Metaphor: ReFantazio continues Persona’s great handheld heritage

Atlus’ Persona franchise is largely a console series, but it has a strong handheld heritage. There were excellent portable versions of Persona 3 and Persona 4, and Persona 5 Royal on Nintendo Switch was great, too. Metaphor: ReFantazio is a new fantasy JRPG from the team behind those beloved Personas. And while the game takes place in a different universe, many of the core elements are present in Metaphor — which means that it’s just as great of a handheld experience.

I might be understating it to say Metaphor is Persona-like. The game’s UI is exceptionally flashy. You’ll spend a lot of time talking with your allies and improving your bonds with them. Days tick by as you navigate sprawling dungeons and spend time with your companions before a looming deadline. The main characters even go through epic transformations where they brutally rip an organ out of their body as a mysterious voice talks in “thous” and “haths.” Once, while taking notes about the game, I called it Persona instead of Metaphor. It’s that similar.

But that means so much of what makes Persona games great portable titles works for Metaphor, too. Battles tend to be quick, meaning if you have a few minutes, you can blast through several to clear a dungeon floor. Doing activities in one in-game day is enough to feel like progress. Some parts of the game feature long bouts of text, but when I’m playing just before I go to sleep, seeing what happens next can feel like an exciting chapter in a great book. 

I’m playing Metaphor on the Steam Deck. The game is listed on Steam as Playable instead of Verified, and while it is indeed playable, performance is inconsistent, especially in town areas I’ve visited. (The towns are pretty busy places, with lots of characters and things going on.) I actually capped the game at 30fps in settings, even though it can run higher, just because I didn’t want to deal with varying frame rates.

But fortunately, Metaphor isn’t a game that demands perfect performance. In dungeons, you can attack enemies in real time to try to get the jump on them, but I found that frame rate dips didn’t hinder my ability to pull off a successful barrage. All battles are turn-based, anyway, and some frame drops didn’t make much of a difference to me there. 

I’m more than fine dealing with some issues; being able to take Metaphor anywhere I want is amazing. I play the game pretty much every night before I fall asleep, I play it on the couch on the weekends while my new baby naps, and I even took my Steam Deck on two recent business trips just so I could sneak in some sessions when I had spare time.

There’s one more way Metaphor is like the Persona series: it’s absolutely massive. But a game that’s dozens of hours long is a lot more manageable when you can play whenever and wherever you want.