Metaphor: The fantasy world of ReFantazio was created after director Katsura Hashino dove into fantasy classics before designing it, though it ultimately seems like this crash course had little impact on the final product.
In case you missed the rave reviews, Atlus' new JRPG Metaphor: ReFantazio is currently one of the highest-rated games of the year on Metacritic, tying PlayStation's hit platformer Astro Bot for the top spot. If we count expansions, Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is the third game this year to reach that 94 Metascore.
Speaking with The Verge, Hashino said it was a challenge to create a fantasy world from scratch after spending much of his time creating universes set in the modern era. Hashino previously developed Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 5, and Catherine, all set in the present day, at Atlus before branching out and forming his own studio, Studio Zero, under the same publishing imprint. Metaphor: ReFantazio, on the other hand, is set in a medieval fantasy kingdom called the United Kingdom of Euchronia.
To prepare for the development of Metaphor, Hashino studied classic fantasy intellectual property by reading books such as The Lord of the Rings. However, he ultimately decided that imitating other fantasy worlds was not the right direction for Metaphor.
“I realized that if we tried to imitate this in any way, in the characters, the setting or the world, it wouldn't really come close to the originals,” Hashino said. “If we tried to copy that, it would just be a copy. So I thought, let's try to make a fantasy game that only we can make.”
In the end, of course, everything Hashino and the Studio Zero team did culminated in a dark new contender for Game of the Year. GamesRadar+'s Metaphor: ReFantazio review gave the game a tremendous 4.5 out of 5 stars and called it “a triumphant evolution of the best of Atlus.”
The Persona director and JRPG veteran says Metaphor: ReFantazio's incredible menus were “really annoying” to make, just as Persona 5's were “impossible to read at first.”.