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[zapper]

well, i have a problem with one of the final bosses, he makes a move that shots the entire party except one that doesn't take fire damage. what do i do?

 

[killatopak]

well, i have a problem with one of the final bosses, he makes a move that shots the entire party except one that doesn't take fire damage. what do i do?

You can use the party reflect skill of the knight, use fire resist accessories or use dish that reflect elemental attacks.

 

[ChackanKun]

On the fence about buying Metaphor.

It is a fairly long game, so playing it on my Steam Deck would be very important.

Yet, judging from the demo, the game doesn't run very well on the SD.

Does the final game run better? Like way better? As in night and day difference?

 

[Dev1lXYZ]

On the fence about buying Metaphor.

It is a fairly long game, so playing it on my Steam Deck would be very important.

Yet, judging from the demo, the game doesn't run very well on the SD.

Does the final game run better? Like way better? As in night and day difference?

It runs better than the demo, as they seem to patch it regularly. It runs much better than it did at launch on SD.

 

[GateofD]

well, i have a problem with one of the final bosses, he makes a move that shots the entire party except one that doesn't take fire damage. what do i do?

do the other two first, they drop equipment that counters that boss.

 

[kindaGoth]

I’m about 4 hours in and may drop the game, unfortunately. The combat design is definitely decent but the overall structure of the game isn’t doing much for me. I liked anime growing up but the world and writing style here don’t connect with me.

Maybe the game starts slow or maybe JRPGs aren’t for me anymore. These games get so much hype and critical acclaim but maybe I’m not the intended audience anymore.

I will say that so far it doesn’t seem like the game is doing much I haven’t seen before.

 

[zapper]

I will say that so far it doesn’t seem like the game is doing much I haven’t seen before.

It doesn't offer anything new, I too got bored playing it.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

How far am I?

Spoiler

I just beat the ice dragon and Rella sacrificed herself. Awaiting a battle with Louis at grand trad

Based on things I have yet to unlock, seems like I have plenty of game left

 

[touchfuzzy]

How far am I?

Spoiler

I just beat the ice dragon and Rella sacrificed herself. Awaiting a battle with Louis at grand trad

Based on things I have yet to unlock, seems like I have plenty of game left

Like 3/4 of the way through.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Looks like Future Press will be printing an official guide for Metaphor.

 

[Nankatsu]

 

[Zephyranthes]

in altabury i was excited, finally something big was happening and everything is done so badly, listlessly and quickly...

Yeah, I just finished the big event in Altabury, and execution of the whole thing was....extremely poor.

1) The fact that the party never once questions if Louis was truly responsible for the prince's curse, despite having no real evidence of it. Their belief in his guilt is based solely on the flimsy assumption that nobody else could have cast the curse.
2) Zorba somehow surviving a fall of hundreds of feet from the top of the Cathedral. Oh and also he apparently has ultra-healing powers that nobody else in the world has. And Forden somehow never noticed that his own aide was a Mustari necromancer.
3) Since gravity apparently doesn't matter, we also have Louis - with a giant hole in his chest - surviving the fall from the top of the opera house and somehow not bleeding out despite laying on the opera stage for 10+ minutes before Zorba could feasibly have moved his body and began healing him.
4) Drakodios can perform magic kill lasers, but only when Louis uses it I guess, seeing as Eupha never brings it up.
5) Why would Forden bring up the wound Hulkenberg gave the prince's assassin, knowing that it could connect him to the crime? Even so, the fact alone does not prove that he was responsible, and he never confesses to it, but everyone just kind of acts like he was after Louis kills him.

I can suspend my disbelief to a point, but the list of contrivances is a bit hard to ignore here.

 

[JORMBO]

Yeah, I just finished the big event in Altabury, and execution of the whole thing was....extremely poor.



I can suspend my disbelief to a point, but the list of contrivances is a bit hard to ignore here.

This is where I dropped the game. Everyone mentioned how great all these scenes were. But I walked away with the same impressions you did. The plot became too dumb to continue on.

 

[Small John McCarthy]

Yeah, I just finished the big event in Altabury, and execution of the whole thing was....extremely poor.

1) The fact that the party never once questions if Louis was truly responsible for the prince's curse, despite having no real evidence of it. Their belief in his guilt is based solely on the flimsy assumption that nobody else could have cast the curse.
2) Zorba somehow surviving a fall of hundreds of feet from the top of the Cathedral. Oh and also he apparently has ultra-healing powers that nobody else in the world has. And Forden somehow never noticed that his own aide was a Mustari necromancer.
3) Since gravity apparently doesn't matter, we also have Louis - with a giant hole in his chest - surviving the fall from the top of the opera house and somehow not bleeding out despite laying on the opera stage for 10+ minutes before Zorba could feasibly have moved his body and began healing him.
4) Drakodios can perform magic kill lasers, but only when Louis uses it I guess, seeing as Eupha never brings it up.
5) Why would Forden bring up the wound Hulkenberg gave the prince's assassin, knowing that it could connect him to the crime? Even so, the fact alone does not prove that he was responsible, and he never confesses to it, but everyone just kind of acts like he was after Louis kills him.

I can suspend my disbelief to a point, but the list of contrivances is a bit hard to ignore here.

This part of the game was not well done at all. And felt very rushed for such a pivotal plot point. The room for proper plot twists was there. Wasted opportunity.

 

[Markio128]

I stopped playing this game shortly after hitching a ride on that stupid mechanical running thing. Oh, it’ll take three nights to get to the next area, so in the meantime you can do some fucking laundry, or have more tedious conversations with your boring allies.

This game does not respect your time.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Gawd this game gets so tedious at the end

I’ve done all the sides quests but the coliseum and dragon trials…lvl 60….

So I decide to do the main Skybound Avatar mission and it’s filled with much higher level enemies that all require tons of MP to take down.

The bosses aren’t bad, but it’s just a war of attrition with MP

No easy way to grind levels either at this point?

Bizarre pacing

 

[RavageX]

The game had me for a moment, but then I just lost interest. I don't think it was any one particular thing, but the story is not super interesting. I do like the characters and their quirks though.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

The game had me for a moment, but then I just lost interest. I don't think it was any one particular thing, but the story is not super interesting. I do like the characters and their quirks though.

Dunno how ppl think this is rpg of the year

It’s a good game but not deserving of its metascore

Rebirth is a better game overall

 

[Bojji]

Dunno how ppl think this is rpg of the year

It’s a good game but not deserving of its metascore

Rebirth is a better game overall

I think rebirth is (in some aspects much) worse than metaphor.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I think rebirth is (in some aspects much) worse than metaphor.

Pretty much all aspects of rebirth are better. I thought you didn’t own a ps5?

 

[Bojji]

Pretty much all aspects of rebirth are better. I thought you didn’t own a ps5?

I have it since 2021, I'm criticizing Sony lately but I don't have any intention of getting rid of PS5 with disc drive

I did like 100h in metaphor and more than that in rebirth.

 

[w00ze]

For the love of all that is holy, can someone please tell me where to grind. It is 10/10 and I’m level 58. I want to finish the game, but all the sudden feel so under leveled.

 

[kurisu_1974]

For the love of all that is holy, can someone please tell me where to grind. It is 10/10 and I’m level 58. I want to finish the game, but all the sudden feel so under leveled.

You can grind it out in the last area where you can also restore MP so no worries.

 

[w00ze]

Thank you. I’ll give that a whirl.

 

[JackMcGunns]

This game supports "Play Anywhere" right?

 

[Chuck Berry]

So I’m going to fire this up today. I’ve never finished a Persona so I hope this one sticks.

 

[phant0m]

So I’m going to fire this up today. I’ve never finished a Persona so I hope this one sticks.

Same. So far I’m about 8 hours in, really enjoying it. Combat system is a lot faster than P4/P5 which helps a lot.

Setting is great too, pretty burned out on the “high schoolers save the world” trope tbh

 

[adamsapple]

So I’m going to fire this up today. I’ve never finished a Persona so I hope this one sticks.

When you meet new people, make 'social links' with them, the game will often let you know at the start of an in-game day that one of them wants to talk to you.

Those little events help make your party members strong, or unlock discounts etc in the world shops depending on who you spend time with.

-

Also, in case you just want to focus on the story stuff, the game offers the kind of difficulty options where you can't die, in case you don't want to bang your head against the combat.

 

[Chuck Berry]

I’m 2.5 hours deep and probably still in the prologue but I’m kinda pretty fucking blown away so far with the lore building and the world these guys have created.

I just love being introduced to fresh new worlds like this with lore dumps galore right off the bat. Being able to hit the Memorandum button during dialogue is straight up just like the way FF16 did with its Active Time Lore. Such a cool way to be kept up with what’s happening, what’s happened, the races tribes, who people are etc.

Also I haven’t fought anything yet but the music is fucking amazing. Best soundtrack shouldve gone to this already.

GHG mentioned early on that this game gives off heavy late 90s-early 2000s JRPG vibes and he couldn’t be more correct.

 

[Chuck Berry]

Strohl is already my Garrus

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Just beat the game, was an excellent RPG overall. I would probably give it around a 8.5/10, while FF7R is around a 9.5/10 for me.

There were some pretty significant flaws though, one being it does not respect your time. This is a game that wants you to grind, and grind, and grind. There are hours upon hours of text boxes, repeating the same overdrawn out themes relentlessly to the point of being just straight up obnoxious. The game doesn't do enough to just let you play the game and perhaps could have been better served if they introduced some of the text while you're exploring dungeons. So the pacing is extremely bad as a result. I shouldn't need to sit for hours before I get to a combat scenario. The graphics are terrible and the soundtrack is held back by its lack of orchestration quality.

That said, the battle system is quite good and there's tons of customization with a lot of builds that can be effective. I enjoyed learning and exploring new Archetypes, although it seemed pretty restrictive to experiment across characters due to the punishing amount of grind required. The battle system also seems to be punishing for some of the late-game bosses unless you play a certain way. Especially with how many turns the bosses start getting in the end. It almost seems like a war of attrition at points and the game WANTS you to play a certain way rather than actually being effective with many builds. I didn't enjoy the final boss which seemed to just go on for way too long and required me repeating the same turns over and over just slowly chipping away until finally he's dead. The characters are all pretty charming with excellent voice casting. The narrative is decent, but not mind blowing. Louis is an interesting villain but his motivations are just ridiculous and the game just seems like a caricature of tropes without much nuance.

Quality of life is improved from persona series but still needs some work. Re-wind feature is great, but in order to re-spec my build I need to completely close out of the game during my battles? That's just bad, especially when you don't know how bosses are going to play out much beforehand (the informant information is of limited value).

 

[GateofD]

Never heard of many rpg that you could just pause in the middle of combat and just start changing all your equipment and respec in the middle of battle. I thought Louis was interesting the beginning, but yea at the end, his final motivations is pretty tropey.

Last final bosses did get boring, cause once you get the final archetype, I was just spamming the same OP move for 5k-8k+ every buff cycle, so that kind of threw the flexible customization that you were able to get value of the rest of the game

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Never heard of many rpg that you could just pause in the middle of combat and just start changing all your equipment and respec in the middle of battle. I thought Louis was interesting the beginning, but yea at the end, his final motivations is pretty tropey.

Last final bosses did get boring, cause once you get the final archetype, I was just spamming the same OP move for 5k-8k+ every buff cycle, so that kind of threw the flexible customization that you were able to get value of the rest of the game

Respec and start the battle over, unless I’m missing something in the UI you have to close the game and reload the last save.

Was annoying on the last boss where there were two phases

Which move did 5-8K damage?

I had that almighty move which does 9999 but the cost wasn’t worth it since I couldn’t do any other moves that turn

 

[Complistic]

Diving into this game right after finishing Dragon Age and man was I starving.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Happy holidays from your fav fairy, Gallica!

illustration by Shigenori Soejima

 

[Chuck Berry]

Pretty sure I’m still in the prologue but as with nearly every JRPG I’ve played since I was 12, I overleveled myself at the beginning and kicked that dragons ass in the mines. Didn’t even need two mages for it.

 

[kindaGoth]

Oh man, I guess JRPGS aren’t for me anymore. Between this game, Remake, and FF16, I am on the verge of despising the genre. I used to love them, so maybe I am the one who’s changed.

Regardless I still may try Persona 5 Royale. I had a decent time with the original release before getting burnt out. It was at least less frustrating then the other titles I just mentioned.

It’s funny when things get so much praise and they don’t click with you - at least when it’s something you used to enjoy. I just don’t think the storytelling is very great in these games and there is so much focus on it. I guess that’s an inherent problem for me.

 

[Zephyranthes]

Just finished today, 107 hours to the end.

Spoiler-free thoughts:
+ Combat system is great overall; Atlus continues to be first-in-class when it comes to turn-based JPRG combat. I have mixed feelings about the Archetype system: on one hand, it's a fun take on the classic job system from Final Fantasy, but the strict prerequisites for certain archetypes basically force you to build the party in a specific way.
+ Even though the audio-visual presentation generally feels like a half-step back from the quality of Persona 5, it's still really solid.
+ The English voice acting is fantastic all-around, with Louis being the standout.
+ The playable cast is one of the better ones of the Atlus games I've played (P3/4/5). The game does a good job of giving them agency in the story beyond just accompanying the protagonist.
- There is a lot of recycled side content, and it becomes particularly apparent in the third act of the game. One late-game quest chain has you running three previous side dungeons all over again, and those all had near-identical layouts to begin with.
- The story really runs out of steam after the second act, and so the pacing of the last 30ish hours of the game is painfully slow until the grand finale.

Now with spoilers:
+ Heismay is probably my favorite playable party member in an Atlus game. His visual design is fantastic, his introduction to the story is great, and his personal journey to process his anger and guilt over the death of his son is genuinely compelling.
+ Louis, for the first two acts of the story, is a phenomenal antagonist. As much as I enjoy Atlus games, I've always felt that their writing of antagonists has been a consistent weak spot, as they mostly tend to be different flavors of "evil scumbag with no redeeming qualities". Louis defies this by having a bunch of interesting qualities: honesty, conviction, and pragmatism to name a few. It's a shame, then, that this is followed up by...
- Louis in the third act. I was really hoping that he wasn't going to wind up as yet another doomsday villain in the end, but I suppose Atlus couldn't help themselves. Louis's ideology of "overcoming discrimination and inequality with strength" has a lot of interesting narrative angles that could be pursued, but instead they went with the way more lame direction of "I'm just going to turn the whole world into mindless monsters".
- To extrapolate a bit on my issues with the pacing of the third act, a lot of it has to with how the story relentlessly browbeats the player with its messaging. Did you know about how the party has learned so much on their adventure? Or about how the protagonist is finally ready to be king? Or about how Louis's plan is very bad and very wrong? Well don't you worry, because there are like five separate conversations about each of these, just to make sure you get the point.

Really good game overall, though I would rank it behind P4 and P5 as far as Atlus titles go.

 

[Chuck Berry]

This is easily one of the coolest fucking menu screens I’ve ever seen

One thing these guys know how to do is electrify you with their style and while I can see it being too much for people, I fucking love it. It’s such a unique, (yet familiar if you know persona) sort of presentation that’s just jaw dropping to me.

 

[Chuck Berry]

Alright so I’m in the middle of the cathedral

Me and Strohl are level 16, Heisenberg is 14

I’m a level 20 mage and level 10 healer, Strohl is a lvl 20 warrior and and Berg is a 14 knight, also a level 10 brawler

Am I overleveled or just right

 

[Zephyranthes]

Alright so I’m in the middle of the cathedral

Me and Strohl are level 16, Heisenberg is 14

I’m a level 20 mage and level 10 healer, Strohl is a lvl 20 warrior and and Berg is a 14 knight, also a level 10 brawler

Am I overleveled or just right

I think I finished the Cathedral around 18-20, so you're good. If you're far enough ahead in levels where you can auto-kill mobs on the overworld, the game starts to scale back EXP gain, so you're unlikely to get too overleveled unless you're actively trying to.

 

[Chuck Berry]

Totally gives off the vibes

Good amount of Jodorowsky Dune designs I’ve noticed. Or Moebius. Take your pick.

 

[zapper]

70 hours, 5 days left and I'm (I think and I hope) at the last dungeon, I've done the first two "altars/statues".

exhaustingly boring oof

 

[Garibaldi]

Fired this up last night. Hoping to find something to give me a months worth of something. Just got to the mines.

Does the game start to just let me play soon?

I'm already sick of some character interrupting me to string off a 2 minute monologue about how it's unsafe (did the last 6 battles against butterflies and crows not give it away) or that I can use triangle to initiate a squad battle (that golden nugget of information has been fed to me no less than three times now along with about 20 fights with it indicating it on-screen). It's starting to piss me off.

Atlus games are all like this. Tutorial hell. Let me play the game please.

 

[Valt7786]

70 hours, 5 days left and I'm (I think and I hope) at the last dungeon, I've done the first two "altars/statues".

exhaustingly boring oof

Im just behind you but im feeling the same. Like, its a fine game but im not seeing why its getting such high praise in top 10 lists etc. The story has been..fine. The party members are mostly forgettable compared to other games, the dungeons are utter dogshit, the bosses have been shit too.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

 

[Chuck Berry]

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Is persona 3 reloaded recommended after metaphor?

How is the pacing in comparison?

Game seems a little pricey at $70 still

 

[Chuck Berry]

Welp, I tried. I can't go on

Breezy overworld combat aside, I just can't get into the story or the characters and the in your face politics of it all I'm just not feeling whatsoever. Made it about 25 hours.

Love the style and presentation of it, dig the music and combat, but the rest? Im good. But I am glad I gave it a shot.

Think Im just going to fire up Persona5 Royal instead and see if I can actually stick through that (doubtful but we'll see)

Zero interest in anything coming out until February so the time is there.

 

[sloppyjoe_gamer]

This game has been fantastic but holy fk at the end game padding lol.....like just let me have the final battle with the cocksucker louis. Everytime i think its coming they add an hour of more shit to do