ReFantazio Has One Of The Best RPG Parties

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home November 18, 2024 7 Views 7 Min Read
ReFantazio Has One Of The Best RPG Parties

Key Takeaways

  • Metaphor: ReFantazio offers a well-developed RPG party, each member with unique backstories and motivations.
  • Characters like Heismay, Strohl, and Eupha have deep emotional arcs beyond typical RPG tropes, enhancing player attachment.
  • Protagonist Will serves as the glue holding the party together, with subtle interactions deepening relationships and cohesion.

An RPG party makes or breaks the game for me. What’s the point of going on a world-saving adventure if I’m not going to be irrevocably attached to the characters afterwards? A lot of RPGs (even some of my favourites) have great parties, but they’re not excellent. There’s usually a character or two who lets the side down. Looking at you, Amarant from Final Fantasy 9.

Metaphor: ReFantazio doesn’t have anyone like that. In fact, I’m 40 hours into the game and still unable to pin down my favourite.

If I Had To Pick, It Would Probably Be Heismay

I love a character who is a little creature, so I was immediately enamoured with Heismay. He’s a talking bat! With humongous ears! But he’s also a lot more than that.

Through bonding with Heismay, you learn that he’s suffered an irreparable loss and has been avoiding his grief out of shame. He wasn’t able to protect his son in his final moments and carries this failure with him. You also learn how he clashed with the people in his village due to their narrow views of others, which led him to leave and pursue a knighthood in the capital. I wasn’t expecting to get emotional over a bat when playing Metaphor, but I have. Multiple times.

Strohl and Hulkenberg, your first two party members, are just as developed. Strohl is a member of a noble house, but his village was destroyed by a human monster. He grapples with the decision of whether to honour his parents’ legacy and rebuild their house, or turn his focus towards the villagers who lost their homes in the same catastrophe.

Louis from Metaphor in front of Clive and Mythal from FF16 and Dragon Age The Veilguard

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Hulkenberg is a former royal knight who failed to protect the prince on the night he was cursed and, as such, feels responsible for his fate. Junah joins your cause much later, and I haven’t increased her bond much yet, but her bubbly personality and determination have already won me over.

I’ve been avoiding spoilers as much as I can, so I knew pretty much nothing about Metaphor before diving in, including who the party members were. With the protagonist, Strohl, Hulkenberg, Heismay, and Junah in the party, I was already beyond satisfied and figured this would be it.

But after completing the Dragon Temple dungeon, the priestess we rescued, Eupha, joined the gang. This addition is what has easily cemented it as one of my favourite RPG parties. In contrast to the other party members who focus on their past, Eupha has her eyes set on the future. She grew up on the secluded Virga Island believing that she might one day need to sacrifice her life for her people. But, after meeting the dragon god Eht, seeing the ancient murals in the temple, and obtaining her people’s legendary lance, she realises the priestess is meant to protect the island with her life, not sacrifice it.

Overwatch's Mercy reaching out her hand but with Metaphor's Brigitta's head.

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This revelation leads her to want to learn more about the world outside the island, despite her apprehension about leaving to explore foreign shores. Her anxieties are surprisingly grounded considering this is a fantasy game, as she asks the protagonist what things are like in the capital to prepare herself for visiting it. She reminded me of myself as a teenager leaving my hometown for university in a city hundreds of miles away, though obviously on a much bigger scale.

The Protagonist Is The Glue That Holds Them Together

Other than his desire to free the prince from the curse and fight for a better world, we don’t know too much about the protagonist, Will. That isn’t to say he doesn’t have an important role in the party, though. The opposite, in fact. His more reserved demeanour allows the other party members to open up to him and trust him.

Outside of bond events tied to a specific party member, you also see Will interact with the party in other ways. When cooking in the Gauntlet Runner, for example, you’ll cook with a different party member if the recipe is connected to them in some way, giving you an insight into how the party interacts with each other in their downtime. Small details like this paint the picture that they’re actually building relationships with each other, rather than just sticking together for a similar cause.

I haven’t finished Metaphor yet, so I can only hope it continues building these characters and relationships, but I already know this party will stick with me for a while.

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