Manic Emo Dream GhoulFUCK 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.
HAHAHAHAHAH I AM HOWLING because I think the entire central city is built on this meme.
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.
Wait what the main streets of Grand Trad near the cathedral is literally Sydney CBD? As in I can believe it if the scenary was taken from there. I'd show you a photo if I weren't 700km away
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.
I just unlocked the influencer popularity piss context meter. There is no escape.
Protagonist gains bonds by shaking hands with potential allies. Here goes my dream of bonding with handless crewtures, like those sandworms outside of the carriage crash.
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?
On protagonists's third Cloud Hair Spike, he aspires to one day tolerate others for existing.
Yeah real talk. I wonder if one of the writers briefly spent some time as Japanese Asian in Christchurch NZ. Because the degree of frequent open racial hostility the protagonist was faced with would've been a comical exaggeration anywhere else, but imo it's very very sanitised compared to existing as visibly Asian in NZ. Usually you don't get through a week without already assaulted multiple times.
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.
No whoever made the decision for battle voice over Gallica. Who hurt you?
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.
Finding Maria is my closest, oh fuck it give me a guide. I can never find anything.
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.
I feel like, everything I read where it's fantasy racism fictions, it just comes across as clueless and weak compared to Delicious in Dungeon. Not that most are bad necessarily. Just DnD is unusually spot on.
"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.
Special thanks to Metaphor for willing to represent the ones of us who are rarely represented in fictions: the ones who refuse to be awake before noon.
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.
So far Metaphor seems like, a fantasy dystopia mistakes another form of reality dystopia as some sort of fantasy utopia?
HAHAHAHHAHA the revealing of the contenders is amazing. It's like Victorian state election all over again
I have met the first character I like. Neuras please join the party please. I will make sure my protagonist supply you with all the isopropyl alcohol you needed.
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.
NEURAS
MY BRO
MY KINDRED SPIRIT
Metaphor is worth it just for my overly enthusiastic awkward nerd brother
MY BRO
MY KINDRED SPIRIT
Metaphor is worth it just for my overly enthusiastic awkward nerd brother
How unfortunate, that my character in Metaphor's name, happened to be "Sandworm".
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.
Where did all those cooking ware came from anyway? Ngl when Atlus want to be funny, they really are.
Can we just stop for a moment and talk about that Alt Silent Hill painting in the guards corp?
This Morris kidnapping children thing is as comical as Trails the mayor burning down orphanage. It's not just 100 years too tired for a cliche, it's also showing fundamental lacking of understanding in how societies in that verse would work.
Does the protagonist have some sort of archetype measles. Like no one ever catches that shit until he stands too close to them
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.
I swear bonding for rank among your party members is basically guide dammit because you physically can't find any of them. -_-
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.
That demon baby fight is so tedious that Yuffie felt sorry for me and presented me her cat bum.
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)
Yeah you know that one time I nearly became a body piercer in 2024 but then I realised I had to actually talk to people so I didn't
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
Anyone else feel like, all Persona somehow made mobs way more fun than all bosses, from strategic perspective? Mobs are all about finding out weaknesses and work on that. Bosses are like that too but an hour long cycling through the same three commands once you know the elementals.
Leon Strohl has all the characteristics of someone I'd deeply respect and admire, and I sort of do, I just don't _like_ him which makes me feel guilty.
It's worrying that I like Louis more than just about anyone else going after the throne at this moment. Especially way more than any of the hereditary royals.
Catherina is cool. Clueless but cool
I have to Guide Dammit here more than any other games, specifically because the game doesn't know how to communicate anything well, and punishes you for it.
Is "Mausoleum" the same as "Catacomb"? Not telling. You can enter and find out. Congrats you lost a full day. Now try a different location that may or may not be "Mausoleum" as I've unlocked multiple tombs already. Congratulations you have timed out, game over.
Hoooo boy. The three turns against individual commanders on Louis's boat is by far the best battles. Snappy. Strategy. Boom boom.
Oh Bardon, he got voluntold as the mayor and now is imposter syndrome hard. Which tbh, I think he'd make a terrible large city mayor, but that village has like seven people. Fence up the cliff and he's do fine.
The team I want: Neuras, Catherina, that super helpful decaying Tooth.
The team I got: Strohl, Hulkenberg, Heismay.
I don't really dislike anyone in my party. I wish them the best, just I don't vibe with any of them either.
We all know Neuras is my long lost brother, when we see him with his wings tied around his waist like a mildly inconvenient jacket.
neatchee@BigShellEvent I'm especially interested in your opinion on the narrative starting around this point in the game
@neatchee i... Got distracted on fighting skeletons
@BigShellEvent This is how I feel every time I play Persona games. Fucking calendars, man.
@neatchee it hates anyone with AD(H)D
@BigShellEvent I'm not gonna lie, P3R and Metaphor were both played with open pacing/calendar guides lol
@neatchee lol i hear you I need a secretary
Uncool mouse@BigShellEvent 100% yes! Occasionally there are personas you can fuse that'll help you cheese certain bosses, but even that doesn't feel like you have a fun rhythm going the way normal enemies feel.
@uncoolmouse I feel frustrated because I know their devs are better than this.
I complain about Saga Emerald a lot because of some poor balancing issues (ps play Emerald! Until you got to the point that you physically can't anyway); but even then the system is interesting, just poorly implemented.
Here it stopped being interesting by P5.
@BigShellEvent 100% agree. Absolute worst part of the game. If I weren't so used to ATLUS games virtually demanding guides to avoid a second playthrough in order to see everything I would've been pissed
@neatchee it's actually bizarre, because this is NOT what I expected from Atlus games. I expected some suboptimal things mostly in the context of the battles, this is incredibly surprising.
@BigShellEvent I absolutely think this is something they'd do. There has always been stuff you couldn't access if you didn't do the calendar just right in persona games. That's always pissed me off.
@neatchee ... That's. True
@BigShellEvent btw I think this might be a means for them to validate the need for a second and third playthrough for their hardcore fans
@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.
@BigShellEvent omg 😂😂😂