Metaphor: ReFantazio It has a combination of real-time and turn-based combat because director Katsura Hashino wanted it to have battles reminiscent of the movies and manga.
Hashino explained the reason for Metaphor: ReFantazio's hybrid combat system in a new interview on the Official Xbox Podcast (timestamped here). In it, he said that there are “remnants” of Shin Megami Tensei 3's 'press turn' battle system in Metaphor: ReFantazio, but ultimately the latter evolved into something that allows you to attack weaker enemies without spend time and resources on them, and still slow down for big, epic showdowns with bigger enemies.
“If you're fighting a really weak enemy, you have the option of using a completely action-based system where you can just knock it out of the park and then move on,” Hashino said through a translator. “But if you face a more powerful enemy, you enter the commando battle system. This goes back to the idea of manga and movie style combat, where you see the main character running around and beating up all the little minions or the henchmen, just running back and forth knocking them down left and right, but then they face a more powerful enemy.
“Suddenly there's a confrontation… and maybe they call their friends to help them and use all their power at their disposal to defeat them. That balance of the pace of fast and slow is something we go over in terms of the combat system in our previous games.”
The new Atlus RPG has been seen almost universally critical acclaim since the reviews were published this week, and GamesRadar Metaphor: ReFantazio Review It's no different, calling it “an evolution of Atlus' best RPGs” and, more specifically in this specific article, praising the combat as deep, strategic, and most importantly, “exciting.” Overall, the game's combat has been widely praised as innovative, satisfying, and challenging, so it seems like Hashino and the developers at Studio Zero were on to something.
It took new JRPG giant Metaphor: ReFantazio just a few hours to dethrone Persona 5 Royal's concurrent player count on Steam, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down.