Metaphor: ReFantazio, the upcoming fantasy political drama RPG from Atlus, is only a few days away from its October 11 release date. Broadly, the game takes the social sim and time management mechanics of the Persona series and fine-tunes them to make a truly exceptional RPG that represents a step forward for the studio in a lot of ways. Still, having played both it and Persona 3 Reload earlier this year, I’ve got one nitpick: I wish Metaphor: ReFantazio had more voice acting.
To be clear, I don’t mind the hours of reading. Metaphor’s dialogue is sharp, and the writing and cadence successfully avoid the awkward, stilted writing of the original Persona 5 translation, which was improved in Persona 5 Royal. But sadly, huge amounts of the game’s dialogue aren’t read aloud by its stellar voice cast. That’s in stark contrast to Persona 3 Reload, which included voice acting for every chapter of its relationship-building social links.
Part of this is likely because production on Metaphor: ReFantazio began long before Reload, which went into development in 2019. Reload is a remake of an existing 2006 RPG, though, so it’s not surprising that the team managed to get it out the door more quickly than Metaphor, a brand-new game and franchise for the studio. Metaphor, meanwhile, was first announced way back in 2016, shortly after Persona 5 was released in Japan, so it’s not surprising that it follows the format of previous Atlus games where voice acting is concerned. Metaphor, like Persona 5, only voices the first and last of its social link-style follower stories, so all the build-up is only portrayed through text and pantomiming.
With games like Metaphor that have dialogue presented visual novel-style with text boxes and voice acting, I tend to switch on the setting to have lines auto-progress and watch them like an anime. With a voice cast as strong as Metaphor’s, it’s always a treat to get to a fully voice-acted scene and hear the crew work their magic. Those were plentiful in the main story, but when you spend hours getting to know characters and the world in these side relationships, it’s a bummer that they don’t get to give voice to some pretty meaningful moments in between the intro and conclusion.
My hope is that this is just a matter of Metaphor being in development for so long, and that Persona 3 Reload is a more accurate declaration of what Atlus plans to do on this front in the future. With any luck, sometime down the line Metaphor: ReFantazio may get a Persona 5 Royal-style re-release and Atlus might fully voice these scenes in a few years. Until then, I’ll enjoy the times the voice cast does get to pop off, though they’re fewer and farther between than I would like.
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