamers interested in playing. Without further ado, let’s start with a quick review of Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Quick Review
Metaphor: ReFantazio celebrates ATLUS’s successes in its thirty-five-year history. It combines elements of realism, fantasy, previous titles, and a well-polished experience that extends to all facets of the game. It uses its development team’s strengths in UI/UX, music, writing, and art while exposing its weaknesses, which can be apparent later in the game.
Metaphor is a breath of fresh air with a breeze of familiarity: the turn-based combat almost identical to Persona 5, the character class progression, and the infamous dialogue options. Yet, something about the level of polish and attention to detail keeps you coming back to Euchronia. The iconic and flashy UI/UX style of ATLUS, the intricate battle system with hundreds of builds and combinations, and the similitude of today’s struggles reflected upon characters that care for a world without prejudice, come together in a singular theme and it’s presented in almost every gameplay system, ‘Anxiety’.
The game’s flaws are not explicit, but subjective to the player. Though, with JRPGs, certain game design choices have become common in the genre in the past decade, which are also found in Metaphor. For example, fetch quests, quests unrelated to the main plot, repetitive side content, little player agency through dialogue choices, and a long stretched act four to five. These are not necessarily ‘weaknesses’, but a caveat for players expecting a unique experience. For Metaphor: ReFantazio, expect some of its side content to be straightforward with little substance.
Acts one through three are the strongest and most engaging, leaving players wanting more each time a major plot point concludes. Once act four begins, the pacing and storytelling decisions become questionable. The repetitive encounters, dungeons, and monster types do not outshine the satisfying gameplay loop that ATLUS has masterfully executed. If you are at this point in the game, you might not want to let go for several reasons. Mine was one: the characters who I considered family at this point.
Another reason could be its story and thematic intrigue in socio-politics and meta-narrative sprinkled throughout the game. Metaphor ensures that the focus is on less than a handful of narrative strings to highlight the multilayered character relationships and backstories, a staple in previous ATLUS titles, supported by fantastic writing. While I value complexity in stories, Metaphor often revisits the same themes, which may feel repetitive unless one engages fully with the narrative and gameplay.
What about gameplay? What’s so special about it? It’s not so much about its systems, but the accessibility, theory-crafting, and level of polish. No longer do you need to replay a quest to beat that hard boss or do you lose experience points from max-leveled characters. It’s the little things that make the experience a lot more enjoyable, focusing more on the challenge and story.
The difficulty will depend on your character’s builds and strategy. Some builds are powerful but costly, while others are simple but hard to master. Metaphor’s quest and encounter design helps ease the burden of analysis paralysis, introducing new Archetypes (classes) and providing players an arsenal towards the end-game.
Metaphor: ReFantazio deserves to be one of ATLUS’s top games, alongside Persona 5 and Shin Megami Tensei V. It sets a new standard of polished game experiences that considers every single second as a vital moment for players, from music, loading screens, combat, to exploration.
Metaphor is a large playing field with opportunities to explore, experiment, and enjoy different tents of activities, but only with the mindset that there’s only an exit to leave or enter each tent. Most tents are unique and engaging, while some attempt to recapture the same essence from previous ones, bogged by repetitive boss encounters and long sessions.
If this quick review didn’t convince you, try the demo! It’s completely free, and the progress carries over if you decide to buy it later. The demo is over ten hours long, or twenty if you decide to check every single dialogue and physical corner.
Narrative Design Overview
Narrative design is when gameplay and story work harmoniously or dissonantly, creating a ludo narrative experience that clicks for players. In Metaphor, we can say that most systems have some relevance to the story or worldbuilding, which we’ll cover below.
Metaphor: ReFantazio teeters on the balance of anxiety, prejudice, and empathy, using these themes as pillars to evoke certain emotions during gameplay. Once entering the city, you immediately hear, and read, nearby conversations of distress, bias, and shame, plastered onto your screen as “chat bubbles”. It is one example of evoking emotion and conveying worldbuilding through narrative design.
Before we reverse-engineer systems and designs, let’s understand the story, characters, and setting, and see how they fit with the current game mechanics and themes.
Characters
Protagonist — a good friend of the prince of the United Kingdom of Euchronia, both under the minority tribe of Elda. The protagonist and his trusted fairy companion, Gallica, embark on a journey to lift the deadly curse placed on the prince. As players navigate the protagonist’s travels, they come to understand the separation between tribes, the clear-coated distrust among them, and the tribulations of being an Eldan.
Gallica — a traveling companion, and guide, of the protagonist. As a fairy, they’re incapable of battling others. However, her knowledge of magic and ability to sense magla is superior to most tribes, including the protagonist. Her loyalty to the prince, and the protagonist, quickly cements an unbroken bond that grows into honesty and empathy.
Strohl — a young Clemar noble, who enlists as a recruit in the State Army. Because of his past, he has developed a strong sense of justice, but with a terrible and complicated consequence. Strohl and the protagonist meet as recruits and soon realize both have a common goal.
Hulkenberg — a Roussainte knight and a former member of the royal family’s Kingsguard. She quickly excelled in her weaponry skills and valor, which placed her as a personal guard of the prince. However, after the attack, and curse on the prince, she feels responsible for the ‘loss’ of the royal family.
Heismay — a former knight of the Shadowguard and the Eugief tribe. His whereabouts are unknown, but it is no surprise thanks to his Eugief traits of acute perception and light-footedness, avoiding discrimination, and his past, through shadow and dust.
Louis Guiabern — a Clemar prodigy in magic and warfare, Louis excelled as a master tactician, becoming a potential candidate for king. He is the lead antagonist, which players learn through the story prologue of his assassination of King Hythlodaeus V. His intentions are clear: to become king without remorse.
Humans — a faction of monsters that only know destruction and chaos. They convey hideous forms that take inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch’s painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights. These are the common enemy bosses that players will encounter in dungeons and major plot points.
We can delve more into the rest of the cast, but for this article, let’s continue with the setting and how these characters maneuver a deluge of challenges and uncertainty.
Setting
Metaphor: ReFantazio features five major cities in the United Kingdom of Euchronia, where Grand Trad sits as its Royal Capital, and the center stage for the monotheistic extremist religion, Sanctism, with its council, the Crown Theocracy. Sanctism plays a large role in the game’s narrative, specifically, the disparity between tribes and heretical artifacts. Soon after Sanctism took hold of the country as the state religion, igniters replaced common weapons and day-to-day artifacts, avoiding the use of ancient ‘relics’ that are forbidden by the Crown Theocracy. Now, magical tools like the igniters require magla, which quickly becomes a commodity.
Magla are a magical resource found airborne as tiny floating particles and in certain regions as crystals. Mining operations have overtaken small towns, and magla accumulators dot major cities to exploit this freely available resource coveted by many tribes. Some tribes, however, don’t find the need, or the means, to use igniters, like the Mustari.
There are nine total tribes, or races, in the United Kingdom of Euchronia, each with different physical traits, abilities, views, religion, and culture. The Mustari wear masks to conceal their unique physical trait, which is their third eye, able to detect magla concentration. The Eugief are bat-like creatures with large ears and small wings. Each tribe has different views on political and cultural beliefs. Biases and prejudice quickly emerged, becoming the essence that destroyed the idea of a utopia and turning it into ‘fantasy’, as mentioned by Louis.
Now, we delve into our second thematic pillar of Metaphor: ReFantazio, ‘Fantasy’. Let’s segue into the hook, premise, and story of Metaphor, and discuss briefly how the setting and characters correlate and bring life to the game’s thematic pillars.
Story (Minor SPOILERS)
We’ll be discussing SPOILERS of Metaphor’s demo, roughly 10 to 15 hours of gameplay.
What is the hook? What draws players to keep playing hour after hour? There are several. The prodigal master magician and tactician Louis Guiabern assassinates the King of Euchronia in his bedchamber and implicitly opens an invitation to the throne for himself. One word deserves an insignia to Louis’s repertoire: audacious, which is not a trait uncommon to villainy in this medium. What about the protagonist? How does he coincide with the villain?
The protagonist and his traveling companion, Gallica, wander the busy streets of Grand Trad, searching for the recruitment center to deliver a message to a secret agent within the state army. While in Grand Trad, the player can listen to nearby conversations and talk to a variety of people regarding the current situation. The protagonist is immediately labeled as ‘Elda’ because of his physical attributes and recent ‘history’, which draws prejudiced remarks and pushback.
The protagonist and his new acquaintance, Strohl, successfully pass their screening to the state army, becoming recruits and soldiers for their first mission outside of Grand Trad. Gallica grows curious about the protagonist’s well-kept book, a fantasy novel about a utopia, which is a narrative detail that we learn more about throughout the game. For now, the protagonist and Gallica are eager to find their secret agent in this impromptu mission and deliver the message to save the kingdom.
During the mission, the protagonist and Strohl encounter a human, a horrific monster that ravages the entirety of a platoon, leaving the two the only survivors. In a moment of desperation, the protagonist unleashes a hidden power. With fierce resolve, he plunges his fist into his chest, tearing out a mechanical heart that ignites his transformation into an Archetype—a manifestation of royal magic that resonates with the strength of kings.
Soon after the protagonist's hard-won victory, secret agent Grius appears, offering his expertise to assist with Strohl's injuries. The protagonist learns about Gallica’s message and the truth of the prince’s curse. It becomes evident that Louis orchestrated a sinister plot behind the prince's downfall, executing a masterful plan to seize the throne. Fortunately, the late king foresaw the kingdom’s future and conjured a powerful spell that would put Louis’s plan to a halt: the royal magic.
The monarch is now in the hands of the people, not in the Crown Theocracy or Louis.
Narrative Design Techniques
As an artist, let’s say a painter, you have tools for backgrounds, details, clothing, faces, animals, etc. Each tool provides the artist with a set of advantages and disadvantages. Let’s use a palette knife as an example. The palette knife collects, applies, and mixes paint onto your palette or painting, which is its intent. However, it’s also used as a painting technique to create a spread effect like a smear or a blotch.
Going back to game development, narrative design systems are the tools used to create a unique painting that can evoke a certain emotion in players with interactivity. The setting and characters are our canvas, while the story and gameplay are our strokes, marks, and smears. Choosing or making the canvas, the easel, and everything in between is also part of development, establishing our scope, themes, and pillars.
The cinematic animated scenes of Metaphor: ReFantazio convey information and emotion without interactivity. This slightly contradicts our previous definition, but cinematics are also a tool used in our game and narrative design arsenal to present certain information. Sometimes, and under the correct conditions, cinematics are the best tool to tell a part of the story.
Let’s examine Metaphor’s anime cinematics, in-engine sequences, and narrator sequences and learn how these techniques fit into its thematic and emotional pillars: anxiety, fantasy, unification, and empathy.
Non-Interactive & In-Engine Sequences
The narrator sequences appear at the beginning of the game and throughout other moments like traveling to nearby cities and waking up for a new day. These are audio-focused sequences with minimal 2D animations, where a narrator describes an event during moments of idle or great importance in the story.
When starting a new game, the narrator talks to us, the players, intrigued by our curiosity about entering this fantasy world. The narrator poses questions similar to the ones at the start of this article, what is fantasy, and what is our take on it? This interaction establishes that we, the players, are part of this fantasy story, guiding our protagonist like a puppet on strings. Or are we destined for a path that only the narrator dictates?
The narrator sequences are a tool to emphasize that we’re still in a fantasy and that the real world is somewhere beyond this fiction conjured by the writer, who we presume is the narrator. We soon learn that the author, and narrator, More, is a non-player character that players can interact with inside the Akademia.
We have introduced a narrative tool that connects characters and locations to players, having a tangible sense of how and why.
What about the cinematic and in-engine sequences? These are two faces of the same coin, mediums used to convey information and story while tempering the complexities of development. While the anime-style cinematic sequences are a staple of ATLUS’s games, it’s also a way to introduce major new locations, characters, and plot points otherwise irrelevant to the main story, a common guideline for large production games. They focus on scenes with beautiful set pieces and emotional scenes that introduce either music or changes to the world or characters.
In-engine sequences are simpler and dialogue-focused, introducing some animation work within the development engine. This is the bulk of Metaphor’s storytelling, a layered system where dialogue feeds words, expressions, barks, and gestures from the character’s 3D model or 2D drawings. It seamlessly introduces other mechanics like decision-making, rewards, and transitions, keeping players engaged. It may feel like a visual novel, but the details that bring characters to life, expressions, movements, one-liners, and environments elevate the written words. Although it lacks voice-over for most sequences, ATLUS keeps their voices present in your head with short one-liners relevant to the text.
Without the quality of the writing, these systems might show cracks, lessening the experience of interacting with a believable, renaissance world. Metaphor: ReFantazio extraordinarily gives life to the characters with their nuances, beliefs, speech patterns, and expressions. Let’s explore the dialogue system and the writing that supports it.
Character Dialogue & Player Agency (Minor SPOILERS)
What defines a character in Metaphor? Let’s categorize the different character types and analyze their attributes. We’ll be discussing SPOILERS of Metaphor’s story after the demo, which is roughly 15 to 25 hours of gameplay.
Let’s focus on the protagonist first and follow up with the main characters. The protagonist is how we portray ourselves in the game. We’re able to decide what to say and what to do. However, we don’t get to say much. ATLUS uses other characters, like Gallica, to express our intentions and emotions. We choose a dialogue option that prompts a sentence or two, and then Gallica follows up with a more in-depth explanation of what we said and why. The protagonist was designed to be simplistic and neutral, catering to both male and female audiences.
There are dialogue decisions where characters immediately reject the player’s agency. For example, after the opening ceremony of the candidate tournament, we set our gauntlet runner to Martira. On our way there, we find two candidates, Gideaux and Glodell, fighting head-to-head. Gallica strongly suggests we should intervene and help Glodell to be in the good graces of Louis. Then, a dialogue option appears: help Glodell or see how it plays out. If we choose to see how it plays out, Strohl immediately rejects the protagonist’s idea and moves forward to help Glodell. It’s these moments that contradict the system itself, creating dissonance.
There’s a somewhat linear path that the game, or perhaps the narrator, wants us to follow to save the kingdom. The dialogue decisions are portrayed as character development for our protagonist, showcasing our beliefs and motives and seeing how they progress through time.
Let’s move to the main characters, focusing on Gallica and Hulkenberg. Gallica is a fairy with a mature, level-headed, sometimes energetic personality. She’s the voice of reason, but not unbearable when we’re listening to a family member. She’s a friend, and her writing does a fantastic job of making the protagonist, and the player, feel heard and supported. Her speech pattern changes depending on the situation, but her intentions are moral. During combat, she’s direct, scared, supportive, and brave. When a character is unconscious, she stammers, shouting with anxiety. When a character deals with critical damage, she shouts “Great job! Keep it up!”
Hulkenberg is a former royal knight, lost in her melancholy of injustice. She prides herself on her tactical skills and unwavering loyalty, which was set back by the events that transpired on the prince. The protagonist helps her realize she has a second chance, another opportunity to prove herself capable as if the protagonist himself is a mirror of the prince. She has eloquence in her speech, showcasing her authoritative attitude and royal education, using contractions like ‘twas and ‘tis. Her most enjoyable hobby is exploring rare and exotic foods, which become a running gag for the rest of the cast, making fun of her unusual and questionable tastes.
During combat, Hulkenberg’s gameplay mechanics are reflections of her personality and beliefs. For example, when the protagonist is targeted by an attack, she shields him from damage. Her Archetype design is also an embodiment of knighthood, wielding a spear and a large shield, atop a royal mount.
Each character showcases a unique personality related to their past and uses their goals to show change and development. Conflict brings the characters together, harmoniously dancing and bickering about what they agree or disagree with, and what they should and shouldn’t do; showcasing empathy and unification. What about anxiety? Where does this fit in? Let’s look at quests, their structure, and how some encounters use anxiety as a mechanic.
Quest Design & Encounters
Quests are not just markers on a map, quests give meaning, emotional drive, and a sense of accomplishment or failure. It is a sinusoidal pattern of emotions that progresses with narrative and gameplay. How well does this translate to Metaphor, and what is ATLUS’s philosophy? Let’s identify the stages of Metaphor’s quests and see what mechanics or systems they used to tie in their pillars.
The main story quests use all the game’s core systems, including cinematics and in-engine sequences. How are they structured? Starting a main story quest begins from the entrance or exit of a major city, revealing a major plot point, or concluding an investigation, that leads to the next plot point. This is conveyed with either cinematics or character conversations, using in-engine sequences. Major deadlines are always part of the conversation, which ATLUS added elegantly with narrative design, prompted onto your screen and quest log.
There’s a commonality between all main story quests: dungeons. Each ‘dungeon’ from each city provides a unique experience, taking advantage of Metaphor’s core game loop to the fullest. Limited to only combat, stealth, exploration, and interaction, ATLUS mixed and matched mechanics to keep players engaged while introducing narrative progression, and controlling scope and quality during development.
Quests are a loop of contextualization, overcoming, and progression, ending with questions and intrigue in pursuing the next quest. Though, at what point do our thematic pillars appear? How do encounters project Metaphor’s emotion and narrative themes?
Before combat, players must carefully choose their battles. Monster placement in the level design, along specific paths and levels, creates disparity, tension, and anticipation. Besides monsters, melancholia crystals amplify these emotional swings, where waves of monsters attack the player. Not only does the moment causes anxiety and stress, but the design of the monsters and encounters are reflections of the theme; melancholia is a synonym for melancholy, deep sadness; humans are forms from Hieronymous Bosch’s painting, depicting pain and suffering.
Moments of respite appear after each battle and encounter when characters from your party echo similar emotional sentiments or provide words of encouragement, motivating the player to keep moving forward in moments of difficulty and horror. Players will also hear narrative tidbits about what they’re about to encounter, the location, or the development of a new character in your party or an enemy they’re chasing.
The narrative progression is not as aggressive during this stage of quests, but as players move toward the end, more worldbuilding and lore information are presented to them through NPCs, interactable items, and environmental storytelling.
During combat, we understand our characters and enemies even further. For instance, we hear Gallica’s support on the sidelines, shouting like a football coach, or each character’s barks when choosing an Archetype ability or landing a critical hit. The timing, flow, and execution of these moments stack onto each other and create an emergent narrative that only the player can tell. Some enemies might have dialogue before or during combat, shouting their purpose, intentions, or weaknesses, giving players a moment of empathy or indifference.
In addition, combat presents a status ailment called ‘Anxiety’, which is triggered when a critical hit or ambush damages players. This adds another tangible layer players can see and feel, creating opportunities for self-overcoming, mechanically and philosophically.
Conclusion
How does Metaphor: ReFantazio compare to other narrative-driven games and their systems? If you’re a seasoned gamer and dabbled in a few RPGs in your lifetime, the gameplay and systems in Metaphor are nothing to brag about. However, what makes Metaphor special is its sub-systems, attention to detail in narrative game design, and a philosophical thought scratcher of a story with relatable themes.
Metaphor: ReFantazio takes new heights with its polished approach to narrative design, from the Royal Virtues, rewarding conversations (mechanically and narratively), to the satisfying combat loop with tidbits of character development, and the eclectic UI design of ‘chat bubbles’. Every system comes together in a tight knot of cohesion and consistency, giving them meaning and definitions in Euchronia, rather than in the meta world of game design. Magla is a resource used in combat and character progression, yet it’s an essential lore bit in Metaphor’s story. Fast travel or teleportation magic and music is an in-lore term found in the memorandum with definitions and mechanical uses. The list goes on.
Thomas More’s books of Utopia are fictional political philosophy interpretations and criticisms of 16th-century Catholicism and monarchs in England. It directly references Metaphor’s world and story, bringing to life the struggles and evil of a society that is now part of history, continuing the thematic pillars of anxiety, empathy, and unification. The philosophical questions of morality and leadership within a world divided are the true antagonists.
How do you save a country without racial distrust and shared religions and faith?
Even with Metaphor’s bumpy act four to five and late development struggles, its narrative game design and characters shine through with elegance and simplicity, keeping you close until you’re satisfied. It is a celebration of not only ATLUS’s tenure but also gamers and fans. This is their gift of passion and their answer to commitment and uniqueness, which is also an emotional and nostalgic pillar in Metaphor.