Metaphor: ReFantazio review

My inner child is playing again

June 29, 2025

Categorization: Fantasy

Where played: PS5

Nonspoiler mid-play review.

Not to sound dramatic, but... Metaphor: ReFantazio (not the best name in the world, but hey whatever) has restored my faith in my ability to enjoy video games.

See, I have been in somewhat of a rut the past couple of years. The last games I remember enjoying wholeheartedly (meaning no notes) were Baldur’s Gate 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which I am pretty sure I played back in 2023 (I’m not great at reckoning the passage of time, as a large part of my psyche is actively dedicated to fighting it). After these games I played Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which were… halfway decent (see my reviews here and here)… but in which I failed to fully immerse. And after these I played Dragon Age: Veilguard, which I can politely say I enjoyed very much for the most part (my polite review is here).

But this ISN’T what RPGs are supposed to do, goddamnit. Great RPGs are not meant to be politely enjoyed. Bejeweled is meant to be politely enjoyed, and indeed, I enjoyed it for a scary number of hours.

I want the RPG I am playing to boil my blood. I want to not stop thinking about it until I can get back in the hot seat. I want to go to sleep obsessing over how I am going to beat the next boss and wake up bright and early ready to explore with my controller in one hand and my Starbucks Christmas mug filled with caffeinated fuel in another. I want a game to suck me into its world and squeeze the reality out of my pores. Why else do we play this genre, for Chrissake???

As Final Fantasy and Dragon Age are both franchises I have loved since I was a child, I really thought that my failure to enjoy these games deep in the marrow of my bones was full-on my fault. I mean, I did play their predecessors, which I adored, decades ago, and so I thought, sadly, that I was simply getting too old. That, finally, the real me had smothered my inner child enough so that it would not be able to come out again and play. Wendy had left Neverland.

I can’t describe the sadness I felt at the thought that I might have lost the ability to, in the realest sense of the word, play. To love a game wholeheartedly and to lose myself in it. Because this is like saying that your imagination has given up, right? Your life, the one where you get up and go to work and get stuck in traffic in, is now the only one you have. And don’t get me wrong, I have a pretty nice life. But I also have a wonderful fantasy life, filled with the books and games and stories and characters that I have had adventures with since I was a child. I hardly ever talk to anyone about these things (hence this lonely elder goblin blog), but they are an indelible part of me. They are part of what makes me me, as a friend, mother, slightly off-kilter acquaintance, and even as a professional. The thought of losing the ability to immerse in fantasy in this way was like losing a part of myself. Wendy might have to live in London, but she wants to know that the way back to Neverland is always open to her.

And so, with no expectations for Metaphor: ReFantazio to succeed where the recent Final Fantasy and Dragon Age games have failed, I started playing this GOTY winner, for the sole reason that it was a GOTY winner.

And when I initially booted it up, the hardcore 2D anime manga graphics style took some getting used to – I haven’t watched anime in almost two decades. I started the first few hours grumbling to myself that how come no one made start-of-journey adventures anymore. I wasn't super keen on being thrown into the middle of an assassination, political struggle, tensions are high situation. I wanted my guy to start in a quaint little hometown and pack his starter sword and some medicinal bread he found in a random barrel in a corner street and go off into the wide open world. Like Skyrim, or Nino Kuni, I suppose, which had that sort of feeling. Metaphor: ReFantazio's starting plunge into an unstable world seemed too stressful and smelled too much like Final Fantasy XVI and VII Rebirth.

But I stuck with it. And when I finally left the training area (which is the first city, basically), and hopped onto my ship ready to explore the rest of the world with my party, it suddenly hit me out of absolutely nowhere. The FUN. That indescribable point in a game where you become fully invested. It came! The Fun came for me! It smacked me right in the inner child and said hey – get on this Cid-type ship and come exploring. There are things to see! Quests to do! Hordes to defeat!

Metaphor: ReFantazio, I soon realized, was what I wanted Persona 5 (same creators, I believe) to be and never developed into, at least for me. I found Persona 5’s school and school-adjacent settings and story kind of boring - I mean, if the whole thing hadn't been set in Tokyo it would have been unbearably dull don't you think? BUT... some genius thought to transport Persona 5's fun mechanics and battle style to the Metaphor: ReFantazio fantasy world and finally made something that I can fully immerse in. The protagonist is basically from an ostracized tribe in this fairy land of different non-human creatures, and must pursue the crown to succeed the assassinated king in order to restore orderly and fair rule throughout the realm. I love me a good high stakes story!!! The story is unpredictable and funny and wildly engaging, as you are rewarded for pursuing the stories of the cast you meet in the course of playing the adventure.

And can I just say that this game is HARD. And I love it for that. You really gotta comb through the battle mechanics to progress, which forces you to learn its complexities. Which in turn, makes you enjoy the game all the more.

Oh, another thing I was afraid of from the last couple of years of playing – I was afraid that The Legend of Zelda and Baldur’s Gate 3 had ruined non-open world games for me forever. I thought that might be part of the reason why I didn’t enjoy the games I played after those so much. But true open world games are few and far in between! I am sunk if I have to wait for an open-world game release to get my kicks! This thought had put me in quite a deep gloom for nearly a year now (little did I know that Oblivion remake was coming out – what riches).

But anyway, where was I.

Metaphor: ReFantazio (thank you Japanese developers and Jesus) made me realize that a world does not need to be open world for me to enjoy it unreservedly. It just needs to have places worth exploring. It needs to tap into your sense of wonder. It needs to have moments like that moment in God of War when a hut stands up and you realize that it was actually a giant turtle. Brilliant, that.

As a mild spoiler I need to make to illustrate my point – when you first leave the training area in Metaphor: ReFantazio, you are treated to an entirely whimsical sightseeing view of a beautiful old tree. It’s just a tree. A magic tree. But what is it about magic trees that just get the blood of fantasy lovers racing?? I had the same deep-rooted psychological reaction to the giant (was it korok?) living tree in The Legend of Zelda (the inner child in me spun round and round and squealed yay a magical tree!) I don’t know. All I do know that this was around the same time the Fun began for me in Metaphor: ReFantazio, and that’s when I know that this game was made by fantasy lovers for fantasy lovers.

In any game, I realized, the stuff you find when you explore has to be worth the effort of finding it. Hell, I can’t even tell you what the magic formula is for that. All I can say is, I don’t think Final Fantasy XVI and VII Rebirth had it, not fully. Veilguard had it, but I don’t know, it felt repetitive after awhile? Something about the exploration in Metaphor: ReFantazio continues to be very fun – and I have a feeling that a large part of it is due to the game’s difficulty (I’m playing it in normal mode by the way, and that is already kicking my butt), that forces you to hunt and gather in order to find the resources to progress. Veilguard was too easy, in that sense. Hmm. I never before realized or reflected on how a game’s difficulty or battle mechanics contributes to the enjoyment of exploring the game’s world.

This game, for me, harks back to Kingdom Hearts or Dragon Quest X, which were not strictly open world games in the way that the modern ones from recent years are, but were such rich, immersive universes, that you wanted to wander through its towns and talk to all of its people and comb through every inch of it for quests and treasure and friends and stories. This is pretty much the highest compliment I can give an RPG.

And I’m a little more than halfway through it, I think, based on the increasing difficulty of the quests (I have just used up my last Balm of Life that restores my guys to full HP from KO and am probably screwed). I can’t wait to spend this evening getting my butt kicked again. 

Update: I have finished the game and have... reactions? Gripes? Applause? My mixed feelings need an entirely new post, which I will publish soon.