I keep getting distracted by the metaphor: ReFantazio

I like the dungeons in Metaphor: ReFantazio. I swear I do. I know some people think they drag on and the first one just goes on and on, but I like them. The inclusion of action combat makes them feel more airy than the palaces or endless wanderings through Mementos in Persona 5, which Metaphor basically combines. I like them, and yet I can’t bring myself to do them.

The pressure of deadlines is designed to make you sort out the dungeons early and then sweep up whatever you have left. When it comes to real deadlines, I’m usually pretty proactive and avoid leaving things until the last minute. But in metaphor? I’m a perpetual procrastinator, and if the deadline is still in the double digits, I don’t even have to think about it.

There are many cutscenes when you arrive in Brilehaven. It’s the first time since the start of the competition that all the claimants to the throne are in the same place, and their exploits, as well as Louis’ continued absence, lead to many narrative developments. When you’re finally able to play, you’re given unique objectives – find a place to stay, eat, talk to Louis – that limit exploration.

Eventually it becomes clear that you must infiltrate Louis’ runners and take out his captains. However, once you’ve achieved this goal, you can also wander around the city and take on a series of side quests. You can also return to old cities where you may need to complete previous quests, and new allies will either be unlocked or can be spoken to to increase their ranks.

Add the latest bounty to the board, and suddenly there’s a lot to do. The most sensible thing to do would be to clear the story dungeon for as long as it took me and then use the remaining free time until the next event to collect the extra things. But I’m not sensible when it comes to Metaphor: ReFantazio.

I spoke to each quest giver first, but that’s just polite. They might have needed something in the dungeon after all (which they didn’t). Then I grabbed the bounty to see where it was. Oh look, same location as a few quests. They might as well do that, right? That was a few days ago, and another quest follows a day later. Clean that up too, but at least the one that’s two days’ drive away I’ll leave alone for now.

Then I thought it would be rude not to talk to Heismay when he had something to say, but the next day I didn’t want Hülkenberg to feel left out. I met Brigitta in the evening and Strohl wanted to talk to me the next day. Borden became an ally and immediately needed a few afternoons, while Brigitta’s lost dog demanded my attention and each group member again demanded my time.

I also reserved an afternoon for Maria, and it wasn’t long before a week was over with little progress to show for it. Eventually I decided that it was getting silly and didn’t suit the creator who I wanted my character to be. Although I wanted to spend more time with Hülkenberg as a player, I ended up taking on the dungeon as a character.

The strange thing is that I still did it too early. The third major dungeon is atypical in that it’s not a gauntlet that you have to fight your way through as your MP depletes too quickly for you to keep up. Instead, there are a few smaller stealth sequences in each room, leading to three different bosses (technically four, since you choose which of the middle two you want to fight).

These bosses are the only fights you have in the dungeon, and although they each have to be completed in three rounds, there is nothing stopping you from depleting the MP memory in each fight. It’s a nice twist that this isn’t a dungeon you can drift through for hours, but one that needs to be completed quickly and decisively, but my archetypes were so widespread that their attacks were high enough that I gave it short shrift have done.

I still enjoyed it, and that now means that the three major dungeons are significantly different from each other and also from the smaller side quest caves. It just makes me feel a little silly that I started to worry about whether I had enough time with eight days to go, only to end up having to kill time for another seven days.

Metaphors are so rich that there is always something to do. I have a feeling that Brigetta’s story will have a new episode soon, I have another postcard for Maria and the side quest is still waiting for me in a few days. Increasing my royal virtues is an option if I really run out of things to do, but in Metaphor: ReFantazio, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.