Why You Should Try To Play Metaphor: ReFantazio On Hard

I like to play on hard difficulty for a lot of games. I want to be tested. I want the intensity. I want to be forced into using everything a game has to offer and not get overly comfortable. I don’t want to just breeze through a game without even trying.

But when it comes to JRPGs, my tune changes fast. I am usually just fine with normal difficulty in any turn based JRPG. With a turn based game, you can’t just get through a tough boss by getting better at the game. You have to grind. While grinding can be rewarding, there’s a reason people also refer to grinding in real-life work capacities. It isn’t always a lot of fun. I absolutely dread randomly running around in circles, waiting for a battle to happen so that I can mash the attack button and watch my EXP bar very slowly fill up. It’s just not for me.

So when I tell you that I decided to play Metaphor: ReFantazio on hard when I booted it up last week, this isn’t a decision I made lightly. Several factors went into my thought process. And so far, I feel like it has greatly enhanced this game for me and is helping make a great game even better. It may seem intimidating… and sometimes it is. But I truly think you should take the plunge and try to play this game on hard as well.

#RiseAndGrind But It’s Actually A Good Thing

Perhaps the biggest reason for me deciding to play Metaphor on hard was my experience with Persona 5. Persona 5 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I absolutely breezed through it. I died a few times because I got lazy with healing my main character, but that was about it (if he dies in that game, you get a game over, this is not the case in Metaphor). As much as I loved that game, I’ve always wondered if I should have tried it on hard instead for a little extra intensity. With Metaphor essentially being a new Persona game, this felt like the time to finally give it a go.

And early on, I think I made an incredible decision. The structures of this game (and Persona games in general) fit a more difficult game perfectly. You almost never feel like you are grinding, even when you are.

The biggest reason for this is how the game deals with healing and MP. Items that heal your MP are VERY sparse in this game, much like they are in the Persona games. There is also nothing in the dungeon that heals your party fully, even before a boss fight. While you can stock up on HP healing items if you wish, money is also a very precious resource here, so you will really want to have as much as possible for equipment. Because of this, every time you enter a dungeon in this game, your goal is to not use MP as much as possible. As soon as you run out of MP, it’s time to pull out of the dungeon and come back on a different in-game day. Without MP, you will be in a position where you can’t really heal and can barely mount any significant offense.

This system means there is always a logical endpoint to “grinding.” When I enter a dungeon, my goal is to get as far as I can, and then when I run out of MP, it’s time to stop for the day. Whenever I’m grinding in a normal JRPG, I’m never sure when I should stop and try to fight whatever foe is troubling me again. Metaphor takes that question out of the equation. You go for as long as you can, and then you stop.

This also allows you to “feel” your progress in some really cool and natural ways. Metaphor features many optional dungeons that serve as fun side quests to get you stronger for the main quest. In my experience thus far, many of these are tougher than the actual main dungeons. In one dungeon early on in the game, I made it all the way through, but was completely out of MP by the time I got to the boss, and thus didn’t even bother fighting it. A few in game days later, I tried again. This time, I was able to get to the boss with a decent but not significant chunk of MP left. As I fought the boss, I realized I was still outclassed. Finally, on my third time, I barely vanquished the boss but had to use up a very precious MP healing item in the battle to make it happen.

Doing the same dungeon three times may sound miserable to some. As someone who doesn’t like to replay things in general, it doesn’t even sound appealing to me! But Metaphor on hard is so tricky that every battle feels so valuable and important for getting stronger. This makes replaying dungeons actually feel fun. When every battle is a fight for your life, nothing ever feels totally mindless. Watching the numbers go up really means something on hard. It’s so rewarding that “grinding” no longer feels like work. I feel like a full-on #RiseAndGrind guy now.

This Game Is Out Here Making Me Think And Shit

The other beautiful thing about hard is that it makes you think about EVERYTHING you do. And not just in battles. As I alluded to before, Metaphor works much like the Persona games with its calendar. Each day, you can only do one or two specific things before you have to rest for the night. There is also always an objective that you need to have done before a specific date. When I played Persona 5, I would damn near clear an entire main dungeon in roughly 1-2 days, and then have a whole lot of leisure time to work on my “social link” stats and other random side activities. This can still be stressful for trophy hunters who want to max every possible thing out so that they can get their trophy, but for someone like me who doesn’t care about that, I felt like I had all the time in the world. I never felt much urgency on anything.

Once again, playing Metaphor on hard turns these systems on their head. Every single day is incredibly important just to get by. I got through the first main dungeon in the game with literally no time to spare. I was in a do or die scenario. Every day was super valuable to me in a way Persona 5 on normal was not. This game has me stressing and debating what action I’m going to take each day in a way I haven’t experienced before, and I love that about it.

Stressful decision-making isn’t just happening with the calendar system either. It’s with everything. The currency balancing is another great example of this. The game never has me in a situation where I have enough money to buy every piece of equipment whenever I go to a new shop. I generally feel pretty broke in this game. Because of that, whenever I am doing a shopping day, I am making super hard decisions. Do I shore up attack or defense? Which character should I focus on? Should I sell some of my MAG (which helps with class changes/etc) for money? Decisions that aren’t that big of a deal on normal are suddenly life or death.

And of course, that goes even more so for the combat itself. I am in love with this combat system for many reasons, but I know that because I’m playing it on hard, I’m being forced to use every single element of it, which is making it even better. Every fight I make agonizing decisions on how to get by while using the least amount of MP possible. I’m exploiting weaknesses. I’m occasionally sending my whole team to the back row and taking turns off from attacking in an attempt to heal up. I have many fights where I’m using “Knight’s Proclamation”, a move which attracts all attacks to one character (a friend who is playing on normal said he hasn’t even considered using that move. On hard, it’s an absolute necessity). I’m thinking deeply about which classes I’m leveling up and taking on each dungeon run. Every move is vital because one mistake can easily be your end. Several foes in the game have the ability to end you or damn near end you in just one turn.

And of course, that can be frustrating at times, but I am experiencing a level of intensity and strategy that more than makes up for the occasional “what the fuck” moment. Yeah, it sucks when an ally misses an important attack, and then all of a sudden you get wiped. But it makes the victory on the next attempt that much sweeter.

You Can Do This!

But as difficult as Metaphor is on hard, it all still feels incredibly fair. I made it through the first main dungeon a few days ago, and it was a TOUGH battle, but I had learned enough little tricks in the combat to make it by.

If you focus on doing dungeons and leveling up when you can, it seems very possible to get to the level you need to get to for each boss. I am focusing much more on dungeons than social links right now. This is not common for me with Persona, but it also makes it feel that much more rewarding when I’ve done enough work where I feel like I can “relax” and hang out with a party member instead of fighting.

And there are other nice quality of life elements that limit frustrations. First off, checkpointing is relatively generous here. I have lost 15-20 minutes of progress on one of the optional dungeons after a death, but in the main dungeon, I seem to usually spawn very close to where I died. Battles also feature a “retry” button that instantly starts you at the beginning of the encounter. When things haven’t gone my way early in battles, or if I realize that I made a bit of a mistake, I just press retry and am immediately able to restart and shift how I do things.

The game’s action elements also give you a very huge head start in most battles. If you stun your foe with the action elements before getting into the turn based battles, you can still finish most foes before they have the chance to strike back at you. Of course, you probably have to use a bit of MP to make that happen This means that you will end up having to pull out of dungeons much faster than someone on normal, but once again, that is OK! It’s actually kind of nice that the game is too hard to spend two hours at a time in a dungeon. It spaces things out in pleasant ways.

I’m talking about those quality of life elements to say very clearly that you can do this. Playing Metaphor on hard can lead to some very stupid deaths. It’s not perfect. But I truly think that with the gameplay structures here, it is the ideal way to play this game. It’s a struggle, but it’s a struggle with purpose. It’s a rewarding struggle.

Playing this game on hard is truly the best way to get the most out of the time management systems. It’s also the best way to get the most out of the class systems. The same goes for the currency systems. In my heart, I believe that Metaphor was meant to be played on hard for most people. If all you really care about is the story and hanging out with cool party members, that might not be the case for you. But if you really want to experience everything this game has to offer, give hard a go. You’ll only regret it occasionally.