It’s Switch 2 Announcement Day and, out of respect for Nintendo’s abusive legal team, I will not be talking about it or any of their IP. Fuck ‘em.

Instead, let’s talk about little known¹ Atlus game, Metaphor: ReFantazio until you unsubscribe from this newsletter² .

I Can’t Believe I’ve Played This

I’m well into Metaphor: ReFantazio’s end-game now, and some of the sheen has peeled off. Long games are difficult to play-test, and end up with far rougher end-games than their earlier sequences. Still too, it is better to have a strong start than a strong end, if you must pick one.

My problem with the game came fast and all at once. During a major plot-point, after spending most of the game comfortably (though not easily) dispatching major foes and dragon gods, I faced a long mud slog of a fight against a magical creature with one weakness, and the ability to erect a barrier that covers that weakness.

Metaphor uses the Press Turn battle system from older games of its pedigree. Each side gains one turn icon per character and spends those turn icons to take actions. Actions that are especially effective, like critical hits, or attacks targeting weak points, cost half a turn icon, whereas actions that are reflected, miss, or are blocked cost two. Unless you find prior knowledge somewhere, you lose your first round testing an enemy’s weaknesses and strengths.

And so, against an enemy with no weaknesses, the fight devolves into a drawn-out, twenty-minute slog. You spend two turn icons removing debuffs and replenishing lost health, one turn icon attacking, weakly, and your final turn icon removing the barrier. The enemy reapplies the barrier, destroys half your health, and debuffs you. Repeat ad nauseum.

I am, of course, willing to forgive one sour fight, even if I had to repeat it ten times before I bested it. I’m even willing to forgive the game for giving me no prep time and no prior warning (in a game that uses information like currency³ ). It had plot importance, and the surprise was part of that plot.

But every fight after followed the same pattern. Some erected repelling shields, others tossed out mind-controlling status elements. All removed your action economy, and transformed slow slog fights into slow bleeds, into inevitable deaths.

Perhaps I have a poor build, but changing builds is no trivial matter in Metaphor, and requires visiting dungeons, earning more currency to activate new classes, and then experience in those classes to level them up. All of that takes time which, as I noted before, is the game’s principal resource.

To make matters worse, I feel as if the story is ending, but I don’t understand any of it. I’ve learned myriad new facts and lore, but each piece is a new question and there have been few answers. I’m left with the unshakeable feeling that the game will end in a climactic showdown, answering none of them.

I’ve gone from feeling like I have enough, if limited, time to experience the game, to feeling rushed, under-powered, and ill-prepared. And yet I’ve beaten every challenge, completed all the side content. If anything, I should be over-leveled. I have sleep-walked into a poor end-game build, and the game not only let me, it encouraged it.

This might be a fake-out and maybe the game continues after the supposed climactic fight, but for now I have ten days: either twenty actions, ten dungeon visits, or some combination of the two, before it all ends. Come back next week, where I’ll either be overjoyed or disappointed. I fear it will be the latter.

I Can’t Believe I’ve Made This

There’s only one day left to get my tabletop battle maps for just 50 cents each. I do this sale once a year, and the maps normally sell for a buck 99 or more, so grab them while you can!

I Can’t Believe I Listened To This

This week on the HisCursedness discord, resident music expert Talia and I discussed the recent-ish⁴ trend in video game music of using unusual techniques to stand out from the crowd. Spurred by the release of the Civilization VII theme music, Live Gloriously by Christopher Tin, which uses four great written works as its lyrics:

• The Ilyad, in ancient Greek

• Beowulf, in old English

• Popol Vuh, in K’iche’ (the people of guatemala)

• Ramayana, in Sanskrit

Given that Civ 6’s theme had lyrics by Leonardo DaVinci, I wondered how they might go harder. I think this theme is fine in aggregate, but not as good as his previous works: Sogno di Volare and Baba Yetu, the latter of which became the first piece of video game music to win a Grammy, and for good reason.

Talia counters that her favourite composer, Austin Wintory, has been doing this sort of thing for a while. Take his piece for aquatic exploration game ABZU, written in Akkadian, the ancient - and extinct - language of Mesopotamia.

Or the lauded Metaphor: ReFantazio⁵ , whose soundtrack is sung in Esperanto, emblematic of the game’s themes of cooperation and utopia.

Metaphor’s is an interesting choice, but I do not think it works as a soundtrack when combined with the games. Other than one or two pieces centred around the villain, the vibes of the music rarely match the games’ events.

And, as Talia notes, how can we not talk about the boss fight from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order? Which uses a song written in Mongolian, sung in a whole new constructed language made for this song, specifically for this boss fight.

Imagine being Roger Ebert⁶ and thinking that video games couldn’t be art. Nonsense opinion.

That’s all for this week’s I Can’t Believe I’ve Done This. Perhaps next week will not be about Metaphor: ReFantazio, we can but hope. The only way to find out is to:

Or read it on the website. You do you.

1  Game Awards Nominee means “little known” now.

2  I’m only half sorry. You should play it, even if I’m down on it this week.

3  Cities have information brokers that tell you an enemy’s weaknesses upfront.

4  Everything from the 2000s onwards is recent because, of course, the 90s were ten years ago.

5  Ha! You cannot escape it!

6  And still alive somehow.