Metaphor: ReFantazio almost has me sold on its bonkers bad guy designs alone

Having played the opening hour of Altus’ Metaphor: ReFantazio – now mere weeks away from its October 11th launch – I think it’s high time to correct a games previewing injustice. Namely, that the majority of its pre-release buzz has centred around its proximity to Persona, and not its far more entertaining quality of having the most gleefully bizarre RPG enemy design this side of Elden Ring’s horn-tooting orbpeople.

I do get it. Metaphor: ReFantazio doesn’t just have Persona DNA; it has Persona’s heart, lungs, bone marrow, and at least one of its legs. The thing where you can land a real-time slash to start a turn-based fight with an advantage? Hey, that’s like Persona. You and your party members transforming into drastically more powerful superbeings? Bit like Persona, that. Winning yourself an extra turn by striking an opponent’s weakness? Reminds me of that game series, Persona.

That’s all fine. I’m actually more keen on the real-time instigation than Edwin was when he played, partly because pulling it off starts the battle with a weirdly charming little animation of our protag grinning with bloodlust (as I probably am at that same moment). But similarities with Altus’ previous works are, at this point, so well-trodden you can see bootprints in the subsoil. I’d rather talk about the wonderfully weird beasts and critters on the other side of these fights, because they’re disgusting, and I love them for it.

In ReFantazio’s Renaissance-ish fantasy setting, they’re called Humans, which is presumably the most ironic name Altus could think of. The ones with recognisably human features still only look like the big naked giants from Attack on Titan got dressed up for a fun run, while others may well have been conceived by picking two words at random from a dictionary. An egg with... boots. A tooth with... a face. It’s literally just a tooth with a face, and I lost a first-hit duel to one, which made me get annoyed whenever I saw a character’s teeth for the following thirty minutes. Wacky in concept, perhaps, but only true art could elicit such an emotional response.

Yet these are mere doodles compared to the Boschian nightmares that are the bosses. Peril, the climactic foe of my demo, is an enormous four-legged, four-armed birdman with swords for feet, wings for ears, and what looks like a prolapsed pomegranate for a torso. Also, the wings have a bunch of mouths. And hands. It’s not just batshittiness for batshittiness’s sake, either: during the fight, Peril heals by munching on the apples growing from yet another vine-like appendage. This unsettling act of autocannibalism shows that some enemies’ visual quirks will in fact reflect their moveset in otherwise unexpected ways.

Frankly, there’s probably also something significant in the fact that nearly four weeks after playing ReFantazio, I can remember Peril and the teeth boys, whereas its cast of heroes had faded into a blur until I looked them up a couple of hours ago. I guess it’s partly that contrast between mad cryptids and largely unremarkable anime people that makes the former seem so lively and farcial, though I’d hope that more time with your allies reveals them to be more than the fantasy archetypes they initially appear. The young noble striking out on his own, the chirpy fairy companion and so on.

In fairness, there are other qualities to Altus’s new world. Exploring the fortress city of Grand Trad really does feel like being on the ground in a busy metropolis, its vast streets liberally dotted with gossiping citizens. Even though it takes half an hour of walking and talking ‘round these parts to get into your first turn-based scrap, it also rarely feels like you’re suffocating under dumped lore.

And my word, the stylishness. This is both another inheritance from the P word and something else that Metaphor: ReFantazio previews always bring up, but it really is an intoxicating assault on the senses, with ornate menus flashing in and out of view and exciting musical motifs thrown out with impressively maximalist abandon. Even a brief flashback is introduced with a fancy rewinding clock graphic.

If I do end up buying Metaphor: ReFantazio, though, it’ll be less because of the hyperactive UI and more because I want to see, fight, and slay more of these offbeat baddies. I want a bestiary of anthropomorphic kraken, of bipedal eggs with heart-shaped bagpipes balanced on their heads, and all evidence suggests I’m going to have it.