Another
terrible Persona formula retread with incredibly distracting visual
effects and word bubbles in 35 different fonts constantly popping up on
screen, a fairy sidekick infinitely more condescending and insufferable
than Navi, and dialog that all reads like a smug-shit Redditor arguing
with his sockpuppet accounts - nothing but snappy back-and-forth stuffed
with the same repeated platitudes and smug one-liners and cutesy turns of phrase and snarky quips and grandiose comic book villain speeches to firmly establish that you're reading the ethos of a straw man. That's because the armchair moralists this trash was written for earnestly believe performative preaching with no thought spared for nuance or realism or even any real action taken makes them a superhero, and anyone who says it doesn't is just another irredeemable evil to be destroyed at a future date. Self-fellating shit like this gets boring to read and listen to really fucking fast, and the fact that they have the gall to charge you $70 for the privilege is nothing short of insulting. Moreso because whenever they're not disingenuously proselytizing at you, they're treating you like you're braindead - rather than
letting you intuit anything through subtext or even context, the game
shows you something, then a character explains it to you in simple
words, then another character (or two, or three) has to tell it to you
again five seconds later. Seriously every other scene goes exactly like
this:
Game shows the player a map
DIPSHIT FAIRY: This is a map! Boy it's a well made map! You know what a map is, right Main Character?
OTHER GUY: This map will show us to our destination!
YET ANOTHER GUY: Our destination is here! Click the location on the map to lead us there, Main Character!
This
is an M-rated video game not Dora the Explorer. Actually I take that
back, I'd rather watch Dora the Explorer; at least the characters in
that talk like real people and not charismaless Beetlejuices.
That would already be enough to ruin any game, but then Metaphor goes out of its way to reach a flabbergasting new low and establish itself as one of the most morally reprehensible video games of all time. Less than an hour into the story they drop a lovely plot point about the 'real' world in this universe being a paradise
comprised of "one united tribe" of one race and zero conflict, and the game world you play in is some kind of power fantasy/instruction manual that teaches people to pretend they're
righteous and empathetic so they could bring such a world about. Yes, by standing up to all the one-dimensional fictional straw men you invent in your head (through violence, of course, because anything else is unbecoming the master race), you can conflate your fictional acts with actual virtuous deeds, sell yourself as a 'hero' to all those
naïve minorities/inferiors you secretly hate and win their trust so that you can exploit them for personal gain instead, then quietly disappear them once they've served their purpose. So now Atlus is laundering Machiavellianism, social darwinism and white man's burden bullshit in the same way P5 was a
lovely coat of whitewash for incels and Kiwi Farms chuds. Hey, if you're gonna cater to the worst dregs of society in pursuit of easy sales, you might
as well dog-whistle to white supremacists, fascists and other miscellaneous eugenics
weirdos too, right? Did I also mention Metaphor conveniently released just in time for the 2024 election? Yeah...
good one Atlus, you unbelievably vile fucks. It's going to take an actual miracle to get me to ever buy one of your games again...
Screenshot removed because of spurious copyright claims
Developer: Atlus Studio Zero
Publisher: Sega
Released: 2024
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, XBox Series