Metaphor: ReFantazio Demo Now Available (Save Data transfers to release)

[Scoopy]

About 90 minutes in, beat the tutorial boss. Kind of a slow dialogue-heavy start. Felt like the intro could have been streamlined a bit. Too much lore dump right at the start.

Lots of aliasing with the graphics on Series S. The graphical style reminds me of Three Houses with a slightly messy and noisy pencil drawn look. The underlying art is good though.

Admittedly I do miss the modern setting of Persona and TMS. The world traversal also feels inferior to SMTV. I'm going to stick with it though and give it a chance.

 

[Bish_Bosch]

Fugly isn't the right word for it, at least not the one I'd use, but I know what you mean. Noisy?

Theres so much happening visually, all the time. Some of it looks punk rock, some like Hieronymus Bosch, some like an AI trained on Persona or SMT started to meltdown.

At times there appear to be textures on textures. Psychedelic baroque? But there's still clearly traditional JRPG underneath.

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Yeah it's reminding me a lot of Zardoz in terms of a weird and messy mix of swinging sixties aesthetics with more classical surrealism.

 

[Twelve Bits]

I tried the series X demo and the steam demo because of the complaints here just to see which version was performing better as the PC feedback made it look like a complete shit show. Not interested in playing right now so I just went to the city skipped all the cut scenes to gauge performance.

I found both to be fine. Yes the anti aliasing is terrible and the frame rate fluctuates in that first city area but it's fine IMO.

I'm on a 180hz 1440p display so I have dldsr enabled in the nvidia control panel and it cleans it up somewhat better than the series x with 4k enabled IMO. I can't unlock the framerate on series x as I have only got 2.0 hdmi on the display but there are some stutters on xbox when panning the camera at 60hz with vrr enabled. It's totally fine tho. Core affinity was fine on my PC as far as I could tell and the GPU was being utilized on my first boot up. 4070 super capped at 120 over 100 fps most of the time.

As for the visual design yeah I can see why people might hate it. I also get why some people would dislike the whole vibe of the game. Personally I'm all about it.

If you are worried about performance like I was and you're not a "this is unacceptable/unplayable" person, and you haven't tried the demo yet, relax IMO. It's not THAT bad. Goes without saying that if you're on the fence you should probably try the demo anyway regardless of the performance issues.

 

[GarudaSmiles]

Strohl is giving off more Ramza/Delita vibes and less "Here's your assigned bro best friend" Persona vibes. Which is a big step up as far as I'm concerned.

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Definitely a big step up.

 

[Ovaltine]

Half hour in and I am LOCKED TF IN.

Gripping story, rad world building, familiar yet expanded upon Persona DNA - and I haven't even gotten to combat yet LOL

This is sick

 

[werezompire]

I haven't gotten there yet - how's the job system work? Can you mix and match stuff like in FF/Bravely?

 

[GarudaSmiles]

I haven't gotten there yet - how's the job system work? Can you mix and match stuff like in FF/Bravely?

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Once you unlock a class anyone can use it, but they have to spend Mag points to unlock it first. You can have everyone be the same class. There's advanced versions of the classes that can be unlocked after leveling up the class to 20, and getting the corresponding social link to the required level.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Once you unlock a class anyone can use it, but they have to spend Mag points to unlock it first. You can have everyone be the same class. There's advanced versions of the classes that can be unlocked after leveling up the class to 20, and getting the corresponding social link to the required level.

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Does ranking a class up for one person rank it up for everybody or does each character need to independently level up each job themselves?

 

[Kuro]

I haven't gotten there yet - how's the job system work? Can you mix and match stuff like in FF/Bravely?

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Early on there's skill inheritance which is limited to 1 (for the intro at least) skill from any archetype.

 

[GarudaSmiles]

Does ranking a class up for one person rank it up for everybody or does each character need to independently level up each job themselves?

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Each character has to level classes individually.

 

[Android Sophia]

I haven't gotten there yet - how's the job system work? Can you mix and match stuff like in FF/Bravely?

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It's the Final Fantasy job system pretty much. Each Archetype has a rank (the game's version of Job Level) and the higher the rank, the more skills you can use. All Archetypes have a set skill list.

Once you unlock a skill on the Archetype by ranking it up, you can then spend Mag to inherit the skill when another Archetype is active. So at any given moment, a character has all of their Archetype's skills + a small (1 in the demo) amount of skills from any other Archetype of your choosing.

So if your character is the Knight Archetype, but you've leveled up the Mage Archetype to get both the fire and ice skill, then you can spend Mag to inherit those skills, and Knight can have either the fire skill or the ice skill in addition to it's standard skillset.

You only need to spend Mag once to make a learned skill inheritable too. After that, you can freely swap skills as long as you can go back to Akademia.

If you have the right combination of skills, then two party members can perform Synthesis Skills. These take up two turns in battle, but are more powerful skills than if you had just done a single skill. A lot of the more powerful SMT skills that you'd expect are now Synthesis Skills.

New Archetypes seem to be unlocked via the game's equivalent of social links and ranking Archetypes to the max of 20.

 

[Jroc]

So is this game secretly running on a PS3 emulator under the hood or what?

 

[Oliver James]

Can you go back to the dragon?

 

[Xenosaga]

regarding pacing..

Spoiler

I don't know if it's only me, but I felt the party members unlocking their power felt way too early abrupt that it felt awkward.
With Persona games they take long time to build it up so it felt natural and satisfying, but here it felt a bit too quick and made it feel weird to me. I guess it needed to be fast for the pacing reasons but yeah...
But characters themselves seem really nice.

 

[DarthKamen]

Can't play the demo, but so far how's the difficulty? I love Persona, but even on hard can find it a bit lacking there.

Never played SMT proper, but I hear it's a good deal harder...hoping this is closer to that.

 

[Elster]

Can't play the demo, but so far how's the difficulty? I love Persona, but even on hard can find it a bit lacking there.

Never played SMT proper, but I hear it's a good deal harder...hoping this is closer to that.

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It is a bit closer to SMT but more approachable imo lots of quality of life like being able to restart a fight from the first turn at any time and if you die it just resets you to like right before the thing that killed you. I played the entire thing on hard and felt appropriately challenged, didn't need to grind and things felt hard but rewarding.

 

[pants]

Hulkenberg is hot as fuck

 

[Lotus]

Hulkenberg is hot as fuck

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Definitely the coolest design I've seen all year

 

[DarthKamen]

It is a bit closer to SMT but more approachable imo lots of quality of life like being able to restart a fight from the first turn at any time and if you die it just resets you to like right before the thing that killed you. I played the entire thing on hard and felt appropriately challenged, didn't need to grind and things felt hard but rewarding.

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That's great to hear, thanks! Won't be able to play until release, but really want to make it a decent challenge.

 

[Enduin]

regarding pacing..

Spoiler

I don't know if it's only me, but I felt the party members unlocking their power felt way too early abrupt that it felt awkward.
With Persona games they take long time to build it up so it felt natural and satisfying, but here it felt a bit too quick and made it feel weird to me. I guess it needed to be fast for the pacing reasons but yeah...
But characters themselves seem really nice.

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I commented on this earlier but while it definitely did feel a bit rushed without very much build up I personally felt it was still better alternative than P5's pacing which was absolutely glacial in the beginning, and honestly the whole way through in a lot of ways. By the time MR's demo ends at ~4 hours or so you've experienced a ton of major combat, you have three fully awakened party members, have been introduced to pretty much all of the game's major mechanics and structure, and the game has more or less fully opened up to what it's going to play like for the rest of your time and fully setup the core plot. Compared to P5 where 4 hours in you are probably still about an hour away from Ann finally awakening her persona and still a good couple hours before the game really fully opens up and introduces all of its mechanics to you and even then it's still incredibly slow and slow drip feeding stuff up through the second dungeon's completion. Mementos doesn't unlock until like your 30th day in the game, a week after you finish Kamoshida's palace. Where as MR like 10 days in and you can start going on major side quests with their own dungeon outside of the city already.

For the most part the only thing that might have benefited from an extra 30 minutes or so of build up was that hour or so between the MC's awakening and Stohl's awakening. Like both of those just happened super fast and without much build up and they completely skip over 3 whole days for you traveling back to the capital which they maybe could have done a bit more with, but personally it felt like a decent trade off for how quickly it sets everything up so we can really jump into the meat of the game.

I'm personally really happy knowing come the 11th when I import my save I'm not going to have to deal with several more hours of what is mostly drawn out tutorial stuff before things open up but instead can really just sink my teeth into the game. With how long they claim the game to be there's plenty of time to build up the characters and add some depth to them after the fact.

 

[Lumination]

Have they mentioned anything about Regicide difficulty? Is it going to be the same everything just takes more damage so sometimes it ends up being easier? Weird that it's locked in the demo that's supposed to carry forward.

 

[vixolus]

The only weird plot thing that seemed skipped over and rushed was

Spoiler

louis obviously (?) killed the king at the beginning. Everyone is standing around and he's like mmm yes now we will need to decide a new heir *smirk*. But then later you hear Louis is in jail? Despite leaving no evidence? And he is using this as a means to whip up support to be elected (guard is in shambles, etc)?

When did he get jailed and why exactly besides the conspiracy?

 

[Xyer]

Really not a fan of the game world so far. I'm finding a lot of the exposition pretty overwhelming. Especially this early in the game.

 

[Anidem]

I liked the demo a lot (I think Im nearing the end) as others have said the pacing feels a little faster than persona so thats fine by me. Also damn the music is great in this, from the battle theme to the akademia music it just slaps.

 

[MrTharne]

The only weird plot thing that seemed skipped over and rushed was

Spoiler

louis obviously (?) killed the king at the beginning. Everyone is standing around and he's like mmm yes now we will need to decide a new heir *smirk*. But then later you hear Louis is in jail? Despite leaving no evidence? And he is using this as a means to whip up support to be elected (guard is in shambles, etc)?

When did he get jailed and why exactly besides the conspiracy?

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

He's not in jail, he was "exiled" from the capital to do some army stuff at the borders since they don't have proof. They basically gave him tasks to waste his time far from the capital.

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About Grius :

Spoiler

Oh look it's Barret ! Oh look it's Barret with 50 death flags ! Oh look it's dead Barret ! 💀

 

[vixolus]

Spoiler

He's not in jail, he was "exiled" from the capital to do some army stuff at the borders since they don't have proof. They basically gave him tasks to waste his time far from the capital.

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About Grius :

Spoiler

Oh look it's Barret ! Oh look it's Barret with 50 death flags ! Oh look it's dead Barret ! 💀

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Hmm. Still feel like there should have been some kind of scene showing this situation rather than be dialogue mentioned.

 

[Enduin]

About Grius :

Spoiler

Oh look it's Barret ! Oh look it's Barret with 50 death flags ! Oh look it's dead Barret ! 💀

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

This is the one plot element that really bothered me so far, like why is it that he gets chained up by the dead king's magic ghost castle for trying to kill Louis but then Louis is able to just slit his throat like it ain't no thing. It just feels like a weird double standard in the rules that just because Louis was much more popular and one of the top three you couldn't just off him but Grius was clearly marked as one of the contenders for the throne but I guess because he had little support it didn't matter. Or maybe because he tried to kill Louis first even though he was a competitor himself that how somehow stripped him of his protection.

Either way that just doesn't sit right with me, it would have been a lot more interesting if there was this hard rule that none of the contenders could kill one another resulting in the need for them to find alternative means and ways around this magical deterrent. Now I feel like we're going to be just directly in confrontation and killing a lot more contender throughout the game in a very straightforward fashion without any repercussions.

 

[MrTharne]

Spoiler

This is the one plot element that really bothered me so far, like why is it that he gets chained up by the dead king's magic ghost castle for trying to kill Louis but then Louis is able to just slit his throat like it ain't no thing. It just feels like a weird double standard in the rules that just because Louis was much more popular and one of the top three you couldn't just off him but Grius was clearly marked as one of the contenders for the throne but I guess because he had little support it didn't matter. Or maybe because he tried to kill Louis first even though he was a competitor himself that how somehow stripped him of his protection.

Either way that just doesn't sit right with me, it would have been a lot more interesting if there was this hard rule that none of the contenders could kill one another resulting in the need for them to find alternative means and ways around this magical deterrent. Now I feel like we're going to be just directly in confrontation and killing a lot more contender throughout the game in a very straightforward fashion without any repercussions.

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Spoiler

Same sentiment, it was weird and just after that the necromancer just does whatever he wants to innocent people and I was like ???

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Also about there being no romance option in the game it's clearly because the canon romance at the end of the game will be with the Prince.

 

[QisTopTier]

The dragon was hilariously easy LOL thanks for the nice free loot

 

[Mediking]

We need a nickname for the MC guy.

 

[Elster]

We need a nickname for the MC guy.

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Matwoko

 

[Mediking]

Matwoko

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LOL it's funny you say that cuz like his face and hair reminds me of someone…. I can't put a finger on it… but he looks so familiar to someone… hmmm I wonder if there was DLC that had him wearing a certain somebody's else clothes.

 

[Jarmel]

Damn, this demo is pretty meaty.

 

[GarudaSmiles]

Finally finished the demo. I was able to take down the optional dungeon Boss on hard. That dungeon was no joke. Those goblins hit like a truck. If you don't get advantage in battle it's usually game over. The boss seemed impossible until I realized it took tons of damage from the Knight/Warrior combo spear attack.

 

[northnorth]

It's there for me. Switch from Borderless to Fullscreen and it'll display all the resolutions.

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Sweet! Thanks I'm gonna try that.

 

[FF Seraphim]

Spoiler

He's not in jail, he was "exiled" from the capital to do some army stuff at the borders since they don't have proof. They basically gave him tasks to waste his time far from the capital.

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About Grius :

Spoiler

Oh look it's Barret ! Oh look it's Barret with 50 death flags ! Oh look it's dead Barret ! 💀

Click to shrink...

Mate, it is a very old Trope in Japanese games with this. You see an old mentor type guy who is stronger than the party?

Spoiler: Story

Yeah they will die

somehow and early on.

 

[GarudaSmiles]

Mate, it is a very old Trope in Japanese games with this. You see an old mentor type guy who is stronger than the party?

Spoiler: Story

Yeah they will die

somehow and early on.

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Spoiler: Slight Unicorn Overlord spoiler

I like how Unicorn Overlord subverted this trope with Joseph.

 

[Kuro]

The magla permeating the air is really distracting in almost everywhere outside of safe rooms. Its weird that they made it such a prominent effect. Its like the MC has the worst case of floaters. Its just too much with all the other screenwide effects they are using like vignetting, motion blur, sketchy boxes, etc. The screen is crawling with worms basically and the aliasing exacerbates it.

I actually like the strange art style but the execution is marred by that.

 

[Spinluck]

Oh damn so you can't go back to fuck up the dragon in the mines once you leave it? I never bothered trying to fight it. Guess I will load up an old save to see what's up. I'm playing on Hard so I wasn't sure if it was worth the trouble lol.

 

[names2hard4you]

Finished the demo, and damn if it wasn't meaty. Glad all this progress carries over. Had a blast, will be there day one.

 

[MrTharne]

I stopped when the days countdown starts and will start from the beginning since I want to change the choices I made in the recruitement interview and also because I put the same name the two times they asked you to put a name, which was hilarious when I examined the scroll and might become confusing later on.

 

[Mifec]

We need a nickname for the MC guy.

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His "canon" name is Will apparently.

 

[FF Seraphim]

Spoiler: Slight Unicorn Overlord spoiler

I like how Unicorn Overlord subverted this trope with Joseph.

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Oh man, through out the whole game I was like... when was it going to happen!? How will it happen? But dude it is just a fatherly bond the whole way. Freaking loved that.

 

[Metroidvania]

Heh, the 'optional dungeon' boss at what I presume is the end-ish of the demo (the Minotaur looking thing) two-shot each of my party when I was at level 12/11.

And even some of the higher level goblin packs in the same 'optional' dungeon could easily wipe me on normal if not careful/at full health.

Definitely wonder how much of a grind things will be though, as I was killing basically the entire map of each dungeon floor, and leveling got sloooooow, and was clearly not in a place to take on that boss just yet.[/ispoiler]

 

[ara]

Excited to name the main character Lil Willie and myself Big Ara and completely ruin the tension of some big plot climax or twist

 

[Devilgunman]

Just came out of the mine. Goddamn this demo is long. This game is straight up Persona without collecting monsters.

 

[GarudaSmiles]

Oh man, through out the whole game I was like... when was it going to happen!? How will it happen? But dude it is just a fatherly bond the whole way. Freaking loved that.

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Yeah Joseph is great.

Heh, the 'optional dungeon' boss at what I presume is the end-ish of the demo (the Minotaur looking thing) two-shot each of my party when I was at level 12/11.

And even some of the higher level goblin packs in the same 'optional' dungeon could easily wipe me on normal if not careful/at full health.

Definitely wonder how much of a grind things will be though, as I was killing basically the entire map of each dungeon floor, and leveling got sloooooow, and was clearly not in a place to take on that boss just yet.[/ispoiler]

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I beat that boss at level 12 on hard so it is doable without a bunch of grinding. I used a knight, a seeker, and a warrior. I gave the seeker and warrior the ice spell which the boss is weak to. My knight would use the spear attack combo skill, and the other 2 would cast ice spells or heal with items. I kept the non knights in the back row to lessen damage. I probably got lucky with some rng, but I beat it first try with that setup.

 

[teague]

I accidentally clicked through allocating my additional stat point after the tutorial boss, can I allocate it later 😅

 

[pants]

I really loved this. Characters are great, vibe is excellent.

The demonic battle chant in the main battle theme has grown on me exponentially.

 

[Metroidvania]

Yeah Joseph is great.


I beat that boss at level 12 on hard so it is doable without a bunch of grinding. I used a knight, a seeker, and a warrior. I gave the seeker and warrior the ice spell which the boss is weak to. My knight would use the spear attack combo skill, and the other 2 would cast ice spells or heal with items. I kept the non knights in the back row to lessen damage. I probably got lucky with some rng, but I beat it first try with that setup.

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Huh.

My Warrior with the best armor I had died from a 199 non-crit hit (he wasn't at full health - really wish there was a tent alternative for boss attempts, lol), and then my other two party members got hit with multi-hit (one each) for 150 and like....90, respectively, in front/back row.

The same enemy multi-hit next turn finished them off (didn't bother to heal that run, due to the save point right outside the door) - maybe I go grind up some more goblins to get Hulkenberg up to 12 to match up.

That, and/or use some mana items - my reserves are basically shot after clearing most all of the dungeon enemies.