Metaphor replaces Personas with Archetypes, ittedly a similar concept: whenever a character faces their internal anxiety and resolves to achieve their goals, they awaken to a sort of inner self called an Archetype. Unique to each person, Archetypes are powerful spirits that represent certain heroic virtues: the Healer, the Warrior, the Seeker, and so on. With the aid of the protagonist's mysterious ally Moore, player characters in Metaphor can swap Archetypes at will, thereby changing their stats and abilities to suit the situation.
Besides their mutability, Archetypes work almost exactly like Personas as far as game mechanics go. But there are a couple of crucial differences in their story connections (and the new features they give rise to) that elevate Metaphor's Archetypes over Persona's Personas. As a result, they feel significantly more impactful on the game's story, and leveling them up is much more worthwhile.
Metaphor's Archetypes Put Quality Over Quantity
Too Many Personas, Too Little Time
Part of the problem is that there are just too many Personas, where there are only a handful of Archetypes. There are over 200 Personas in Persona 5 (and 173 in Persona 3 Reload), and only 44 different Archetypes in Metaphor. Actually, there are even fewer: there are only 14 Archetype lineages, and most of the 44 are just simple variations on those basic types. Collecting all the Archetypes in a single playthrough is a much more feasible task than collecting all the Personas in any given game.
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Metaphor: ReFantazio, Atlus’ brand-new JRPG, has one key advantage over Persona 5 and the whole Persona series that makes it the JRPG of the year.
A side effect of this restraint is that every Archetype feels noticeably different from the last one. Personas typically pick from a set menu of skills, resulting in each feeling like a variation on a theme, and not a wholly unique class. The fact that every single character can swap Archetypes at will, instead of just the protagonist, also makes the potential party compositions much more flexible, and each new Archetype unlocked feels like a revolutionary change.Personas aremostly disposable by design, and most players will usually fuse them away as soon as a better one with a similar skillset comes along.
Moreover, each Social Link/Confidant in Persona is associated with an entire Arcana's worth of Personas. In Persona 5, that means that whenever the player levels up one of their Confidants, they gain some bonus XP once they fuse new Personas of that Arcana, and maybe occasionally unlock a handful of new ones. The rewards are so vague and distant that spending time with non-party member Confidants doesn't feel impactful in the short term - it's easy to forget which Arcana is associated with which person by the time they get around to fusing more Personas.
But in Metaphor, each Archetype is closely associated with a particular NPC, and captures a portion of that NPC's spirit. Therefore, it's much easier to make a connection between the rewards received for leveling up each of Metaphor's Bonds (its equivalent to Social Links) and the player's progress in combat.
Metaphor's Skill Tree Makes Bonds Worthwhile
Archetype Progression Is Easier & More Customizable
Despite being categorized into specific, well, archetypes, Metaphor's Archetypes are also more customizable than the average Persona. Players level them up through an in-game skill tree (pictured above) that somewhat resembles Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. Once they've ranked up with a particular Archetype or leveled up a Bond sufficiently, they'll unlock a new node of the tree, and they can gain the associated skill or Archetype variation by paying the cost in Magla, a unique currency used only in Archetype development.
Magla can also be converted into reeve - the game's monetary currency - by certain merchants.
In Persona's system, the protagonist's Personas are customized mainly by fusion - the combination of two or more Personas into a single, more powerful species, destroying all the component Personas in the process. During fusion, the protagonist can choose skills for their fused Personas to inherit, but their companions don't have that option, and can also add other skills by leveling up consuming Skill Cards. The result is that most characters only level up along set paths, with the occasional stray skill as a poor excuse for customization.
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An added bonus is that players always know which Bonds they have to level up to obtain their desired skills, intertwining the two halves of gameplay better than any Persona game ever has. Generally, in Persona games, perks for leveling up Social Links aren't made clear until after the requisite rank has been reached. Players must either grope in the dark for the correct perk, and may end up going through much of the game without useful abilities that can only be obtained from NPCs they've neglected.
Between their increased customizability, their better links to the social sim side of gameplay, and their quality over quantity, Metaphor's Archetypes mark a significant improvement over Persona's summoned spirits. Its positive reception will probably influence the development of the next Persona game, whenever it comes out, so there's still hope for an improvement in Atlus' next effort after Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Metaphor: ReFantazio
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- Top Critic Avg: 93/100 Critics Rec: 98%
- Released
- October 11, 2024
- ESRB
- T For Teen // Blood, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Studio Zero
- Publisher(s)
- Atlus
- Engine
- GFD
- Number of Players
- 1
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- Playable
The creative team behind Persona 3, 4, and 5 present Metaphor: ReFantazio, a new fantasy action-adventure RPG game. The game's development team includes the original director, character designer, and composer of the Persona franchise and is as a full fantasy-setting game with modern elements.
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
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