the Shin Megami Tensei series and its Persona spinoffs, Metaphor wears its inspirations on its sleeve. It carries over the concept of awakening and summoning Personas (here called Archetypes), blending it with the classic SMT Press Turn system to create strategic battles. It even reuses spell names and other concepts from the Persona series, including, perhaps most importantly, its Social Link system.

Persona games (since Persona 3) have been more than typical turn-based RPGs: they're half-dungeon crawlers, half dating sims. Using a calendar system, the player is free to decide how to spend their days and nights: studying, hanging out with loved ones (called Social Links or Confidants), or exploring deadly dungeons. Ideally, they want to strike a balance between all three, as leveling up the protagonist's personality traits allows them to deepen their relationships, and deepening their relationships makes them stronger in combat. Metaphor draws on all of these mechanics, but its approach to romance is entirely different.

Does Metaphor: ReFantazio Have Romance?

Not Quite, But It Has Something Similar

Metaphor: ReFantazio doesn't have romance options in the sense that a typical Persona game does, but it does have a Social Link-inspired system called Bonds. Bonds work almost exactly like Social Links do in Persona: players can choose to spend time with a particular character, watch a scene, and rank up their relationship by choosing the correct dialogue options. Each Bond is associated with and named after a particular Archetype (Metaphor's equivalent to Personas), and as a player levels up a bond, they'll unlock new abilities for that Archetype. There are eight levels to each Bond.

New Bonds are generally unlocked naturally as the player progresses through the story. Some of them also level up automatically at crucial story moments, but for the most part, players must willingly spend time with their followers in order to advance their relationships. That may make it difficult to max out all Bonds in a single playthrough, but it should still be possible with careful planning.

While the party will occasionally move on from certain areas as the calendar progresses, the protagonist can always return to them (and the Bonds located there) using the fast travel system during their free time.

However, none of the Bonds ever turn romantic, even when leveled up to their maximum. The protagonist will forge close partnerships, even intimate friendships with his followers and other NPCs, but can never actually date them. However, there's a perfectly good reason for that.

Why Metaphor: ReFantazio Doesn't Have Romance

Not Friends, But allies

The relationships in Metaphor are of a different nature from those in Persona. Bonds are more like political alliances than personal relationships; the protagonist is recruiting ers who will back his eventual bid for the throne. To that end, leveling up Bonds is more about impressing NPCs by exhibiting the virtues of a natural leader, and attempting to understand their own viewpoints and ideologies. While this does occasionally provoke personal revelations and other intimate moments, these never progress into full-on romances.

To that end, the protagonist's Social Stats from Persona have been transformed into Royal Virtues. These are characteristics a ruler should ideally exhibit - Courage, Wisdom, Tolerance, Eloquence, and Imagination - and, much like in Persona, can be leveled up by completing certain tasks in-game. He'll occasionally need to be of a certain level in a certain Virtue to level up a Bond further - for example, he may need high Eloquence to make an impression on a skilled orator.

So while Metaphor's approach to Bonds is quite similar to Persona's approach to Social Links, the relationships they give rise to are completely different. Metaphor: ReFantazio may not have romance, but the alliances players will form with their ers are much more thematically appropriate.