View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaF5z9J0YWQ
Eagerly awaited by fans of Atlus' celebrated RPGs, Metaphor ReFantazio is built on the Persona engine with Persona mechanics, with a fantasy edge. In this extensive review, Oliver Mackenzie focuses on the PS5 code (the only review code offered, alas) but brings in comparisons from the PC and Xbox Series demos where appropriate. As expected, the game is terrific, but there are a number of technical problems and performance issues that demand attention.
The next two issues though are perhaps the largest, and might end up defining the visuals for the worse. Metaphor has relatively poor image quality, with a lot of aliasing and shimmer at all times. Like Persona 5, there's no anti-aliasing whatsoever, but critically here the geometric density of the game has seen a big bump, providing more fodder for aliasing artifacts. Combine that with a high-contrast art style that uses outline shaders, and the game is just an aliasing mess. PS5 renders at circa-1656p, so resolution isn't really the issue I'd say. Image detail looks fine enough from a normal viewing distance, and the game seems reasonably sharp. It's just the presentation of aliasing that annoys, and that's something that only a temporal AA technique could really fix - though getting that working properly with the existing engine tech here would likely be a reach.
In contrast, the PC version of the game runs pretty well at native 4K at high refresh rates on my RTX 4090-based system, but it doesn't actually look much cleaner at all. It seems like the size of some of the outlines scales with rendering resolution on PC as well, which means that you do lose a bit of visual stylisation as you step up the res, and the finer lines tend to shimmer obviously. It takes a full 8K downsampled to 4K to approach decent image quality, and that drives performance often below 60fps even on a 4090. These brute force approaches just aren't going to work for console hardware, so it's a bit of a 'TAA or bust' situation for image quality in this title I think.
The nuclear option may just be to wait a month for PS5 Pro, where the 45 percent GPU bump would likely just about lock the game to 60fps. This assumes that the game has PS5 Pro support and that Atlus doesn't do something poorly considered, like forcing higher res rendering. If the Game Boost features deploys the full force of the Pro GPU to older software, that may be enough as well. Unfortunately, we weren't sampled Xbox code for this review, so I can't fully address performance and visuals on Xbox Series consoles. But we do have a lengthy playable demo that in my experience on PS5 corresponds closely with the full game, so I did take a quick look at that code.
On Series X, there is a very similar visual experience to PS5. Graphics settings appear identical, with the same 1656p resolution combined with similar shadows and imposters. Performance is, again, similar to PS5, with a variable frame-rate that dips into the 40s but can hit 60fps in lighter content. Series S, predictably, takes a resolution cut all the way down to 1080p. That also affects the UI, which goes from 4K on Series X and PS5 down to 1080p on the S. Other visual settings look similar, except that shadow draw occurs at a closer range on Microsoft's junior console. Performance is notably degraded compared to Series X and PS5, with frame-rates sometimes dipping into the 30s.
I am definitely eager to play more of this game though in my personal time in the future. I'm just not sure where to play it - if I should continue on PS5 or on the PS4 Pro code on PS5, wait for PS5 Pro, or restart it on PC or Xbox. It's very much contingent on how Atlus develops the game further through post-release patches, and especially dependent on how the game works on PS5 Pro. Metaphor has major performance compromises, and we really need to see those issues addressed. I'd like to see a quality 30fps mode, a 60fps mode that runs more consistently at the target performance level and low frame-rate compensation support for 120Hz output with VRR enabled on PS5 (the developer is halfway there - 120Hz is supported with an unlocked frame-rate)
Metaphor: ReFantazio - a sublime game let down by bizarre technical choices
Digital Foundry reviews Metaphor: ReFantazio - a truly superb RPG marred by older tech, odd technical choices and inconsistent performance.
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