Metaphor Made Me Confront My Atlus RPG Burnout

It was winter of 2016 when I started playing Persona 4 on my PS2. I didn’t have a PlayStation Vita, so I only had the vanilla version to play. Despite that, I absolutely fell in love with Persona 4. It felt like every form of entertainment came together to make one awesome story. Do you like books? Good, because you’re going to be doing a lot of reading. Do you like music? Good, because the music is phenomenal here. Do you like movies and TV? Good, there’s plenty of awesome fully voiced cutscenes. Do you like video games? Good…because it’s a video game.

The PS2 Persona games normalized bonding with party members in JRPGs. Some other games like Fire Emblem tried to emulate this with mixed results. But in Persona, it just feels good to hang out with a teammate outside of battle and get to know them on a deeper level. When I finished Persona 4, I was left with a emptiness in my heart. After 80+ hours, it really felt like I was leaving some friends behind. All the love I had for Persona 4 instantly transferred to Persona 5. It has better dungeons, cooler characters, and one of the greatest soundtracks in gaming history.

Fast forward to today, and Metaphor: ReFantazio is everybody’s favorite JRPG of 2024. And for good reason; every fantastic aspect of the Persona games is here, with the addition of a new world and lore. I really enjoyed my time with the game, but I think deep down I’m just burnt out on these Persona-style RPGs from Atlus. Here’s a few reasons why:

Combat:

The Push Turn Combat system is heavily reliant on exposing enemy weaknesses for an extra turn. The elemental weaknesses always encourage you to use skills or spells, which means you rarely use standard attacks. I like having variety in the actions I take in an RPG. Maybe I’ll use a standard attack for one turn and then use a spell on my next. If you don’t care about that type of variety, then there’s probably no problem for you. But in almost every Atlus RPG, MP is your best friend. Your skills and spells always do more damage than a standard attack. And they can help you get an extra turn. Unless the enemy is weak to physical attacks or reflect all magic, you’re just spamming skills. The developers know this because there’s very few MP recovery items in the game. I know the Mage Archetype helps you get around this, but again, this is a thing in most Atlus RPGs. I never feel this sort of discouragement in other JRPG series.

Social Links:

Maybe I’ve just gotten over them, but I feel like the Social Links in this game didn’t hit as hard as previous games. All you do in this game is agree with people or tell them they’re right and amazing. That’s how you get the most social points. In the older games sometimes you had to disagree or push back on your friends to help them learn. In Persona 3 especially, the social links felt a little more raw and real. Sometimes a Social Link could actually go down a level if you say the wrong thing. It feels a little more realistic. Sometimes you have to tell your friend what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. But in Metaphor you just gotta keep saying “You’re the best, you can do anything!” and you’ll be fine.

Uneven Difficulty:

Another thing in Atlus RPGs that always bothers me is what I call “The Atlus Bitch Slap”. I’m the type of player that almost never runs away from battles unless I know I’m about to die. I also like to grind in my JRPGs. Usually I’ll throw on a podcast and grind for a bit. Despite that, usually around the three-quarter mark, Atlus RPGs love to spike their difficulty. All of a sudden the enemies you were destroying in two turns are now devastating you. The bosses can one shot your teammates and you feel totally confused. Why am I getting destroyed if I’m not running away? In Metaphor specifically, I did every single bounty I could for the extra experience. And by the time the Mage Academy came up, I was getting wiped. Why? Yes, I was upgrading my equipment. Yes, I was leveling up my Social Links. Yes, I was utilizing Archetypes. These games never seem to have a consistently rising difficulty. They’re usually extremely easy for the first 40 hours and then they just spike up out of nowhere. I think it’s even worse in Metaphor. Look it up, tons are people are saying the same thing.

Shin Megami Tensei has always had a reputation for being difficulty, but Atlus games in general have that same characteristic. I just wish the difficulty was more gradual than a sudden betrayal to an otherwise easy game.

Pacing:

The Achilles heel to any Persona-style game is the pacing. While I do want to commend Metaphor for getting players into the core systems and first dungeon relatively fast, the pacing can still be an issue. Many times I would sit down in my comfy chair with controller in hand, ready to play a game, only to have two to three hours of cutscenes. It can be brutal. Atlus games have a funny way of manipulating time. If I told you “It takes 10 hours to really pick up” about any other game, I’d fully expect you to scoff at me. But Atlus RPGs are an exception. Despite that, I do find it annoying that Atlus seems to rival Kojima for his absurd cutscene length.

Last year I enjoyed the Persona 4 Golden port to modern consoles. Earlier this year I played through Persona 3 Reload. And here I am now still fresh off Metaphor. Maybe an Atlus style RPG is meant to be played once every few years. Or maybe I’m just burnt out on them.