Thank you @neatchee I'm sold.
Persona ish series are always odd. When they want to make good social commentary they are always spot on, but then they'd just do a whole subplot about sexual harassments and effect on teen girls, immediately followed by a skit where the player would give three options of a "joke" and all of them are sexually harassing your friend who is still dealing with the aftermath like WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS
I vaguely remember there were some comments about Metaphor has a build problem that if you got into it blind, the game can become unplayable later on. I also don't want to look it up because people are shit at spoilers.
So.
Is that true? What do I need to be careful about?
Huh protagonist's fairy is Misty from Pokemon???
On one hand, Psyduck doesn't wear shoes to bed.
On the other hand,
HEY LISTEN
HEY LISTEN
HEY LISTEN
HEY LISTEN
HEY LISTEN
HEY LISTEN
H
FUCK YEAH THE MONSTERS HERE ARE "HUMANS" I WAITED FOR THIS DAY FOR SO LONG
While Atlus isn't what I'd call the peak interesting game system creator (that's TriAce), I have to say that when it comes to UI plus style, Atlus is on its own league.
There are better UI and there are better style. Atlus got the mixture down to distinctive functional art form.
You cannot convince me that Metaphor verse isn't a mirror of Persona verse. Akademia is where they kidnap humans from Tokyo to turn them into Pokemon, like what Velvet Room does.
Shin Megami Tensei series are something else altogether. I got to the obliterate everything ending in IV and decided I can't deal with that degree of depressive media. And I'm raised on pre Soviet depressing Russian novels.
Hold on is this a normal rat (pest), a supercharged rat (pest), or a protected species of indigenous massive rat (not pest)?
Only asking because I have ran into protected large white tail rats in urban settings before.
Metaphor so far:
Royal = good
Lineage based authoritarian state = good
Being completely subservient to royal = good
Low born working their way up = evil
That scene where that The Substance styled giant face coming down from the sky was hella cool.
I hope Grius stays dead. I really don't like him. He's the worst at this whole assassination business, worse than Tetsuya Yamagami.
Not a fan of how every cat/dog/foxgirls only have two breasts
Probably why I'm never allowed to do furry arts
I do find Metaphor pretty good for what it is, I just absolutely cannot with royalty and to say that I give less than 0 shit about the everyone's motivation is too much shit to give.
I just miss the flavour of Persona. Give me an urban fantasy any day over this.
Just give me Chie Yukiko and Yosuke baaaaack
The cast feels like Persona 3. I could never get into Persona 3, even though nothing was wrong with any of them really, they were coworkers who have a job to do. I just never felt that anyone ever became friends even til the end. Just, ok clock off, hide the evoker so we don't get arrested for carrying, see you tomorrow.
Something Americans got right that the Commonwealth hasn't, is the idea that with diversity Americans are about "acceptance" while Commonwealth is about "tolerance". Which is rather aptly named in Metaphor given the setting.
Needless to say not a fan. But also I guess thank you for tolerating my existence like I'm a mildly discomforting haemorrhoid?
Royal Capital Grand Trad has THE WORST corpse handling capacity, for a large city that has disproportionately number of corpses. Or maybe they just look disproportionate because no one deals with them so they accumulate.
I'm waiting for the fantasy desentry wave.
I swear Metaphor is so strong at stuff Trails in the Sky is super weak at, and vice versa
And I saaaaad because they both could've been so strong
I don't know how else to describe it. So far Metaphor felt like a stronger narrative title than than any Persona to date, but also it's noticeably less of a "my" game than Persona.
Though one particular structural mild spoiler makes me think there are also legit poor decisions made about Metaphor's playability.
I really like the voice acting for everyone except Gallica and Protagonist.
How do I turn Gallica off and Gallica only? She's a homage to HEY LISTEN HEY LISTEN HEY LISTEN but like, excessive parody.
The distinctive design philosophy of Atlus SMT games are, a "hard" battle is one that the boss has many many HP and it takes for forfucking ever and you are expected to mostly grind them down.
Which is ok, you'd get into an Atlus game expecting this. Also entirely not my style. I much prefer the rapid fire of minutes of intensity. Think of FFXIII where a battle can go anywhere between an hour to minutes based on how well you strategise. Or VIIRebirth, man what a game. Or Resonance of Fate wooooooah I love how it feels so much and it's been a decade.
FFXIV is the oddest because based on which cluster of battles they are, they can be anywhere between digging a hole with a toothpick, to legit rapid don't-fuck-up-a-step. I still loved Eden Titan and Eden Ifrit-Garuda for the speed.
I really can do with a child character who isn't just a generic child.
I can think of one well written child in all media in my life, that isn't a child-audience based work. Which is pretty worrying.
Maria is not that example. Nor is Nanako Dojima. Weirdest being Marlene Wallace: where Nanaki was such a well written pre/early teen, Marlene is like a talking lamp post.
"The prince is a really good guy! Like he thinks non-royals are also kinda people! Like, he's only partially as horrible as all other royals" ok then.
Metaphor in 2026 is odd in general. I don't think they could've predicted it when they wrote it. My expectations for princes are so low right now, basically they are probably not as bad as this dystopian timeline if they are not sexually assaulting people on a private island.
I'm absolutely loving the regional UK accent variance in English voice acting here, the best part is all of them enunciate as well as you'd expect from professional voice actors.
I never found UK accents challenging regardless of the region. I struggle with people who don't believe in opening their mouths once in a while when speaking. No it's not an accent issue. It's a individual issue.
So far I feel like all of the main cast are super bland, and the one person I want to hang out with isn't interested in joining the main cast.
Which is fine, I'm getting into it thinking about P4, and you can only have so many I REALLY NEED TO PEE kind of party members.
I decided this is a personal affront that my protagonist was sent to bed because tomorrow is a big day of the tournament.
I want to cook before big days. Let me in the kitchen. If I don't do commercial cooking, I spontaneously combust.
I'm probably seriously missing the point here, I don't get what's the point of Knight class, except to prepare for the royal archetype.
The thing about tanking in this game is, there's no point to it. You lose a turn for damage dealing, the tank isn't really more enduranced than anyone else, and still are faced with same weakness exploits. It would make way more sense to have low HP squishy tanks with unique skills that bypasses weakness/nullify Crits than anything else.
Instead I just get this thing that can't tank, can't melee DPS, can't mage DPS, and can't heal.
Sometimes I forgot how unpleasant all Persona games truly are to play. Say, you have a time limit to get out of a dungeon. Take a wild guess how will you waste most of time?
The answer is, mandatory fight with longest ever, most boring to watch animations in each attack that is in the timer, and cannot be turned off.
This whole surprise mandatory royal archetype is actually the worst thing. Now everytime I get someone, I have to look up a guide, which usually gives me spoilers of other future archetypes, which are the sort of thing that I want to have the joy of discovering myself. It's not like wait until midgame and all are unlocked is plausible, as the game expected you do somehow know exactly what route to take 100 hours before telling you it's a thing.
Not saying it ruined the game but, it kinda did.
How to play a Persona game.
Boss: 9999HP, 2x adds 5000HP each
Must kill adds or wipe
Killed add, got one hit on boss
Adds regenerate
Grind for an hour
Boss at 100 HP, surprise cutscene fully heals the boss
Games like this don't need an "easy mode", because easy mode is only mildly less tedious. It needs a walk simulator mode. As in removing the gameplay altogether would've been an improvement.
Now something Atlus/SMT excels at: monster design in the pure aesthetics kind of way. You'd think I've seen all there is to be seen, but without fail every boss ever in any SMT and derivatives are just a different magnitude of brilliant.
The narratives... This is a Persona game. As in I remember Persona fondly but in a "I liked it but I just couldn't love it" kind of way. Here is that again, it almost always touches something unique and interesting but always backs off the last second. Which is very different to SMT main lines, I only played IV and it broke me in ways no other fictions ever did and I couldn't touch another one. And I played it pre Trump.
With monster aesthetic designs, I frequently feel "this is cool", but Persona/Metaphor kind of, "holy shit what is this I'm looking at? How? Even... What?!" Almost never happens.
This is my holy grail of monster aesthetic design. I don't want to describe them because the impact of seeing them is the point.
I'm only partially joking when I say that I'm so fucked in life that I'm thinking about just do a hyperspecialised degree in videogames monster aesthetics design*.
The monster designs here. This is the level I want to eventually achieve.
(*Yes it's a thing. Yes I know you don't need a degree for that shit. I have this formative-years acquired mental illness called raised as Traditional Asian, and all my rebellion went to the oppositional defiant queer with lifestyle of an ibis going through trash cans thing. Academic external validation is something I lost my battle on not giving a shit over, normal people don't even need to have this issue)
I get that Bardon is a really nice bro who genuinely cares, and as a command he kept on closing wall holes instead of commanding, which in a village of like four people it works, and I love him for it and all
But I was not expecting how literal the supportive Commander weapon is a floor mop
I support you with my mop!
That is the real deal, folks. None of that hero fantasy shit. Don't fight for me I can fight for myself. Please mop for me, you have no idea how incompetent I am at mopping
@neatchee I feel there are much much better way to balance games than this. Persona never figured out how to make things fun without adding HP, hit harder and make it long. Meanwhile it really failed on the mastering, unlocking, and better capacity for system building, in a planned and purposeful way.
Which could be worse. One of my potential favourite all time game is literally unplayable for me because it decided to be a highly accurate poverty simulator.
Manic Emo Dream Ghoul
Uncool mouse
neatchee