[Boss Mog]

I'm currently playing Metaphor and I'm about two thirds of the way though and I don't get the 94 metacritic for this game at all. The graphics are poor. The dungeon design is very poor and extremely basic , a step back from P5R. There's a very bloated job system where you won't want to use more than a quarter of them. The game expects you to master all these jobs on the protagonist (there's a trophy for it) but there's not enough battles to do so, so you stay and try to grind job exp in some dungeons where there's these rocks that spawn enemies continuously but by doing so you also gain regular exp which makes you level up and once your too high for the enemies you defeat them instantly in the field without entering real combat. Well even though I didn't grind much, I'm above the level in each new dungeon I go to now so I can't do any real fights except the boss of that dungeon. I just one shot everything from the field which is not fun and puts me to sleep.

The story so far is alright. Some good characters, some interesting plot twists. But it's pretty woke. Similarly to Tales of Arise and FF16, Metaphor is also about social injustice and trying to change the world to be some commie utopia.One of the main antagonists wants to create a world where everybody gets an equal shot no matter their race or background, a meritocracy. But the hero and his friends don't like that, they want equity it seems. Another evil faction is the church, one that of course looks a lot like Christianity. At one point a woman who killed countless children is made out to be a victim, she decides to turn herself in to help us and one of your party members says that she doesn't have to, that she suffered enough and shouldn't be punished. It honestly made me sick. Thankfully the "bad guy" church swiftly killed her for her crimes.

I think so far this game is a 75-79 at best and I don't really see how it will shoot up to 94 by the end.

Honestly between this game, FF16 and Tales of Arise that all have this social justice theme, I think Tales of Arise is actually the best of the lot by quite a bit.

 

[Spiders]

Bummer. I had a feeling. The equality / equity thing really sinks my battleship.

 

[regawdless]

Wait a second, FF16 is pushing some commie utopia? I have it on my wishlist, can you elaborate on that? I hate commie shit.

 

[HeresJohnny]

Yep, I decided to pass on this when I heard it was all about teh social justice. Sorry it got by you, man.

 

[Boss Mog]

Wait a second, FF16 is pushing some commie utopia? I have it on my wishlist, can you elaborate on that? I hate commie shit.

FF16 and Tales of Arise both have a slavery theme to their stories and changing the world. In FF16, slavery is there in the background constantly but it's kinda separate from the main bad guy, but he wants to kinda enslave all humans, remove their consciousness and free will... so not really. Most of the side content is about helping "bearers" which are the slaves in the world of FF16. Here's what Gemini says about the bearers:

In Final Fantasy XVI, "Bearers" are individuals born with the innate ability to wield magic without the need for crystals. This ability, however, comes with a heavy societal cost.

• Oppression and Discrimination: Bearers are often branded with a magical tattoo on their face, marking them as different and leading to widespread discrimination. They are frequently treated as second-class citizens, enslaved, or used as tools due to their magical abilities.
• Varying Treatment: While Bearers face prejudice in most societies within Valisthea, the degree of oppression varies. Some realms might use them as soldiers, while others treat them as property.
• Story Significance: The plight of Bearers and their struggle for equality is a central theme in Final Fantasy XVI's narrative. The protagonist, Clive Rosfield, is himself a Bearer, and his journey is intertwined with the fight against the systemic oppression of his kind.
• Contrasting with Dominants: It's important to distinguish Bearers from "Dominants." Dominants are individuals who can also wield magic without crystals but possess the unique ability to transform into powerful beings known as Eikons. Dominants are often revered and hold positions of power, while Bearers are generally looked down upon.

In Tales of Arise, which like Metaphor also has a contest to crown a new ruler, there's two intertwined planets Rena and Dahna and the Renans conquered Dahna enslaved the Dahnans but there's a lot of intrigue to the story as not all it what it seems, and even though there's some "muh oppression", it's less than FF16 I'd say. I also think Tales of Arise has more interesting characters, better bad guys and far better combat than FF16. FF16's combat is alright but there's just not enough moves and variety, you can't switch characters either. Arise is like FF7 Rebirth, you can switch characters during combat and they all play different so it keeps things fresh even if you mostly play the protagonist.

Arise is also looks better aesthetically speaking. The graphics in FF16 are decent but there's no color almost it's all muted and bland, most of the little villages look the same too, I had a hard time remembering which was which sometimes. In Arise every location is vastly different and each very colorful.

FF16 was alright, has some nice set pieces, combat with eikons and such but it was like a 70-75 at best game. Arise is more like 80-85 to me.

 

[JORMBO]

This is the game that puzzled me the most last year. I liked the Persona games a lot, but found this one to be mostly a bad game. Bad graphics. Ps2 level dungeons. Boring characters. Combat that revolves around who hits who first. Unmemorable bosses. Some of the most repetitive and drawn out dialog ever. Stupid plot twist. I gave the game 40 hours because it felt like a game I should enjoy, but dropped it once I realized it just wasn't a good game.

 

[kiNeMs]

I love pers9na games. I put this down after the second dungeon. I thought it was boring. I don't think it's woke though. It just has concepts of class based societies. You can insert your minority group of whatever in as your main protagonist.

 

[Hinedorf]

I love the art style and music......I got just past the first dungeon and something just hit me wrong where there were too much dialogue to the point I just alt f4'd and haven't touched it again.

I definitely didn't give it enough of a chance but it's no Persona 5 thus far to me.

 

[DonDonDonPata]

Thankfully Unicorn Overlord exists.

 

[Zeta Dragoon]

Yeah XVI has little to none of the elements of XII that were emphasized in marketing as being the most influenceal FF to XVI. None of the major cities in XVI are explorable at all you only see them in brief cutscenes.

The continent in the latter part of the game?

Spoiler: FFXVI Spoilers

Its a fucking dead empty wasteland.

Absolute bait and switch.

It also has a gigantic luddite theme with

Spoiler: FFXVI Spoilers

destroying the steamship being shown as a good thing because the world is not ready for it fucking lol. Still you never actually got to directly use it outside cutscenes either.

Tales of Arise and FFXVI also fall off cliffs narratively at certain points. They also compete to have "What is the most absolutely disgusting, fucked up thing you can get away with in a JRPG?"

XVI also has a lot of uncanny resemblances in their MC and theming to Tales of Berseria.

 

[Tapped]

I found Metaphor to be worse than Persona in virtually every way and really can't understand the high scores either. I finished it but it felt like a slog.

Visually it's very poor on a technical level, they're using the same engine as P5 which was made to work on PS3 (when P3R just came out in Unreal and looks way better) so you get loads of blurry textures and small areas with repeating assets. The UI is a mess compared to the sleek designs in P5/P3R. The only saving grace is the art style which does go some way to helping keep things fresh.

Gameplay wise it's massively inferior to P5 and inferior to P3/4 too. The archetype system is terrible, I was expecting something more dynamic but instead you can end up soft locking yourself against a boss, or even a regular enemy, simply because none of your equipped archetypes have it's weakness, or even worse, you're weak to the enemies abilities. So then you die, restart the save, change everyone to have the bosses weakness and now there's no challenge to the fight at all. The difficulty is awful balanced because of the aforementioned issue and the turn/half turn system feels shit compared to the knockdown/one more/all out attack style featured in persona games. In Persona the combat feels like it has flow. In Metaphor it feels clunky and obtuse. The mainline dungeons are mediocre and very forgettable, unlike Persona where they have unique and memorable environments and mechanics, the side dungeons also use the same tileset many times and are a chore to complete.

The characters aren't anywhere near as endearing and interesting as Persona. The voice acting (English at least) leaves a lot to be desired, you have this odd mix of various accents from around the UK along with American voices and it just feels out of place. Personality and social link wise nobody feels like they have a proper story, it generally seemed rushed and forced. I found myself not caring at all about the characters and just wanting to progress the social link to access the next perk, unlike Persona where I want to progress a social link to see how that characters unique story unfolds.

The story has a decent premise but never really peaks and towards the end very much fizzles. The MC explains how they want to make a fair and equal society over and over again and it just becomes so boring that you don't want to hear it any more. The plot twists/reveal moments feel bland and boring compared to Persona. The writing almost feels too safe, like they wanted to do something edgy but were worried it wouldn't go down well so they played it safe and toned things down. Persona 5 was guilty of having conversations where a lot is said with very little substance but Metaphor takes it to the next level with the same stuff being repeated time and time again.

I complained more and went into some specifics in the OT as I played through but overall I was really disappointed with Metaphor, I wanted to love it because I'm a big Persona fan but it just really missed the mark with me and it's actually got me a little worried about P6.

Edit: Forgot to complain about the soundtrack. Persona OSTs are so unique and varied with very distinct and memorable songs from dungeon themes to environments to ambience for dramatic moments etc. Metaphor basically has like 2 or 3 unique pieces and then everything sounds very similar to these as either a derivation or just generic fantasy JRPG style music.

 

[Spiders]

really can't understand the high scores

Water in the desert. 2024 was a brutal year for normie gaming.

 

[Boss Mog]

Thankfully Unicorn Overlord exists.

I have it, it's in my backlog, I'll try to play it this year.

 

[Boss Mog]

I found Metaphor to be worse than Persona in virtually every way and really can't understand the high scores either. I finished it but it felt like a slog.

Visually it's very poor on a technical level, they're using the same engine as P5 which was made to work on PS3 (when P3R just came out in Unreal and looks way better) so you get loads of blurry textures and small areas with repeating assets. The UI is a mess compared to the sleek designs in P5/P3R. The only saving grace is the art style which does go some way to helping keep things fresh.

Gameplay wise it's massively inferior to P5 and inferior to P3/4 too. The archetype system is terrible, I was expecting something more dynamic but instead you can end up soft locking yourself against a boss, or even a regular enemy, simply because none of your equipped archetypes have it's weakness, or even worse, you're weak to the enemies abilities. So then you die, restart the save, change everyone to have the bosses weakness and now there's no challenge to the fight at all. The difficulty is awful balanced because of the aforementioned issue and the turn/half turn system feels shit compared to the knockdown/one more/all out attack style featured in persona games. In Persona the combat feels like it has flow. In Metaphor it feels clunky and obtuse. The mainline dungeons are mediocre and very forgettable, unlike Persona where they have unique and memorable environments and mechanics, the side dungeons also use the same tileset many times and are a chore to complete.

The characters aren't anywhere near as endearing and interesting as Persona. The voice acting (English at least) leaves a lot to be desired, you have this odd mix of various accents from around the UK along with American voices and it just feels out of place. Personality and social link wise nobody feels like they have a proper story, it generally seemed rushed and forced. I found myself not caring at all about the characters and just wanting to progress the social link to access the next perk, unlike Persona where I want to progress a social link to see how that characters unique story unfolds.

The story has a decent premise but never really peaks and towards the end very much fizzles. The MC explains how they want to make a fair and equal society over and over again and it just becomes so boring that you don't want to hear it any more. The plot twists/reveal moments feel bland and boring compared to Persona. The writing almost feels too safe, like they wanted to do something edgy but were worried it wouldn't go down well so they played it safe and toned things down. Persona 5 was guilty of having conversations where a lot is said with very little substance but Metaphor takes it to the next level with the same stuff being repeated time and time again.

I complained more and went into some specifics in the OT as I played through but overall I was really disappointed with Metaphor, I wanted to love it because I'm a big Persona fan but it just really missed the mark with me and it's actually got me a little worried about P6.

Edit: Forgot to complain about the soundtrack. Persona OSTs are so unique and varied with very distinct and memorable songs from dungeon themes to environments to ambience for dramatic moments etc. Metaphor basically has like 2 or 3 unique pieces and then everything sounds very similar to these as either a derivation or just generic fantasy JRPG style music.

I agree with almost everything you said. The only thing I disagree with is the voice acting. I find it quite good for the most part. I don't mind all the different accents. The only voice I dislike is the protagonists. He sounds pretty gay to be honest and it just doesn't fit. Thankfully he doesn't talk much. I regret not playing in Japanese though, because I found out that Heismay's voice actor is the one that does Kenpachi's voice in Bleach and I love that dude's voice.

 

[Adam Warlock]

Wait a second, FF16 is pushing some commie utopia? I have it on my wishlist, can you elaborate on that? I hate commie shit.

FF16 is actually an allegory against religion, nothing really to do with communists.

 

[regawdless]

FF16 is actually an allegory against religion, nothing really to do with communists.

Oh well, that's fucking great and totally novel. Religion bad, haven't heard that one. Makes me very excited.

 

[Bonfires Down]

I gave the demo a shot and unfortunately it delivers on all the things I don't like about JRPGs. Extremely wordy without saying much of interest, which I think is especially damning in the beginning of a game. Strohl is one of the least interest characters I've seen and there's barely anyone else to pick up the slack.

The combat seems like the same mindless grind as in Persona 3 where all that matters is that you use the correct element the enemy is weak against.

And while I'm ok with the outdated visuals, the amazing cutscenes brings into stark contrast what could have been.

A bit of a shame because the world seems kind of interesting with humans as grotesque monsters and the dead king's face appearing as a giant floating island.

And I must admit this thing is pretty cool:

 

[Boss Mog]

FF16 is actually an allegory against religion, nothing really to do with communists.

Really? I didn't really get that at all. Is it in reference to the main bad guy, like he's god and everybody should be happy to serve him or something? For me the main bad guy was kinda just there in the background, the main story was about social justice and the plight of the bearers and the systemic oppression they face. There's a lot more side content than main content, and I did all the side content, so maybe that's why I feel that way but when I played the main bad guy was like an afterthought I felt. Also when I said "commie", I wasn't really referring to actual communism, just the drumming of "the message" about social justice that is all the rage with blue-haired non-binary degenerates of today.