Metaphor Refantazio

We’re still waiting on Persona 6, but with Metaphor: ReFantazio, Atlus released a fantasy RPG that takes a lot of the best parts of its social sim/monster taming/dungeon crawler series and remixes them for a brand new setting. Metaphor: ReFantazio is a sublime turn-based RPG that reconfigures Persona’s social systems for a dark fantasy political drama that, when all is said and done, actually has some profound things to say about how people dive into fiction as a distraction from the real world, potentially to the point of inaction against injustice. We’ll see if Atlus makes it another franchise alongside Persona, but even if there isn’t another Metaphor, ReFantazio stands tall alongside the rest of Atlus’ greats. — Kenneth Shepard

A good match for: Anyone who wants a fantasy Zohran Mamdani simulator.

A bad match for: Anyone who doesn’t want to spend almost 100 hours on one game.