Get Played - We Play, You Play: Metaphor: ReFantazio

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Matt, Heather and Nick discuss the surprise hit and GOTY contender Metaphor: ReFantazio! They talk about how it iterates on the Atlas formula, their gripes and what they love, the incredible music and art direction, and more. No spoilers!! Check out our brand new merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayed. Follow us on social media @getplayedpod. Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com. Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com. For ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? and our Premium DLC episodes and our exclusive show Get Anime'd go to patreon.com/getplayed. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. People throwing parties, ugly sweaters everywhere, stockings hung up by the chimney with care. It could only mean one thing. McRib is here. At Participating McDonald's for a limited time. Alright, we have a time limit for this operation. We only have 12 days to infiltrate the cathedral and kill the vicious human that is threatening the town. Okay, okay, 12 days, 12 days. We gotta focus, we gotta set our priorities straight.

There's a lot on the line here, and if we don't get this done within the allotted time, things are gonna be really bad, really fast. And honestly, I think we should spend this time preparing. Yes. You know, like get our meds, get our armor, whatever it is that we need taken care of so that we can roll in and lay that human out.

Yes, we don't need to rush right in. We should make sure we are adequately prepared for this ultimately decisive battle. Maybe even increase our courage and intelligence and things like that. That would be really handy. All right, so, I don't know, what do you guys want to do today?

I was thinking we go to, like, the Build a Bear workshop, build some bears that look like us. Yeah, I could build a bear. It's just one day of the many days that we have. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we've got 12 days. And there's no reason we can't just build a bear today. Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer. All right, we have 11 days left.

11 days, 11 days, 11 days. Okay, okay. I don't feel like yesterday was a waste. I want to say I love my bear. Yeah. Me too. I feel slightly more imagination that I have, like a little bit more of imagination than before.

Yeah, we got to be creative, so that was actually really, really good. Okay, things we have to do. We got to get medicines. We have to get recipes. We have to get armor. We should get medicines. We have to get recipes. We have to get armor. We should get weapons. I wanna go to the Mag Trader. I think there was some side quest we needed to do.

Yeah, yeah, okay. Also, I just, I really wanna try the New Jersey Mike's pastrami. I feel like it's gonna be a pretty heavy meal, so you know, we should kind of budget a lot of time for it. I could eat, I could eat some pastrami. Yeah, I could eat, I could eat. We've got a lot of time.

Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer. All right, 10 days until we need to infiltrate the cathedral and kill the human. You know what? The bear was good, but the sandwich was really, really good. The sandwich is great. The sandwich slapped, man. You know, I'm gonna say, with only 10 days remaining,

what I think we should do is go back to that Jersey Mike's and try that sandwich again. Time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer. I wasn't as good the second time. No, it was like way better the first time, but I think the difference was- The novelty of it. It didn't travel good.

Yeah, that's the thing. We should have eaten it on site. We shouldn't have brought it back. Well, I don't see why we can't, I agree. And I don't see why we can't do that today, because I feel like we wasted that sandwich. Third time's the charm, perhaps? Excuse me, adventurers, adventurers,

my son is trapped in a building. Can you rescue him? Shut up, shut up. We've got to get to Jersey Mike's. Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer. Okay, it was really, really good this time. Yeah, it was good. I think it's a good sandwich. It is.

I think I'm gonna land on good. Yeah, yeah. Maybe not like extremely good, but like good. But it was hitting this time. Yeah. I know we have, I think, seven days left. Nine? Eight?

Eight? Where are we? It doesn't fucking matter. I don't even know what day it is. Who even knows? But I just know that whatever, I cannot do any of the prep today. I'm just so tired.

Yeah. I need to look at now. We just need to fucking chill. I just want to look at my phone. You know, I've got this cool 90s commercials compilation on YouTube that I want to show you. You want to watch that? Yeah, we can watch that.

Alright, cool. Now we've mixed yummy chips of chocolate in a creamy vanilla frosting. New chocolate chip Dunkaroos. Hip hip for chocolate chip. Time marches on and the age of a new King draws nearer Now after watching those commercials I kind of want to eBay some Dunkaroos time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer oh Cool, the Dunkaroos are here. Let's eat them. Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer.

Hey guys, I think I got food poisoning from either the Jersey Mikes or the Dunkaroos. Yeah, hard to know. I gotta go to the urgent care. I feel awful. I think I got it too. Yeah, let's all take a sick day, let's go to urgent care, we'll get them tomorrow. Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer. Man, I feel way better.

I feel so good. I think I'm actually ready to put my best foot forward and start to maybe think about doing some of the things we got to do to prepare. Yeah, definitely. Because we definitely don't want to find ourselves under the gun. So we could divide and conquer here.

We could get some medicine. We could get armor. We could get, um. We could get armor. We could get- We could go to the Mag Trader, maybe check the weather. I was thinking, I don't know about you, but this might be a battle that could cost us our lives to save this town, fighting this human.

I don't wanna die without knowing what happens in Gladiator 2. And it's an IMAX, so. Is it? Yeah, it's not gonna's an IMAX so yeah it's not gonna be an IMAX for for long so I mean if we watch it we might get better at fighting we might get inspired time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer gladiator 2 slapped it was really good and good oh yeah ice cream truck ice cream truck cream truck! Time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer.

It was an ambulance, I was confused. Time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer. Guys, guys we fucked up. We fucked up. We gotta fight this thing tomorrow. Oh my god, it's the deadline. Yes, the deadline. We gotta fight tomorrow. Oh fuck. We're not prepared at all. We ate so many sandwiches and built so many bears.

Oh my god. I love my bears. Did I tell you guys I named one jersey and one mic? That's so cute. Pretty good, huh? Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer. Fantasy is dead!

We surf on a sword and experience discrimination as we play You Play One of the Year's Best Games, Metaphor Re-Fantazio, this week on Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. That's me, Nick Weiger. I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaca.

Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premier video game podcast where we are talking about one of the biggest games of the year, and we mean that both in terms of quality and in ourage, it's metaphor refantasio. It's a big boy, and we got a lot to say. We got a lot to say about the big boy. What can we say? I've got a lot to say about a big boy.

Like proud parents, we got a lot to say about a big boy. My friend had a baby. Oh, how about that? Yeah, and it's a big boy. Wow. It's a huge boy. Like, the baby is six months old, and it's wearing the clothes of a three-year-old toddler. Wow, how about that?

It's a huge, big baby. Ever know their birth weights? I was a big baby. I was 10 pounds, 6 ounces. Fucking huge. That's nuts. Yeah. I was a set of twins, so the combined weight,

quite large of course. However, I was very small when I was born. I had to stay behind. Wow. In the NICU to get healthy before I could go home. Not to bring us down, but. My brother tried to kill me in the womb. Oh boy.

I tried to kill myself in the womb. I boy. I tried to kill myself in the womb I uh my mom had to have a c-section because I got the umbilical cord around my neck I was trying to hang myself as she gave birth. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Did you like see what the future was gonna tell? Yeah Yeah, I did that thing from martyrs See the other side oh my god We can see the other side. Oh my God. So Richelle Chen, our regular producer, Ranch, is out this week. But with us is our Able guest engineer, our buddy Sam Rogich.

Hi Sam, good to have you. Hi Sam. Hey guys, thanks for having me. Of course. Sam, your band Guk has a new single out. That's right. People should check it out. Check it out.

Streaming. There you go. Hey, we got a lot to talk about with Metaphor, but first, let's talk about some other video games we've been playing. It's What Are You Playing? What are you playing? Hey, it's me, the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm here to answer the question of the week.

What are you playing? What? Usually you tee it up, like who's gonna go, and you kind of just were looking at both of us like yeah I'm just waiting to be one for one of us to be teed. Oh Do I do that or one of the any? Usually say to one of to one of us usually me or Matt But sometimes Heather you kind of could just just toss some sort of an underhand pitch. Do you want me to go again?

You don't even do another take honestly everything you said up to there was good. We just need to add on to it. Dear audience, I am sorry. No, apology is not warranted here. You don't have to read from your notes app. I've made some mistakes over the last few years. And I say this with full recompense that I am diligently trying to change my behavior. I take no onus for what has been done,

but instead allow myself to fully foot the blame. My apologies and that's the truth. Resident Evil Mervins. That was like, that was from the heart. Yeah, it was very heartfelt. And if it makes you feel better, then I think it was a good use of our time. But yeah, so all we need to do is- You think I could use that to get uncancelled? Um, you weren't cancelled.

No, yeah. Yeah, but I'm gonna be. No, you're not gonna be. You're gonna be fine, Resident Evil Merchant. Yeah, don't relish the idea. Honestly, no, I've got some plans. That's because, maybe, I'm gonna be cancelled thus far. Yeah. I think you're gonna be fine, Resident Evil Merchant. Don't relish the idea. Honestly, no, I've got some plans. It's because, A.B., I'm gonna cancel thus far. Yeah.

I think you're gonna be fine. I will say, while we're in this period of giving notes, it is, you've been doing this job for so long. Yeah. It's kind of shocking that you would make a mistake like this, this far. Yeah, yeah, interesting. Are you okay?

I have a lot on my mind. I adopted a cat. Oh, that's nice I'm a cat lover. Oh, yeah, I have two cats myself. What flavor is your litter? Oh Jesus Christ Why I only use pretty litter, of course delicious Nick why don't you tell me what is your playing? Resident Evil Merchant, thank you so much. You're welcome. I wanna talk about UFO 50,

which is a game that came out earlier this year that I've spent some time with. UFO 50, for those who don't know, is a collection of 50 games crafted by different indie developers. The conceit of it, it is presented as, it's basically like the fictional library for a fictional console. And it's presented in this framing device where you have a bunch of fictional details.

I keep saying the word fictional, but it's just how well realized this is that this is all stuff that's invented, but feels real. And that says like the release dates, when these games came out in the early 80s, who the developers were, what the reception was, what the historical context was for it. For instance, like this game used new hardware to enable more colors per sprite. So this game in particular has particularly detailed characters or that's their justification for it.

And all that stuff is really fun. The console hardware capabilities that everyone is working with is somewhere, I feel like above Atari 2600 but below Famicom NES, if that makes sense. It's kind of like a, you know, not quite as old school as those first couple console gens, but also not quite an 8-bit gen. And that presents some really cool designs and aesthetic choices. I mean, I think it has like, yeah, I don't know if it's a 16-color palette or an 8-color palette.

It's not a ton of colors that are being worked with, but it's like, it's cool to see all the different variations that are made and the same sort of thing with the with whatever the the sound chip emulation or or the you know The limited number sounds that can be Emitted from whatever they're using as a baseline You know that there's there's a bunch of different takes on how to make take advantage of that My thought on this game overall, and I do enjoy it, and I do think it's really cool,

and I do think it's an incredible art piece, but with an Indiana Jones game in the zeitgeist right now, this belongs in a museum, I guess. I guess that's what I'd say, because what I admire about it is that the games collectively nailed the look and feel of early game design, where there's

so much quirkiness and awkwardness. You know, gameplay stopping abruptly when you acquire an item for no certain, no particular reason. It's like, you got an energy cube! And like, all gameplay stops and the text slowly comes up on screen. Or just, you know, when you die and it's like like you have failed you know Whatever like it's like it's like kind of messaging that feels a little bit Everything just feels a little bit awkward possibly like poorly localized at times. Yeah also, but also kind of charming in that way

And then a lot of these are games that that are They feel like either arcade games or the kind of early console games that were adapted from arcade design where it was, hey, we're gonna try to have a punishing difficulty curve, we are going to have short gameplay sessions, and maybe you get one life and then you die

and then you're done, there's no continues, or maybe you get a limited number of lives But you're set up to fail because we want you to pump more quarters into this sum bitch Also things like you know games that have like super slow walk cycles and like clunky like slow attack animations with weird hit boxes It's like intentionally cumbersome to evoke what it was like to play a game from that era I think it's absolutely awesome at that But it also means that some of these games are not super fun to play

And I don't even I don't even think that's like the developers be doing a bad job I think that's them trying to be like hey, we're trying to present a Game as it was in this era. We're trying to invent Yeah, not a invent not a retro game that feels modern, but a retro game that actually feels retro. It's not just an aesthetic choice. It also is a core part of the gameplay. One example I'll give.

A game I overall enjoyed, but a game that I don't really have an urge to play more of, Onion Driver, which is like a game. It's basically a top-down crazy taxi. You're going around making deliveries to a bunch of different targets on a map. But it's one of those things that's clearly meant to present like, hey, we didn't quite know how to do controls for driving games yet.

So there is an acceleration and reverse button, but the steering is extraordinarily clunkyunky and it's just a very cumbersome game to play but it also has things like it has like, you know, you're an alien and there's There's a cutscene with there. There's there's cutscenes with the aliens explaining You know what the what the weather conditions are today or whatever or what's or what's going on right now? And all that shit is really cool. And you know, again, just makes it feel like a real game. Also, there's some games that I do really enjoy, like really appreciate, because they're not just like demos,

they're like fully realized games. There's this one game, Bug Hunter, that I think is just the second game in the collection, that's like a turn-based strategy game, and it's genuinely really fun, and I found myself spending a lot of time with it. And so, I don't know, I think this is worth experiencing if you love games, I'm just not sure how much

I'll ultimately come back to this one. I'm more just like happy that it exists, and I think just anyone who, I think both of you should try it, should play it at some point because I think it's just a cool thing to see what it's attempting and what it's succeeding at. Are all 50 of the games available at the start?

Yes, no, there's no progression you have to play through the first game to unlock the next set or anything like that. You can go straight to the 50th game in the collection. And in fact, I think a great way to play it is either to Just go through them all in sequence and spend some time with them. I mean You know yeah, you know I some of these games You don't have to spend a ton of time with to get what they're trying to do

Or just go like scattershot like completely out of order and just like play number 49 and then play number 23 or whatever It's been on my radar. I just haven't committed to doing it, but maybe I should just get it on the Steam Deck and see what's going on. It's gonna be a good Steam Deck game. I imagine it runs well. It doesn't seem technically intensive. I wish I still had my Steam Deck,

which was Nick's Steam Deck. Because this is exactly the right game for it. Yeah. And I... I feel fool. You feel fool? I feel fool. I'm fool.

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So recently, my manager, who is my professional representative, got me a gift. And it was, I believe it's called the R40S Pro, which is a handheld device that comes preloaded with a ton of emulated games on it. It's got like emulation station pre-built in. You turn it on out of the box. The box is from Amazon. It's not like, oh, I had to order this through some clandestine serpentine.

He got it off Amazon, it comes to my house, I open up the box, I'm like, wow, what's this? I turn it on and this fucking thing has 3,000 or 30,000, I don't know what it is. Games built into it, how the fuck is this legal? How is it that you can buy this thing? Because usually when I'm preloading emulators onto a thing, then you gotta find the ROMs

and I already own this game so I don't feel bad about it or it's discontinued and there's no other way to play it. But there's a lot of hoops you have to jump through. Are there some big gaps of, oh, it's clearly missing games from these developers or whatever? No, I mean, fucking thing has Dreamcast on it. I open up Dreamcast and it's got Crazy Taxi. They're massive games.

It's not like, I mean not that Crazy Taxi's the massivist game. It had everything from Super NES, everything from Genesis, like full software libraries. It might just not be legal. I mean that's the thing, it might just be that Amazon's just selling something that's illegal or an Amazon third party seller.

Well, how, well it comes in the official Amazon with the smile box, right? I don't know what to tell you. I mean like I, I just, I, I can't imagine Well, it comes in the official Amazon with the smile box. Right? I don't know what to tell you. I mean, I just, I can't imagine that that was fully above board and officially licensed knowing how game licensing is. I mean, cause even the version of Crazy Taxi

that's on Steam is like not the version that's on Dreamcast. Oh, it's got the music. It's got the like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's no way this thing is above board. But like, how can you get that? I mean, like, I don't want me to sound naive, but I imagine a store like Amazon isn't the kind of place where you can go

to just buy illegal goods, right? I think because they have such an enormous inventory that maybe that they err on the side of allowing things up as opposed to being restrictive on what can be listed. And so probably you do end up with situations like that. I'm sure on eBay the same, you can buy all sorts of semi-legal stuff. eBay seems a lot more obvious to me.

You could get modded hardware, modded software, all that shit on eBay, and it doesn't make me bat an eye It's weird to go to what is effectively online Sears and buy like Every super NES game for 50 bucks But you can like buy like AI written biographies about people who are like alive like like it's like it's it's I Don't know. It's that's it's weird like Like like it's like it's it's I don't know it's it's that's it's weird like I guess I say that to say anything could be on I could put something on Amazon like it's probably coming from a third-party seller It's not like a verified Amazon seller necessarily isn't that strange. It's weird, but it's weird

But you can buy similar things on like Etsy of like yeah people like you know just like loading up flash carts with ROMs or whatever. Etsy makes sense to me because it feels like I'm going to a garage sale. It's like more user generated. Like it's like, oh, somebody selling a Vita with every PlayStation and PSP game already built in, that tracks, because I feel like,

oh, I've wandered into somebody's garage and this is a small pseudo business where they are probably not saying that they got all the money that they got to the IRS, right? It's fucking Amazon. In the listing, does it say, like, comes with every game you've ever heard of? Yes.

Like, it's like, ha ha ha ha. Because I love that. That's what I just looked up. I was like, before I go on this rant, I should see what is, like, it features, like, before I go on this rant, I should see what is, like, it features like, Super Nintendo graphics in the fucking picture of the thing. Yeah, because I feel like when you buy like a flash cart

or something, it'll be like for dumping your previously owned ROMs onto, like, then you sort of can fill in the blanks, like, from there, if you were 56 gigabyte storage space and pre-installed with 30,000 games as well as support for 20 emulators You'll be able to revisit a vast array of classic games. That's telling you what it is Yeah, but I guess it's not saying like explicitly what it is like 30,000 games could mean anything. Yeah

It's wild. Yeah There's some loophole that's being exploited. Of course All I know is there more few years back someone uploaded the 2016 NBA dunk contest to Pornhub So we shouldn't just expect things to be in their right place on On the internet can't fucking jack off Anyway, that's what I've been playing. It's perfect for trips. It seems cool. The picture you showed of it, it was actually pretty slick looking. It's so slick looking.

The screen is like an OLED screen, like an IPS OLED screen or some shit. It looks like you're looking at the screen of an iPhone. It kind of makes me mad because of all the Little devices that I've bought that are exactly like that that I had to do it all myself No, you can just go on Amazon and click click purchase and honestly It's like a hundred dollars at most fifty dollars for most of them. Yeah, fifty bucks The whole world in your hand pretty nice Matt. What are you playing? Oh look? I rolled a new character in Diablo 4 I bought the expansion. I love it

I rolled a spirit a spirit born character But what I'm realizing is it's taking me straight through to the vessel of hatred expansion yes so so by default it basically does the And and I should have talked about this when I talked about my play through of Vessel of Hatred, but by default it skips the main game content. And it just sort of starts you out in the post game slash Vessel of Hatred content. I do kind of wish that flag was a little bit more

forefronted when you make that character. Cause I kind of had the same sort of thing. It was like, oh, I kind of, I had forgotten some of the specifics of the base game and I kind of wanted to go through some of that story again with the spirit porn. Because my previous character was a sorcerer, which I was enjoying,

but just kind of bounced off of it at the time. And the seasonal stuff wasn't happening yet, so it's kind of like, it's an offline character, basically. So when I try to load that one up, it's like, your progression's not gonna carry through for X, Y, and Z or whatever through the seasonal stuff. You're not gonna be able to participate in the seasonal rewards, things, whatever.

And I'm like, I kinda wanna do that stuff. So maybe what I'm supposed to do is start another character that's not the DLC character first, go through that stuff, and then come back to my spirit-borne character. I think you can go through the store. I think you just need to like uncheck whatever the box or check the box that makes it so you'll skip the campaign.

I think you can still play through the single-player campaign or single-player campaign, the regular, the main campaign, the main game campaign as a spirit-borne. I'll have to look, because I am enjoying it. It's such a cool, cool new abilities, cool new fighting style and stuff. And I just like, I double-dipped on this because it was on sale in the PlayStation Store with the bundle with both.

So I'm playing it on my PS5 and on my Portal. And it's great. I'm having a blast with it. I can't wait to sink some more time into it. Because I forgot about this part of playing Diablo. Yes. Is that it does require some It requires your attention and your participation of course But it doesn't require that much thought kind of like I kind of don't really care about the story of Diablo

Like of what's happening in the in in the story. I will say somebody's played all the Diablo games I generally don't care too much about the story either It's just kind of functional by do you think the story in Diablo IV is pretty strong. And I think it's good in Vessel of Hater as well. I'll be paying attention to stuff, but I kind of just want to be clicking a bunch of buttons and killing a bunch of guys. That's just what's fun.

And it's a very good second screen sort of experience, playing it on my portal and we're watching Survivor or something. It's just me mashing buttons and doing something else. It's it's it's I I fell back in love with it. I'm excited to continue playing it. Oh, yeah. I wish there was a beam. All that to say, I'm really enjoying Diablo four, and I can't wait to get back into it. But yeah, I do wish the Sorcerer had a beam, is the thing. There was a great, one of my favorite beams of all time

in Diablo 3, and it's just not in there, and I wish it was. Yeah, I don't think anyone didn't use all the spirit-borne abilities, but I don't think there's a beam, but there's a gorilla. I do like that. Yeah. Gorillas.

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Use code HEADGUM at checkout to save. Headgum. That's right. Terms and conditions apply. Of course. Thank you, Aura Frames. All right, let's get to business. Our We Play, You Play of Metaphor Riff on Tazio developed by Studio Zero, released this year

by Atlas and Sega, directed by Katsura Hoshino character designs by Shigenori Sojima and music by Shoji Meguro and some other people on the team. It is essentially a Persona 5 total conversion mod but nothing wrong with that and a game that I don't think was on any of our radars I don't think was on the larger gaming presses radars it comes out obviously now one of the Game Awards nominees for Game of the Year. Not that they're the arbiter of all of game criticism, but I think it's a pretty good indicator

of just how prominent in this discourse this game became. Again, just kind of as a total shock. Former guest on the pod, Gene Park, has called it a life-changing game. One of his, I mean, that's not a direct quote, or maybe it is, but he's gone on effusively about how much this game meant to him and how much fun he had playing with it.

And that's kind of what, I don't know, beaconed me to the game. Yeah. Yeah, I was not, I had, you know, I was aware of it, was like, you know, after we did like, Persona 5 Royal on the show, like it wasn't like a shock to me that Atlas was like cooking up another like big RPG,

but I was just like probably not very interested in it. And then when everybody's saying that it's like so good, I was like, I gotta get my hands in there. So what's going on? I wonder if when you're sitting on a game like that at Atlas, if you're concerned about the reception or if you know you've got a banger. Like if you know that you've got a great joke

and you're a standup and you know you're about to land that joke, like you know, you're ramping up to the delivery. And I wonder if Atlas is like, we fucking know what we've got, and I can't wait to unleash it on the world. Yeah, I don't know. I'd be interested, because I'm, obviously they would have play tested the shit

out of this internally, but you know, who knows to, I don't think they could have play-tested the shit out of this internally, but who knows? I don't think they could have anticipated this reception. Look, I love this game. I mean, I think it's a, what a fucking video game. I think it's a masterpiece. I think it's really awesome. I don't like it as much as Persona 5 Royal for what it's worth, and I finished Persona 5 Royal

about 130 hours into it, but there's probably like 30 games I've played in my life that I like as much as Persona 5 Royal. So, you know, that's not necessarily any sort of indemnification of this. I do have a few gripes, and I kind of want to just like frontload my gripes, and maybe if we have any other grievances, we can just sort of get those out of the way,

because I think that it's a game that has... I think anyone who's played it, who's listening to this has moments where you're kind of like, this game rocks, but come on. You know what I mean? There's a few bits of frustration. Here's my list. There's some weird UX inconsistencies,

particularly when shopping. There's some merchants where they have an inventory of different things you could buy, others that sell one or two like reagents. And that's just like it's, it's presented a completely different way and I find it disorienting. There's some superfluous stealth one on one sections, and just like outright bad action sequences that I feel like are in there just to break it break things up. And I just don't know why they're in there. And that ties in with there's some unclear signposting in terms of how some of this stuff works. For instance, there's one stealth section I was going through kind of in the in the in the back end of the game, where I didn't realize once there were some items, and I was like, Okay, well, once I take out all of these enemies, then they need to take out, then I'll go back and collect these items. I didn't realize as soon as I took out that last enemy,

it just like brought me into a cinematic that took me out of that area and that stuff was just back gated off. So it's just stuff like that. I didn't know that was coming. And you know, honestly, from a signposting standpoint, there's also times where it's like, I didn't know this was a place I could enter.

You know what I mean? Like there's just like some shops that don't have a clear indication that you could go into it or taverns. There's cooking in this game and I don't find it particularly rewarding same deal with the fishing and it's also kind of sluggish because It's based around these repeated NPC interactions that that you know are one of the things for a game with like a lot of Dialogue those are the times where I'm like, I'm I kind of wish there was a little bit less of this also on that note

like Persona 5 Royal has an unnamed protagonist that you name, like Persona 5, like a lot of JRPGs, unlike those games, the protagonist actually has some voiced dialogue, which I find really disorienting and really takes me out of it. And also, because it's sparse,

it's just kind of interspersed a little bit, just enough where I'm kind of like, I kind of feel like you could have figured out a way to not do this at all. And maybe there will ultimately be an update where they just take that stuff out because it feels like it doesn't need to be there. Wait, I'm confused about that complaint.

Yeah. So when the protagonist, even though you've named him, you don't like that he speaks? Like his voice acting? No, I just don't think that care. I like the mute protagonist. Oh, okay. I'd rather it be like Chrono and Chrono Trigger.

I also don't love that there's some, in between these acts, so basically like, when you move from town to town, which is kind of how it anchors each of the different acts of this game, it's such a prolonged sequence. Like, it's just like these super duper long, one of them I had, like, my save between the two of them was three hours apart.

I was like, I couldn't believe how long it took to transition from one act to the next. And a lot of it is non-interactive. A lot of it is just one big, long cut scene. Maybe they'll be like, hey, here's a mini boss fight, and then we'll go back to more and more cut scene. Hey, maybe it's a little bit of where you can control your character.

But my main issue is, and I know I'm front loading these things with a laundry list of grievances, but this is my last one. The performance I wish was a little better, especially on PC. I returned, and my rig is no slouch, but I returned the PC version because I was getting a lot of really bad performance and graphically and then just some like a bunch of audio bugs that really took me out of it. Like I couldn't even tell, I didn't even know there was spoken dialogue for in-game because it was mixed so low on the PC version it was something I could never ultimately resolve.

So I returned that version and re-bought on PS5, which has also not been great performance-wise, but it is a much more functional version of the game. So those are my complaints. Well, you were saying too, before we started, that you wish it was still set in a high school. All right. I will say, a big part of... This is one of those things where,

so this is more of a high fantasy approach as opposed to Persona 5, the real world, the persona sort of real world Shin Megami Tensei approach. And I do just kind of like, aesthetically, I do like the setting and the look and the feel of the persona, it gains more than this. But I do think this is really effective and has some really cool art direction.

Yeah, I guess if I'm thinking about it, I do like fake fantasy setting less than, like, actual Japan. Like, that's a little less interesting to me. Yeah, I guess when you're walking around Tokyo, and this is like a genre on TikTok, of like people who walk around Tokyo and they put the persona music behind're walking around Tokyo, and this is like a genre on TikTok, of like people who walk around Tokyo and they put the persona music behind their walking around and they're like, feels like I'm in persona,

that there is a little bit of that lack of, I don't know, tethering to the IP that fosters this sort of deep dive feeling that you have when you play Persona. Because then you can play Persona and then go to a place that's like Persona. But with this, unless you're going to like, I don't know, one town in England,

it's not really, it doesn't scale sort of. And honestly, it's not even like a town in England. It's just fucking bonkers. Yeah, it's its own thing. But again, I just wanna say, those complaints aside, I think this game is awesome. I think it's a masterpiece. I really love it.

This is not necessarily a complaint, but something that stresses me out when I'm playing this game. I'll say I've put like 30 hours into this. I'm not particularly very far into it, but I've played a lot of it, like, you know, hours-wise. Something that stresses me out in games like this, that really only happens in Atlus games, I've noticed,

for me, at like hour 20 I'm getting new pop-ups for like new things I can do like, okay now you can do here's this new mechanic that we're introducing It was like stop showing me new stuff Please it gets like so like I don't know like because I feel like i've learned how to play the game And now they're like now you can do this Here's the way you can synthesize this thing or whatever. And like, this stuff that I've had this whole time, now I can do something completely different with it. And I'm trying not to like, I don't know, like with a game like this,

I wish there wasn't so much going on. Feels like there's like too many different systems and mechanics for me to like, I just wanna hit and walk around and stuff, you know? Man, I love how many mechanics there are, but sorry, keep going Heather. I was gonna say similarly, and this is something I voiced on our text thread,

this game stresses me out in general because I spend all day managing relationships and turning in documents and making a phone call or whatever. And at the end of the day, the last thing I wanna do is then do a synthetic version of that. Like where I'm like, okay, who am I going to prioritize today? And if I don't get to them in time for the deadline, am I ever going to be able to get back to talking to that person,

or is that quest going to be fully gated and locked behind me in perpetuity? Like it's really, it evokes the same feeling of stress that I have at work. And that's part of why I don't, I haven't finished a Persona game yet, is because at some point I'm just like, oh my God, I just want to relax.

But I am on Nick's side where the drip feed of all of the different mechanics and all the different systems and the menus within menus, I am a junkie for that stuff. I just, if I could change one thing about the games, which would make it thoroughly un-Persona-esque, it would be just, take the could change one thing about the games, which would make it thoroughly unpersona-esque, it would be just, take the deadline away, man. Just fucking let me go around whenever I want.

Oh man, I love it so much. And I think we talked about this, Heather, but this is just the place where you and I are in different planets, but we just have, I think, different tastes with this sort of thing. For me, it's like, you know, it's the same reason I love dialogue trees. That's how I have conversations in my brain.

And when I'm this, it's just like, OK, yeah, doing one thing means you're not doing something else. I have to choose priorities. If I can gamify that, it's like a thing for my life. I love it. And I think it's so fun. I think it's so satisfying to figure out what is the best way to optimize my time with the 19 days?

I have before the big event because all these all the different actors structured is that you'll go to a town There'll be some big thing that's going to happen And some big mission. This is exactly what happens in persona and in the in their intermediary time You have to figure out what you want to do, whether you want to go take that on head on immediately, or if you want to do a bunch of side quests, if you want to build relationships with your party members and other NPCs, if you want to go, you know, kill monsters or fight in a coliseum, you know, ways to increase your level and treasure and gear and everything. There's all these sorts of like, you know, spinning plates you have going and it's just a matter of how you want to prioritize that. And I love it because you get one chunk a day, you get the daytime, you get the nighttime and certain NPCs are available in each window.

And I don't know, I think it's really fascinating to try to make those calculations. I also feel like the game is pretty generous in terms of you really are going to be able to do what you need to do. You just can't do everything, if that makes sense. Well that's the, for me, I'm like, did I just fuck over the entire game

because I didn't do that thing? You know, like- Yeah, I would say no. There's not a way to do that in this game. And look, I'll also say, I was really hoping to have finished this game. I had Jury Duty, which effectively ate up two weeks of time I was gonna dedicate to playing this.

I am 50 hours in, so I'm pretty far into it. But I, and I'm on the back end, and like several, like a while ago, it kind of felt like the game stopped adding major mechanics. There'll be things like, you know, hey, here's a new archetype that plays in this different way. But I feel like I basically have everything at my disposal right now. I mean, the deadlines don't really bother me. It's like when-

And also, by the way, the main, whatever the main quest for the act has a deadline. And then also there's some side quests that will have their own deadlines that you have to track. My daughter's gonna die in a day. Can you get me a leaf? You know what? This is another thing.

And since you just brought that up, this game does not pull any punches. It'll be like, my son died. It's like the game starts and very early on, you go and you witness an execution. And the execution is someone unjustly being hanged because of their race. It is like fucking heavy shit that this game is dealing with.

But because it has this layer of high fantasy on top of it, it's like able to grapple with some of these, like, really, really dark themes in an approachable way. But sorry, keep going. Well, it has stuff like that, but it's also then help, it's then it has stuff like, help me make this soup for the tavern. Well, yeah, there's also, I mean, look, that's just like, that's just like all the Like a Dragon Yakuza games.

Did you see that guy get executed? I need carrots. Yeah. I need this special water. Yeah. Yeah. I like the deadline stuff, I do kind of like the deadline stuff

only because I don't really think about, I don't think about my life with deadlines like that. I've never really like I Mean I guess like with big stuff sure like I'm going to Disneyland in a week And I'm like well, it's only a week away till I go to Disneyland. That's pretty cool, but like only seven days Really think about other stuff like that unless it's like a monumental sort of like thing that I know is you know on the horizon or Never, but like I'm not like 365 days until the next year. But I like that this game also interrupts your flow

a little bit with some of the side stuff, and then it's up to you to police yourself whether or not you have enough time to go talk to this little girl instead of do to go talk to this little girl instead of do, you know, the main task that you're, you know, on call for basically. Like it'll be like, oh, I'm hearing a voice. That's Maria, I better go spend some time with Maria.

And then you can either do that or not. And most of the time, I had to, for the first time, ignore her and I felt bad. How dare you. I felt so sad about it. No, I mean, this is the thing. It's like you can't be with everybody at all times, especially as your party starts to grow. You'll have like a half dozen different characters

that are all like chirping at you at once, and it's a matter of choosing who you're going to go spend time with. But that does have a gameplay effect because this game is based off of the archetype system, which is analogous to the persona system and the persona games, but it is more like a job system, more like your character's class and subclasses and switching between them and then having abilities that you can mix and match abilities from different classes, inherit different abilities. And if you spend time with, for instance, Maria, then that helps everything that's in

the healer class lineage. And so all your healer abilities are enhanced, or you have additional slots for skills to inherit or what have you. So part of that is also a calculation of like, hmm, do I need more stats for my gunner or do I need more stats for my thief? Like those decisions go into it as well. But also all of those characters, like primarily most of their quest lines

involves something personal to them that again is oftentimes extraordinarily tragic. Yes. Like, Maria is dealing with the loss of a parent guardian figure, you know? And she's a little girl who's facing discrimination. It's just like, again, just intense shit. I saw you talking to that little girl that seems sad.

I need a basket. And then there's also like the, what's his name? The little freak, the little guy? Well, I mean, like there's a few different little guys. I don't know which one you're talking about. I think his name is, is it Heismay? Yes, yes. Heismay is my guy. I mean, he's my guy.

He's great. I love him. So it's like, it's interesting that- Heismay is very, very frog from Chrono Trigger. Yes. Extremely frog, frog coded. It's just interesting, like what all this, what this game, the sum of all of its parts, like what it could actually just be.

I'm very much enjoying it. It is just like, there was like a, I I don't know with a game like this There's just so much going on that it feels like there's a sort of outside Sort of like pressure to like see all of it and like do all of it But I just know that like the days are not gonna Sort out that way that I'm just not gonna be able to do every single thing So that some people will be disappointed, but then also I mean you know every single thing so that people will be disappointed but then also I mean you know this game unfortunately came out at a very interesting time because like it

has like of it's a you know you're trying to stop a bad election in this game and so like I know that a lot of people that when we said that we were gonna be covering this game we're sort of like how much of it, you know, how much of it is that part of it? And it's, you know, it's kind of all of it, but it is, you know, it feels, it does feel good to be on a good side of something and being like, I have to stop this bad thing from occurring. Like that to me is like,

it's sort of in the same way that like, when Death Stranding came out and then a couple months later this pandemic started and changed everything and then The Last of Us 2 happens while it's going on and it's like this you know you're sort of just dealing with these things too so this game as a form of processing real life has been honestly very helpful and very welcome. Yeah it makes you feel a little bit more empowered. Yes.

Well, I also think this game does not treat you like an idiot. No. And by that I mean, I think the game trusts the user to understand nuance and to understand complex themes and to understand that someone can maybe be fundamentally, understand that someone can maybe be fundamentally, you know, a decent person, but have some instincts that make them, or some history that makes them have some racist

or some classist leanings. And because this is all abstracted through a bunch of fantasy races that also are not like, not only are these fantasy races not cleanly mapped onto, like, oh, I see what, you know, I know what that's supposed to be. Yeah, good choice. Exactly, it's not cleanly mapped onto real, you know, ethnicities in our world.

It's also not cleanly mapped onto existing fantasy tropes. Like, it's not like, like, like, like, like, there are, it's like, oh, I guess that's a kind of akin to the elf, to an elven race, but it's not like elf, dwarf, orc. They aren't these cliche fantasy races that we're familiar with. There's the Kleemar, the Roussaint, the Ujif, the Nidia, the Mustari, who all wear masks.

There's Elda, which your character, the player character is, and Elda is the most human-looking. And the Elda is also the one that's like, kind of like the, uh, you know, the lowest in the hierarchy and the most exotic to everyone. Which is an interesting situation for, you know, to play as a human being in real life. And you say human-looking, even though humans in this game are absolutely do not look like humans.

That's the other thing. So there are humans and the humans are the abominations, these horrific monsters that are these enormous existential threat. They're basically treated like Kaiju. And so, and I love that, cause all the time they're talking about like, I'm terrified of that vicious human

Yeah, it's like anytime that comes up. I'm just absolutely tickled by I think it's such an awesome choice Just to call them the humans and the art design on those guys. Sorry, man No, I was gonna say the exact same thing you're about to say. Yeah, the art design on the humans is fucked Yeah, like it'll be like an egg with an eyeball and a crown and one leg it'll it like it looks like somebody did a cell shaded versions of Shadow of the Earth tree bosses like they're they're fucked up dudes. Yeah. Yeah, it's like It is it's one of my favorite parts of is that like and that's something I loved in persona 5 Is that like atlas just like just goes for it with with character design

That's just a dick in a chariot. All right I want to circle back to something that you were saying about the Having the protagonist having voiced lines. Yes when when you're faced with making a Giving your character a name in a game like this where it's supposed to be a sort of just like blank slate kind of thing, I always struggle. Cause also you have to give yourself a name at the beginning of the game.

And it's a self outside of the game. Yes, it's like, who are you who are playing this adventure? So it's like, give your own name and then who is the character. And the, I imagine it comes up when I'm in the end game, or maybe it doesn't, but that has not been forefronted. If it never comes back, that's haunting. It'd be very funny if it never comes back.

I would be mad only because I was like, okay, well I can't name my character Matt now because I said I'm Matt. So it can't have two of these Matt's running around. So I remember wanting to have a name for a character in this game that sort of felt in world. So I was looking up before I started, what would you name a metaphoric character?

And I stumbled upon, they data mined what this guy's name is, what the nameless protagonist's name is what the nameless Like what the nameless protagonist name is and it's not even interesting. It's just will Will's not bad. It's not it's not bad and I did pick it. I was like, I just got that's kind of fun I'll just pick the like the in-game name for it instead and I'm sure it's gonna you know, he it's gonna be a You know a metaphor if you will. Yeah, I wonder if that was like kind of like internally that has some effect. I mean like the one thing of Baldur's Gate 3 is Tav is like the default character name. Doesn't really seem to have an inherent meaning. But here like that would tie into another key figure in this is the character who is kind of like

when you go to the academia, when you go to the liminal space where you can upgrade your archetypes, there's an individual, Moore. M-O-R-E is the name. And Moore is revealed, I think this is early enough in the game, we're not quite into Spoiler Country, Moore is revealed as the author of the novel that the player character has, the nameless protagonist is reading.

And let me tell you, the first time we started hearing stories from that novel, and again, I don't think this is Spoiler Country, it's early on in the game, and they were about what was effectively, like you're in this fantasy world with like, dudes with like horns on their head, and other people wear boxes on their face,

and things look like elves, and things that can fly, and humans are in an egg, and it's like, what's in your book? Yeah, the UG for like, Heismay or like bat-like creatures, you know? Yeah, and it's, what's in your book? My guy was called Wolfgang. What's in your book? My guy was called Wolfgang. What's in your book, Wolfgang?

And he's like, here, let me show you. And he opens up the book and it's like fucking New York City. It's great. It's like our reality. What the fuck is happening? I love it. It's so disorienting.

And it's like taxis and cars. And you're reading this fantasy novel with your dude. And it's like, in this world, people all had conversations about stuff. It's a utopian version of like New York City. It's so fucking weird. And such a great hook to draw you in even further. No, I love it.

And then I also like that there's just like, you know, like the clemar who are the ones who have horns and are kind of like the default in the world. They are kind of like them and the roussaint are kind of like, hey, these are the top of the food chain. And then, you know, you end up with like the parapess who are like, I think this is a great game for anyone out there who's a furry, probably has found some characters that they've latched

on to here. But the parapess are all like kind of of like kind of dog creatures, right? Yeah. They're kind of like dog slash human kind of hybrids. They've got humanoid features, but like, you know, dog ears. And again, I got to be careful using the word human here because I don't mean human. The, you know, the Bosch like abominations, the HR Gieger designs, I mean like our sense of humanity.

They're humanoid with dog ears and dog tails, but they're very, very much treated like gutter people, and they are abused, and a lot of them live on the street, or impoverished, or are treated as criminals or denied employment. And in fact, your character as an Elda is denied, like he won't be served at some shops at first because they're just like, we don't serve your kind. It's like you're literally on the receiving end of that, which is just, again, I mean, it's like it's a little bit of a weightier thing than a lot of games tend to delve into.

I really love the... To speak about the combat system in this game. You use an arc, every character is assigned an archetype. You can pick basically different classes for each of the characters, but some of the characters have specific ones that they're pre-assigned, that you can change if you want. Every character has a default one.

But it is like, you do have the flexibility to jump between a bunch of different, to change classes a bunch of different times and ultimately land on some sort of hybrid class for each character. They're definitely ones that they're meant, they're intended, like, because of their stat spread. Hey, this character probably should be more of a magic character. This character should be more of a thief character. But, like, you still have some,

you still have a good amount of customizability. And also, some of the archetypes are pretty distinct. Like, the merchant or the commander, you know, these are support classes that are, like, pretty different than what you typically see in a job system. I don't use that word as much as you can in here. What word? Merchant.

Let's just let him go. Okay, alright. Let's change it to shopkeeper. Some sort of trades person. I was rocking a healer archetype for a while.. Were you with your main care with my main character? Yeah, I mean like the main character is is for the the first part of the game is like your best magic user so I feel like you kind of end up defaulting to having him be kind of like a Mage cleric sort of hybrid, but now that I have a party of four

I've been rocking I think Seeker is the default for the main character. Kind of a melee slash support class that uses wind magic. And also like the Persona series, vulnerabilities are such a huge part of it. So like, you know what, that character might be strong against wind, but then they'll be vulnerable to, I don't remember what element it is,

let's just say thunder. And those vulnerabilities take the shape of anxieties in your battles, where, like, if you take a ton of damage, your dude just can't do anything anymore. He's, like, got an anxiety attack. He's like, I forgot how to do my stuff. Like, forgetting is one of the ailments you can have. Yeah, there's psychological and physical ones

that you can deal with, but yeah, one of them is just anxiety. I like the idea, or this is where having so many systems is actually good and fun, because you can do any fight in so many different ways. You can either just use a melee attack, you can use an archetype attack, or you can use a synthesis attack Which is when two

Two archetypes in your party combined to do like a basically like a super attack and all of it is so fun and so cool Yeah, those are really fun And they're really powerful and they they also like have Animations that are perfect length where like they they look cool but they're not so long that I wanna skip them. Yes. And you use them infrequently enough where they don't wanna skip them, but also,

all this is a calculation because you have a limited number of turns to work with and using a synthesis attack eats up more turns. Yes. But also you can get additional turns by inflicting damage on an enemy's weakness. And that's where, this is another thing I think

this game's combat system does really well, it really incentivizes using a lot of consumables, both like healing items and support items, but also like attack items, because it doesn't matter if this is only doing a hundred points of damage to an enemy, if it's hitting their weakness, you're getting more turns,

so it may be a good, a good move from like an, an action economy standpoint, because then your characters who are more suited to this encounter may get additional attacks. I wanna say two things about just basic design that I really appreciate. One is that before you tackle the bosses, there's often a way to get to the I'll call it junctioning room

Academia whatever the fuck you want to call it like a little cats there And it's like you talk to the cat pet the cat and it'll take you to the library And then you can like read love that cat yeah cat game The cat in this game is kind of like though the thing that's keeping me going honestly Every time I go into the academia, I pet the cat. I have to pet the cat. You gotta pet the cat. But you get so, it's forgiving with like,

hey, you can save here. You don't have to go back to the beginning of this dungeon. You can try a different setup for your party. Like I felt like there was often a little bit of forgiveness on the placement of that and that was really, really, I was grateful for that because the last thing I wanna do is get all the way down on the bottom of something and then be like, fucked. Well, there's also a lot of forgiveness

within the battles themselves because there's just an option at any point in the battle you can start it over. As long as you toggle that before a complete party wipe, you can start the battle over and use a different strategy. You can't like, respec right before that or like, give yourself more items or even like, heal yourself more before that.

But it's sometimes you can just either change up your strategy like Nick was saying with the consumable like, attack items. It's sometimes you can just either you know change up your strategy like Nick was saying with The consumable like attack items instead give yourself more More turns, or you can just figure out a different you know attack order instead or something I think like I don't think this game is is a difficult really, but I do think it is a game that rewards difficult really, but I do think it is a game that rewards, like, optimized choices, both in terms of party construction and within your turns, and that feels very satisfying when you feel like you're doing things properly and you're taking advantage of the game systems. Could you just say something real quick, because I know we probably have more to talk about with the gameplay of it, which I do think is very strong. And this is another thing I will just say to, I've had some friends who are like, not really into turn-based combat,

but are like interested in this game because of the buzz. I do feel like this is a game where there's just a lot of turn-based JRPG combat. I do think it's like the best, the funnest, most fluid, fastest version of it. But if it's a thing that's gonna make you bounce off of it, I just, I don't know if this is gonna be the game for you. Yeah, and there's some- There's so much of it, but if it's a thing that's gonna make you bounce off of it, I just I don't know if this is gonna be the game for you. Yeah, and there's some there's so much of it. There's some Like overworld combat. That's right. That's a good point getting to point out like it's very limited. It's like basically just like

single strikes at an enemy and sometimes depending on the level of the enemy that you're Encountering you can hit them once and then that sort of takes them out. But then sometimes- Yeah, you don't even, you can skip the combat encounter entirely because you just, you just, and I think that the targeting and the, you know,

the attacks you have are pretty elementary, but it is, it does mean that you can breeze through lower level enemies without going through a bunch of tedious turn-based encounters. I want to ask about if y'all went subs versus dubs, because I started off with a subtitled version. And then I read some takes that were saying, although this is a Japanese language original game, first off,

the English dub is very strong. It's really well localized. I do think this is a great localization, even just text-wise. But also, because this game is so much about racism and classism, the accents are class signifiers, and you pick that up more in a language that you understand. So I switched over to English, and I don't regret it. Honestly, I'm very happy with the English language VO.

But what did you all do? I started in subs actually as well, and then realized that if I was gonna have a fighting chance of really understanding what was going on, I had to switch. Yeah, because it's dense and there's a lot of made-up vocabulary. Yeah, there's a lot, a lot going on.

Yeah. I'm still with subs, but I Don't know that's enticing To Maybe try it a little bit in dubbed and see if I liked it Yeah, cuz I did I played persona 5 royal entirely in Japanese I did try a little bit of it with the English language track and I didn't really care for it But here I think I do think it's just a better way to experience it.

I do think the sound is really strong in this game. You know, in addition to the voice performances, we've talked at length about the combat theme, but I think the score in general is great. And I think there's some town themes that are really strong, really solid. A lot of stuff that like plays a number of times, but you never get sick of.

And then also just the variety of music in terms of just coloring whatever environment you're in, I think is really, really well done. Something that hasn't come up that I also really, really love, I love the anime cut scenes. I love how gorgeous they are. They'll hit you out of nowhere. It's just like I'm in the middle of this thing

that I thought was kind of inconsequential. It's like, oh shit, there's a fully animated full screen cut scene. Yeah. And that looks pretty great. I mean, like, yeah, I really like that. I really like the quantity of it. And some of them are not short.

They're not short, no, some will go on for a while. They did a lot of work for this. Yeah, I know. And that's another thing where it's just like, you know, I think it goes back to, some of those happen in those lengthy between act breaks where you're just, a lot of narrative is being dispensed to you. I have a complaint. Go for it.

My complaint is that you can't pause in cutscenes. Like if you press what you think is going to be the pause button, it skips everything. And it skips all the way to the end. And you're like, what the fuck? It should be hold to skip, you know? This is a game-wide thing. This is just a thing that we need to figure out

with games in general. You should be able to stop and resume at any point without losing any progress. I know that's a bit of a technically daunting thing, but cutscenes absolutely need to be paused. Like, I just like, yeah, that absolutely bothers me when you can't do that. Like, I feel like you can pause them in like Death Stranding. You can pause them in a lot of games.

Yeah. But it's not like a thing that's expected by default. It should be mandatory by law. I fully agree. Do we like the fairy Galika? Galika's a lot of fun. I love Galika. Galika's great.

And she's so helpful. Yeah, she's great. Like, you know, there's a mechanic where it's like, you can talk to her and she'll tell you, like, oh, like, check in on your supporters, check in on your requests or whatever. And she always knows exactly what you're supposed to be doing, where you should go. It's great.

It's really, really helpful. I find myself just hitting the triangle button in town a lot because she'll just chime in and say, give you some options of what you could be doing. Because again, this is a game where there's just like a huge volume of possibilities. The, so the other thing that we're, and we were talking about this earlier, Heather, in terms of the game being forgiving,

and I think this also ties in with its difficulty, is so there are, I don't know, gossips, there are plugged in characters that you can find in taverns that you can pay off and buy intel from. The intel isn't particularly expensive. And that will usually tell you, like, hey, you're going to be fighting this guy. Here are some things you can do.

And sometimes it's as simple as, here's what their vulnerabilities are. Here's what they're strong against. Don't use a sword. Exactly. Yes, yes, yes. Don't wield a staff, because that will agitate. And then they'll be like, OK, I've

got to change my character's classes so that it's not a staff-wielding character because I know that these goblins are terrified of magic users and they'll attack ferociously. So like, you can get that intel going in and that can help you overcome whatever obstacles you got. I also like, and I think this is something that was in Persona also, yeah, I'm positive it is,

where you'll see two people talking to each other and you'll see little murmurs floating over their heads and you walk past them and you can overhear their conversations or sometimes you can lean into those conversations and really listen in and then those people will sometimes become aware of you and be like, what the fuck are you doing? All of that color is so, it's lovely. Look at that boy, he doesn't have horns.

I like on that note, so one thing you can do that is so gloriously stupid, I love it, is that you can surf on your sword and that's kind of a way you can speed through. There's all sorts of ways of traversal in this game which we can talk about, but the way you can get to speed through environments is by just hopping on your sword like it's a hoverboard,

and then you'll inevitably see dialogue in bubbles as you're going by of like, like writing on a sword? What is he up to? I like that they think it's so crazy. They think it's so crazy. Like this is your world. They think it's so crazy. But also it is insane.

It's wild. Also, I will say, I don't like that when you're on the sword, you can't trigger dialogue that you have to hop off the sword, but hopping off the sword looks so cool that I love like peeling up to somebody on the sword and then like kicking it off and like talking to them like casually Yes, pretty great traversal in general is actually pretty good because there's so many ways to Fast travel without having to like engage with the fast travel system like in the Galakas like oh go talk to Maria But Maria's in Grand Trad and you're in the other city or whatever.

You can just jump straight to that without having to go to your ship and then go to the whole thing. Well, that happens later and you just hit on ship. So that's a big thing that you get the gauntlet runner, the gauntlet runner, which allows you to traverse the overworld. And I mean, this is just like a ship with legs.

It's really dumb, but it's really cool. I actually think the Gauntlet Runner's awesome, and I think it's an awesome thing to be inside of. And then when you're on the Gauntlet Runner, it'll take like, hey, it's gonna take three days to go from here to here. So you gotta figure out how to manage your time. That's another place where it's like,

I can hang out with my bros, I can go take a bath, and get my stats up. I can go read a book and get my stats up. You can make all of those decisions. But yes, that also leads to you also having a method of fast travel, which is a teleportation thing that lets you travel between the major hub worlds. Although if you are gonna go to one of the outlying areas,

you still have to take the gauntlet runner and that can still take a number of days. So you're talking about, you can basically do like two things per day, kind of. Pretty much, yeah. And I kind of wish that it was a little bit, a little bit more granular because some of the things that, like, because you'll start your day, your morning is basically a debrief of,

with your team basically like talking about things that you've done and things that you have to do. Yeah. So that's your morning. Then your afternoon is like your main part of your day where you can like go, you know, potentially travel toward a dungeon or of some kind or an area that you need to explore or, you know,

go around the city and talk to people. And then if you, it takes you back to the, your, the tavern or like the hotel that you're staying at or whatever, and you can go back outside and do another thing. I think you should be able to do two things in the afternoon. The afternoons are long, are long enough where you could feasibly do two things. I think having one conversation with like a lady about baking bread to get your imagination

up, there's no way that takes an entire day. It's probably a very interesting conversation, but I think you should be able to do two things. Yeah, and sometimes what your thing is is like, hey, we got to go over to this village and like, you know, like, see it, I got to shake these people down. Sometimes it's a lot bigger.

It's like, wait, that feels like that would take more than an afternoon. So yeah, every unit of time is kind of treated in the same way. But I don't know, I don't really mind that. I kind of buy that as a conceit of these sorts of games. Or at least some things should take longer than others. Like yeah, going to another area to explore,

maybe that takes the afternoon or whatever. But if I just have one conversation, let me have a second conversation in the afternoon. Well, there are things like, and just to be clear, like for people to have them play the game, you don't mean like if you talk to any NPC about anything. That does not necessarily eat up your entire day, but there are certain designated like, and it will give you, here's where it will be sign posted and there will be like an icon that will indicate that it will take a chunk of time. Yes. That it'll be like, hey, do you want to learn about the,

you know, the Mastari people and the discrimination we face and then it will give you a conversation and that will take up part of your day and that will increase some stat. And yeah, there are ones though, there are like, hey, if I'm going to go explore this dungeon that will take up both units. That will take up both the day and the night. And the thing I really like is at the end of that, Galak is like, well, we finished that dungeon, let's go get some dinner. And then there's a cut scene where you all have a nice dinner together.

I do love that. I do love that. And I love the stuff on the ship that you can just kind of like hang out. Yeah. You know, polish your sword with stroll or whatever, or like talk to, play chess with Hulkenberg or whatever. I haven't spent too much time with the guy that pilots the ship because I don't like him that much. I like the button you can press to see what other people who've played the game have done. Heather, that's a great thing to bring up.

Like, you can press a button and it'll be like, here is the level at which people were when they finished this quest and here's how some people spent their day in this town. And I think that's a really, I don't know, charming feature. No, I think that's rad. And I like seeing like, oh, okay, 19% of people did the main thing today.

So I'm actually not, I don't feel like I'm in a rush where I have to do this right now. I have some, you know, you'll oftentimes see that it'll almost be reassuring because you'll see that most people are going to do what you were planning on doing. Yes, every game is a Strand game now, isn't it? Yeah, it's true.

I love it. That's a menu that I always accidentally open. Yeah. Yeah. Another thematic thing I really like in this, and they're kind of story thing. So there's effectively a state religion, sanctism. And this game is, which seems very much like it's

meant to be Catholicism. There's effectively a pope character who is also running to be the leader in this democratic election. And the game seems to be not explicitly saying so, but exploring the tension between having effectively a state religion and also a system of democracy that you kind of can't have this legal code that's based on popular will that coexists with like, hey, here's this doctrinal religion that is telling you what is morally right and wrong.

Like these things are in tension. You can't have basically like one system that overrides the democratic system in people's brains because it is, because that is the will of some higher being, you can't have that be also sanctioned by the state. And I feel like, oh, it's again kind of a sophisticated, like heady topic for a video game to be

Exploring you know yeah, yeah it is like I Am often like while I've been playing it been like this is some crazy stuff Cuz I can usually like usually like I don't know it's a little more cut and dry a little more Less subtle right where it's like, it's, you know, Final Fantasy VII, like this guy, I guess there's like more subtleties in there. You are an eco-terrorist in that game. But like in other games where it's just like,

it's a very clear line of just like, you're good, this is bad, go to the bad thing, be good, stop bad thing. There's a lot of like, there's just a lot of nuance in this game, which is very interesting. this is bad, go to the bad thing, be good, stop bad thing. There's a lot of nuance in this game, which is very interesting. I think it kind of is a condemnation of gaming at large that you can go into a bookstore and there's a lot of books that are subtle

and then there are another section of books that are subtle. And then there are like another section that's like not so subtle. It's wild how few subtle games are of this, like this much reach and like the popularity of this IP, like that there are so few games that touch on some of these themes. And with the subtlety that this game does so, because it seems to me like there is an audience hungry

for that. You're like, I don't need every game to be Zelda. Like, it would be cool if there was a game that was like Zelda, but when you went in to have a conversation with somebody, the whole game became about the relationship to that person. Like, who knows? But it's surprising to me how surprising it is that this game is interesting.

Because often you write off the story. Right. I've been thinking about this as a take. I don't know, it's not fully formed. I'm thinking about, like, the big three JRPG franchises. I'm thinking about like the big three JRPG Franchises I'm thinking Final Fantasy is obviously like in that conversation probably number one Dragon Quest is probably two in there our atlas games third now. I Mean I do and if there's if you want to You can say because you're talking about so many franchises, yeah say, because you're talking about two different franchises

and then you're talking about a company. So it's like kind of like, you know, if you want to say persona as a franchise. Yeah, that's maybe what I mean more. Yeah, I mean, it also depends on how you, do you want to, how do you want to classify like a dragon, you know? But I don't know, I think, I think certainly persona five

in terms of cultural cache is definitely up there. There's like, yeah, like three different persona five. Yeah But is this like is this is this is not really explicitly part of the no persona franchise Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to answer that I Do want to say one more thing on the sanctism side and this is not necessarily related to the themes but it's like So there is a church in this game and, and then there's a mechanic that I found that I really like, found really interesting,

which is that you can find an item, and this will be a usable item, but it can have, that can oftentimes be powerful, but also you can purify it if you find some, you know, some rare items, and then you spend a good amount of currency at the church, they can purify that item and then the item will be even more powerful and will have additional stats.

And I think that's really cool and that's really satisfying when you purify something. I like when you go into the church for the first time and they're like, get the fuck out of here. Yeah, no, we don't serve your kind. And then eventually they're like, all right, look, we don't like you but we will take your money.

Yeah. That sounds like the church. I think it's a good mechanic because it incentivizes going to church. Oh, boy. There's a... Okay. There's also like a big part of it is that most magic users in the game use these things called igniters Which are extremely expensive items and I do like how much they cost or just like early on they're just like oh

That's like a down payment for a house I can afford a fucking igniter and but like your characters have magic abilities But you can get your hands on some igniters and igniters are a way that you could again just add your available skills. So like if you don't have a way to inflict dark damage and you're gonna be facing some enemies that are weak to dark, you can equip that igniter and have that ability.

Yeah, it just feels like it's really well thought out all of the possibilities in terms of how you can play your characters. It's also because of the time structure that I don't like. It prevents you from being able to power level your way to be able to avoid conflict by having spent a million years grinding in a dungeon. Like, if you clear the enemies out of a dungeon, very few of them return.

Like, it'll be like, if you clear out a room, then maybe, like, one guy will come back and he'll be wandering around, but for the most part, that room is cleared permanently. I... So I actually had to use a day to go back to a dungeon I'd already cleared, because there's also... There's another quest that involves finding relics,

and I somehow missed a relic that was at this location. And so what I found there is that it was a completely inefficient use of my time. And like, I just was kind of like, I just kind of got to eat it, because I got to advance this side quest, and this will let me increase my, you know, relationship with this particular character,

so it's worth doing. But yeah, you go back to this dungeon, and first off, all the enemies are now lower level than you, so you're not getting any valuable experience from them. And also, like, everything has been cleared out, and there's a lot fewer of these enemies, so it's like, yeah, it's... You're right, it's not a thing you can just sort of grind,

and like, oh, I'm just gonna keep going to the same well repeatedly and just try to get my XP up. That being said, my first dungeon in that first town or second town, whatever it is, the first dungeon that you get assigned to like go do a quest in, I clear the dungeon. It's not easy, but it's not super hard. No.

And then that boss wiped the fucking floor with me over and over and over again, no matter how many times I restarted that, like, I'm like, am I, am I miss, am I forgetting, like, a major mechanic? I had to eat that whole day. Like, eventually I was like, I can't beat this fucking boss with whatever it is that I have, and I have to go all the way back into town

and eat dinner with these guys, and I'm gonna have to come back to this dungeon to fight this guy all over again. Yeah, I found these guys, and I'm gonna have to come back to this dungeon to fight this guy all over again. Yeah, I found, look, when I played Persona 5 Royal, the way I like to do it was, for my own brain, I like to take off, take care of the main part of the quest early, like whatever the major task was

for this month, for this stretch of time. I like to take care of it early in the calendar, and then so I have the rest of the time just like that that weights off my shoulders. I can just focus on side quests the rest of the way in character relationships. Here I found that it actually was to my benefit to invert that and to take like really like the game

is trying to tell you to do that too. The game is saying like, let's make sure we're powerful enough. Cause you know, you can get better gear. You can get a more advanced archetypes, you can get new abilities. And so I found myself just sort of like, backloading it and trying to do all the side quests,

do all the character relationships. And then with just a few days left until the deadline, that's when I finally tackle things. And actually it's mostly been a breeze when I've done it that way. So yeah, but it is... Yeah, you can hit some roadblocks, depending on how you play it. Yeah, I had to... There was this one side quest that I was doing,

where I had to, like... I had to kill this, like, troll king, or whatever it was called. I can't remember what it was. It was like an imp king I think it was. And it was like a thing that I had to go around this like open area and like fight a bunch of other little imps and then the big imp king would then be like summoned to me and I would have to like have a conversation with him and then and then fight him and kill him. But I kept getting destroyed by the imp king because I just wasn't strong enough, but then it would reset and I'd have to,

it would be sort of random when he would appear, kind of. Sometimes he would appear after one encounter with some of the other imps, and then sometimes it would be four or five encounters and then he would come. So I often was never prepared for him because I didn't have enough magla pills to give myself, to refill my magic.

So I'd be like spent on that stuff. It was just like a bad time. And then- Yeah, cause you can't, it's like magla pills are the other abilities that restore, you know, your MP are not like things you can purchase. Those are things you have to find, acquire as treasure, and sometimes craft through cooking.

And so they're really scarce. And so part of this game is, in terms of getting through these very lengthy dungeons, especially for the big quests, is conserving your resources and not using too many of your, blowing your wads, so to speak, in terms of using all your MP and using some of your more standard attacks.

Yeah, so I eventually got over that hump. I was concerned that that was gonna be the hump, that that was gonna end it for me, because I had to keep resetting and redoing this fight and I was not making much progress but then I started to figure out getting more attack charges for using the weakness against it. Then I started to, then I locked in and was able to take him down in just a couple of turns. Then I locked in and was able to take him down in just like a couple of turns but I

This game is so big But I am still like committed to wanting to finish it. I want to I want to get in there I want to I want to I want to actually finish one of these. Oh, I love it so much I'm 100% gonna finish this game. I can't wait to see where the story ends up I I wish I had finished it by the time we did this episode but you know, I'm rambling so much and borderline incoherent anyway because I'm trying to just get all my thoughts out that I think if I'd played more of this game,

I'd do an even worse job than I'm doing. But I think this is the thing we run into, is that when you're talking about something you really like, it's just oftentimes harder than talking about something you have a lot of complaints about. And I do have some complaints about this game, but ultimately they're pretty minor and they're dwarfed by what I just, I think what a triumph of both gameplay and narrative this is.

And we haven't even touched on how beautiful the art direction is. Yes, thank you, Heather. It's just like, it's such a gorgeous game. I think the character designs are awesome. Hulkenberg is such a cool looking character. What an amazing commanding presence. This towering roussaint who is just so regal and so intimidating.

And I think it's just such a cool, like Stroll's arc who you meet very early on and starts off and you're kind of like, this guy seems like kind of like an upper crust dick. And then you get his actual story and how like tragic it is and how much he's just like trying to like find some sense of redemption. It's all that shit is really cool.

And I think that even though some of these characters kind of tread the same ground, like some of these party members are all kind of dealing with the same sort of thing of like personal or professional failure or having lost a loved one in some tragic way. They all are distinct enough and they all also are distinct enough both visually and in terms of their characterization that it really feels like they each have their own

arcs. Yeah, I think that's all great and again I can't get over how how great what an awesome choice it is to make the menacing enemies the humans I love it so good. Yeah, just like this thing this here's this thing that pops out of the ocean That's that's like a squid with stone cold Steve Austin's head. It's great. I fucking love this shit. After this episode, when I'm commuting home, I'm no doubt going to think of a dozen things that I meant to say and forgot. That's the nature of trying to cover a game like this.

It is so at once so dense and so sprawling that I think it's just impossible to be comprehensive But maybe some of those thoughts will be covered by you the listeners It's time for the you play of our we play you play. It's your review crew the Ryu crew for metaphor refund Tazio Hello good, there's all source from our discord discord dot GG slash get played this first one is from Daisuke Danny hi, Daisuke and Daisuke Danny writes if I had. And Daisuke Danny writes, if I had Galika with me at all times, like the protagonist,

I think it would solve all of my problems. Galika the fairy, the familiar who is accompanying you and always offering you advice. And hey, sometimes the key aspects of those advice are presented in a red, bold text. And I feel like if I got what I needed to do at a given time in red, bold text, I wouldn't fuck up so much.

No, yeah, I certainly would be doing a much better job in general. This next one is from Tater LaRue. Hi, Tater. Hi, Tater LaRue. Tater writes, I'd die for Heismay. Cute little guy with an utterly heartbreaking backstory. Absolutely. Yeah, Heisme rocks.

Also like a really fun character is obviously is steered towards one archetype at first has a, you know, but like I kind of feel like because Heisme's stats are so geared towards agility, there's a few different ways to play it. Yeah. And I think where I ended up with that character, I don't know. I'm not looking at any spreadsheets. I'm not looking at any YouTube tutorials in terms of how to min-max the characters. I'm kind of curious to see what that looks like after I finish my playthrough to see like,

oh, I see what I should have done. I should have had a Faker general hybrid. I would never have thought to do that, but you know like whatever I'm as far as I'm figuring out I'm enjoying the way I'm playing it. Hell. Yeah This next one's from Koopa Troopa. Hi Koopa Troopa As someone who has as someone who has played every persona game so far, as they came out and multiple times, I have to say there are things that are really refreshingly different about Metaphor. Lots of good gameplay choices.

I think the battle system might be my favorite iteration of the Atlus game formula. And like all great games, the ending has stuck with me and given me things to think about. No game is perfect and that's okay because it means we get interesting and unique games and this is absolutely one of them. I think that's really well said. Yeah, extremely well said.

And I hate that it's making me look forward to the ending than I already am. I think that the, yes, I do think this is one thing that I talked about as comparison to Persona 5 Royale. I do think that I actually like the combat better. I do think the archetype system is just a more effective. Yes more extensible You know way to have a JRPG combat. Yeah, I remember playing when we were doing persona 5 I like didn't use the personas that much look it's like kind of weird I would just do like the regular attacks more I feel like Well, there's your problem. Yeah, probably I never finished it Having a hard time this next next one's from Simony.

Hi Simony. Hi Simony. I finished the game twice now. Holy shit! Wow! Metaphor is one of Atlas' top tier games. Gameplay is an amazing combo of persona and SMT that creates a fun, new challenge for players.

I like that while there is still a time element to interactions in the game, they are not as demanding as personas are. I was able to complete everything in the game with about 8 days to spare. I love the story in the game. While there are times it can be very on the nose with its message, I like that the characters look at the idea of a utopia with a very optimistic but realistic view on the challenges and making it happen. I cannot recommend this game enough to everyone, especially fans of previous Atlus games. Nice. Yeah, I think it's, look, I think it's a really unique experience, and yeah, I do think a lot

of the characters, because of their reality, are pretty clear-eyed about, you know, what might befall them. I think that the, all the idea of just like a, a nation that has lived under a monarchy, grappling with democracy for the first time and what it means and not quite even understanding it is really interesting shit.

Yeah. This next one is from Joey Guy 7. Hi Joey Guy 7. And Joey Guy 7 writes, a Persona game you can recommend your friends without sending them a disclaimer first. Some of the stuff in Persona games, I'll say, ages like milk, we'll say,

but some of it is also very, very good. Delicious. Yeah, the older a gets everybody knows it untapped it unlocks that untapped flavor I don't think there's anything wrong with your a teacher taking a second job as a sexy maid. I think it's fine If you want a date or that's fine, too Let me say the first part of that. Yeah, there is nothing wrong with that. What follows is not great. And then finally, Xdream000 writes, Xdream000.

The way the game approaches social dynamics and how it conveys how real fantasy can be makes this one of the most thought-provoking games I've played. Wow. Definitely, like, I don't know. yeah, you're thinking and feeling things. And that's what's, that's what should happen when you engage with art. Yeah, that's what art's all about. That's what life's all about, baby. Feeling stuff.

Feeling, thinking, and having emotions. Yeah. I'm having emotions right now. What are your emotions, Nick? Disappointed in myself. Whoa, no! I did a bad job. No, you did a great job, Nick. It's hard to talk about this game. You said a lot of really great stuff.

Yeah. Oh man, I forgot to say a bunch of shit I was supposed to say. That's okay. No, Nick, you did a great job. No, I did a fucking bad job. What are you talking about? You did a fantastic job, Nick. I'm no better than a lowly peripus.

Ooh, I hate the peripus. Oh. Took the wrong lesson for the game. No, wait, Nick, no. Oh, those are bad people. Get them out of here. No, Nick, you did the parapus. Took the wrong lesson for the game. No, wait, Nick, no. Oh, those are bad people. Get them out of here. No, Nick, you did an amazing job. It is difficult to talk about a game so sprawling such as this,

but I think you hit on the stuff that was important to you right now, and I think that's more than adequate. You're a great podcaster. Well, thank you for saying that I was fishing for that Hey, that's this week's get played special. Thanks to Sam Rogich for helping us out. Everyone. Check out duck Yeah, does got have social media. Yeah, it's at guck band on Instagram Awesome. Check that out. Listen to the new single our producers are shell Chen ranch yard underscore underscore Sorry, our music is by Ben Prunty Ben Prunty music comm our art is by duck brigade design duck brigadeade Design, duckbrigade.com. And hey, check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash get played. We can find our entire pre-head come back catalog,

plus ad free main feed episodes, and also our Patreon exclusive show, Get Animated. Matt, what's up this week? This week, I'll tell you what we're doing. We're doing our pilot presentation, and Heather and I, we watched a show called Gurren Lagann. Gurren Lagann. Gurren Lagann. Wow.

And it's a show that I feel like a lot of people in the Discord have requested us watch. So it's very exciting that we watched it a while ago for it to finally come out now. And let me tell you something, strap in. If you haven't seen it, watch it along with us so you can hear what our thoughts were on the pilot. Yeah, it's a pilot presentation is a

Set of episodes where I introduced Nick and Matt to an anime I loved they watched the pilot They give me their thoughts and tell me whether or not they want to pick it up patreon.com Slash get played and hey, we also have merch now That's right. That's a great point. We do have merch now. We have merch now. We have merch now. also have merch now. That's right. Heather, that's a great point. We do have merch now. We have merch now? We have merch now.

We have merch now. It's at kinshipgoods.com slash get played. And you can get yourself a freaking t-shirt. You can get yourself a shirt, a long sleeve shirt with the Resident Evil 4 merchant on it. Though I think that one is selling out in some sizes, which is very, very cool. There's a hoodie with the logo on it.

There's a hat, sticker buttons. Get whatever you get, whatever you want over there. Kinship goods dot com slash get played, baby. Oh, yeah. And you know what? Fantasy got played. Hmm. Or I thought that fantasy was dead. It's not. It's got played, actually. Hmm. That mean it's dead. It got played to death. Yeah, oh fuck fantasy is dead

That was a hate gum podcast