Story
(This will be a spoiler-free review, which is more difficult than usual, but I should be able to make it work.)
The intro cutscene, before even reaching the main menu, shows a man you will come to know as Loius, assassinating the King of Euchronia, a fantasy realm where 7 tribes live together, but certainly not as equals. While it may be a trope, the way this story of racism and prejudice plays out feels fresh, because it doesn't rely on simple tropes, and having 7 tribes means it can be more than just one-note "oh let's all look down on Elves."
Prior to the King's death, forces unknown attacked the Prince, resulting in a magical coma. Fearing for his safety, those loyal to the Prince chose to present the story that he died. Even if they came clean now, the comatose Prince still could not rule, so the country has no head. The council decides that a contest will be held, which will be a weird mix of specific challenges and popular support. You -- a member of one of the least privileged tribes, meet up with friends and allies along the way, such as Strohl, a noble whose hometown was destroyed, and Hulkenburg, an ex-knight on a personal journey to find her place and bring justice to evildoers. In a somewhat crazy move, you decide to throw your hat into the ring, hoping to gain enough reputation to get close to other candidates and see if any of them know anything about the Prince's attackers.
Background
Editorial note: Due to a bug at the time of writing, I can&039;t tag Persona 3/4/5 correctly; the link will just go to the @persona series page instead. All 3 games are listed there, should you want to check them out. There is not yet a series page for Shin Megami Tensei, but I tagged it in case it is created in the future.#
The creative team includes a lot of people who worked on Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5 (tagging these games is broken due to the @persona series page having priority). Gameplay blends elements from the @shin-megami-tensei series such as the "Press Turns" system and Persona series such as social links and the calendar system. It reads a lot like they had wanted to do something merging the two series and put all their favorite toys together.
Gameplay
Social
Persona's calendar system will drive the steady pressure -- key activities will have to be done by certain days, and you can generally do one activity in the afternoon and one in the evening (clearly, the party are all gamers staying up too late to do anything in the morning). You might hang out with a follower to increase your bond strength with them, give an inspirational speech to try to win more followers and improve your Eloquence, have a nice conversation with a Mustari priest -- the only race that majority does not follow the state religion "Sanctism" and thereby improve your Tolerance.
These social activities will be the key to unlocking new Archetypes (the game's job system) and other abilities -- form a bond with a powerful merchant to get a discount at every shop in the game; a military tactician will help you learn how to easily escape from battles if you get ambushed; party members will grant the ability to equip more skills from other jobs, allowing for deep customization, something strategists will truly enjoy.
There are a host of different activities you can do as you work on ranking up your 5 "Royal Virtues" (things that will make you a better candidate for the throne), and I enjoyed having a lot of freedom here. There are also a number of extra side quests given by NPCs that will often involve traveling to an optional dungeon -- this means spending time on the road to get there and then time exploring the dungeon; how will you balance this vs. working on social stats or ranking up followers?
One of the trophies that required I replay the game -- you have narrow windows (about one-two in-game weeks at most) to debate each candidate, sometimes you have several candidates to knock out during the same duration. It's one of the ways you can spend your free time.
You do realize that telling me it's dangerous is just making me want to do it even more?
Hanging out with your followers (s.links/confidants in Persona's parlance) is a great use of spare time.
Combat
Exploring dungeons -- required or optional, takes both time slots, but features your traditional turn-based combat. However, where other SMT games always rely on summoning demons to fight for you, in this game you'll channel Archetypes, which is basically a fancy job system. The press turn system gives you a number of actions equal to your party member count, but you can get a "half-turn" by attacking an enemy's weakness; hit the ice monster with fire and you quickly turn the tables even if you're outnumbered. MP management is key; restoration items are extremely rare and only available in limited quantities from shops until the very final dungeon; and the calendar system means that if you take an extra day to finish a dungeon, you're giving up time that you can spend getting stronger for the next dungeon, because sheer XP is only part of the equation.
There are no random encounters; you can clearly see the enemies as you're exploring the dungeons, and unique among the greater SMT series, you can engage in a limited real-time battle with them before going into squad turn-based combat; if you can stagger the enemy by landing enough blows without getting hit yourself, you'll start the battle by doing a sizeable chunk of free damage to them. Get hit by the enemy, and you'll find that flipped; opening at a strong disadvantage including damage and status ailments. If you're not confident you'll stun the enemy, you can chose to start squad battle immediately with neither side having an advantage. In my 180 hours (two full plays), I found I was almost always able to stun the enemies and start battle with an advantage. The disadvantage is so severe that it's faster to run away from battle, heal up quickly if needed, and reattempt staggering the enemies.
Boss battles will truly challenge your ability to juggle buffing, debuffing, damage, healing, when to use items vs when to go all-out with an expensive MP skill. You've also got Synthesis skills -- for 2 or more press turns, 2 or more members can team up a la @chrono-trigger for unique attacks -- but in a fun twist, the available attacks are based on the Archetypes, not the party members themselves, and except for every party member's ultimate job, anyone can learn any job, giving a crazy amount of possible combinations.
I had to go back and record some spoiler-free video, and I forgot to unequip my level-80 weapons against these level-30ish enemies, so I'm doing insane damage, but you can see the idea. Honestly combat is way more fun to play than to watch; but you might have to take my word or play the demo.
Video: Combat with early/mid-game abilities and ultimate-tier equipment.
Graphics and Sound
If you've played Persona 5 or Persona 3 Reload, you're going to know how detailed and immersive the game's style is; from every dialog box, to the menu, to shopping, to everything in between, you're going to find a familiar style that has a sort of pencil look to it, which fits with an overall theme -- early in your adventure, you'll meet a mysterious researcher named More and spend time reading a fantasy novel about a utopia with a single tribe where everyone is treated equally.
The music is great, but I may have had unfair expectations -- Persona 5 is one of only a trio of games to ever warrant a spot on my OSTs list here on channel 3, and I knew they were working with Shoji Meguro who also worked on P5, but Metaphor isn't cracking the list. Don't get me wrong, it's still great, it's just not GOAT looking only at the music. There are some great tracks, for sure.
More impressive is the voice acting; while the game is not fully voiced (there's entirely too much dialog for that; a 100% single playthrough is probably 80-100 hours alone), all the major plot developments and every follower's first and last social ranks are fully voiced by an excellent cast. Even the minor / background NPCs felt solid; I don't remember a weak VA in the entire cast, which is impressive with a game this size.
Here's a clip of the party stopping along the road between two cities to check out a scenic area ... Hulkenburg is notorious for eating anything and always being hungry.
This is from an in-game cutscene, but I had to clip the lyrics about fire.
Strohl is easily the smartest right-hand man (strictly men) from Persona 3-4-5 or this game, but even he seems surprised there is an actual dragon in the Dragon Temple.
Critique and Comparison
If I had to pick something to gripe about, I'd pick on the required second playthrough for a platinum trophy, and some requiring grinding near the end especially to take on the superboss. By the end of the second (immediately consecutive) play, it was starting to wear out a little bit. Certainly if you were going to beeline for platinum you could do a much faster first play and ignore a lot of content, but I wanted a truly blind first play, and went for as much as I could. And for that entire first playthrough, I was hooked. A major plot twist happens 75-80% through the game and I did not see it coming, which is truly impressive for a fantasy role-playing game.
Persona!
OK, if you haven't played Persona, this isn't going to make a ton of sense, but if you have, here's some key differences:
#I:Editor's note: a table or bulleted list would help, but those options were not available as I was writing this; if you're in the future and super posts support those now, leave a comment and I'll clean this up#
• Job system instead of demon fusion/summoning
• Followers guaranteed to rank up during each hang out; "right" answers give you "magla" which is kind of like "job points" and you can get from fights anyway
• Partial real-time combat: enemies 3 or more levels lower can be completely killed without starting turn-based battles (kind of like Ryuji's ability from P5R), higher than that and you can still get advantage, but it's more like mementos or Tarturus where you're going to have to jostle in real-time than P5 palaces where you can just hide in cover
• Significantly more of the game unfolds before you get your 4th party member
• The navigator is never a party member (unlike early P5)
• The characters' struggles and backgrounds hit way harder than P5 -- P5 features some really horrible villains who have done unspeakable things, but in MRF you have some extremely dark and depressing backstories to followers
• Press turns is a little harder to master than Persona's "one more"/baton pass, but the very flexible party setup will help
• No equivalent to Tarturus/Mementos; all dungeons are predetermined / non-random
Conclusion
This is a must-play for any Persona fans and any turn-based RPG fans. If you're not normally into those things, this is a fine place to start; it's extremely well-paced, well-written, well-acted, and incredibly fun to puzzle out the fights. It may not quite eclipse Persona 5 for me, but "just short of GOAT" is still incredible.
Platform: PS5 Physical
Completion: Platinum trophy (2 full playthroughs)
Bonus Round
WARNING: POLITICS
This section is optional; that's why this is at the end. If you don't want to read or think about anything political, that's 100% legit, and you can stop reading now; thanks for making it this far!
This game is heavily political and everything about this point glosses over that intentionally. This review is being written between January 31 and February 2, 2025, at a time when the United States is facing immense political upheaval. This game was made by a Japanese studio during an 8-year span ending in 2024, so it's not like they wrote it specifically for this situation, but some of the things that happen and that are said in this game are downright eerie. If you or a loved one has been adversely affected or targeted by hate as a result of contemporary political events, parts of this game may hit too hard. I've included a video here of one such scene that just... wow.
