Normally I open these reviews with some kind of rhetorical question about the game and then give my opinion out in pieces over the course of several paragraphs, but today's subject has put me in such a rotten mood that I can't be bothered to even entertain the idea there's anything redeemable about it. In short, Metaphor is everything I despised about Persona 5 again, now with the added insufferability of a hack director/writer so high on the success Sega bought him that he now thinks he's some paragon of talent and virtue who's beyond all reproach. Well, he's not. His latest dungheap is just another retread of the same 18-year-old Persona formula; walk down linear corridors, exploit elemental weaknesses to knock down the enemies and get free turns, hit the I Win button once they're all down, repeat ad nauseum. Yawn. The only difference is now there's even more obnoxious distracting visual effects and word bubbles in 35 different fonts constantly popping up on screen coupled with some of the worst writing I've ever seen in any medium, let alone video games. The dialog feels nothing like real conversation and entirely like one teenager manning a dozen sock accounts to "debate" on Reddit; every character speaks with the exact same smarmy tone and rapid-fire cadence, and every line is overwritten to cram in as much clunky exposition and clichéd turns of phrase and snarky quips and glib one-liners as possible in some desperate attempt to appear 'witty'. It's about as credible as someone with a 6th grade vocabulary showing off their big collection of expensive books with uncracked spines to prove how 'smart' and 'well-read' they are; embarrassing for them and doubly so for anyone dumb enough to actually buy it.
Metaphor's whole morality play unfolds in the most simple, childish way possible. Good and evil are clearly defined polar opposites with no nuance or ambiguity whatsoever, or so we're told. All the heroes are presented as infallible selfless übermenschen who always have completely correct information and invariably make the right decisions, so logically anyone in their way must be the complete opposite. We certainly never see any evidence to the contrary; all the villains ever do is commit heinous acts without any hesitation and love every second of it. They also proudly spell out their ethos to the player in plain, unambiguous language just to make sure there's absolutely no doubt in your mind that they're completely irredeemable scum and you should hate them. That's because none of Katsura Hashino's antagonists ever have any nuance or humanity whatsoever, they're just straw men for him and other armchair revolutionaries to point at and say "Sure I never do anything that isn't cowardly, manipulative or self-serving, but I'm not as bad as THESE guys so therefore I'm a good person, now worship me and destroy anyone who doesn't!". Likewise, there isn't a single scene in the game that showcases any genuine wisdom, insight or plan of action regarding the social topics it's spotlighting, just lame speechifying about how everyone else needs to be better. Just like Persona 5, no thought is ever spared for how violence and mob justice just beget more of the same, or how innocent people suffer most when giant egos clash, or that there's any degrees of severity between crimes and criminals (I remind you that rape, murder, fraud and cheating in a video game are all equal sins in the eyes of Hashino), or how taking one problematic person out of the equation doesn't solve systemic problems and prejudices; nope, everyone instantly joins hands to sing Kumbaya and bow to our heroes in reverence and never strays from the righteous puritan path again after they punch the latest cardboard cutout baddie around a bit and spout off a lame PSA message after. Stupid, arrogant Saturday morning cartoon bullshit at its worst.
Nothing said or done in Metaphor qualifies as storytelling, or even as having a writing process behind it. It's just Hashino transcribing all the half-baked lore and loaded arguments and witty banter and juvenile power fantasies going through his own head every minute of every day so he can show off how amazing he thinks he is and how shallow, stupid and immoral he thinks everyone else is. Forget being insulting, he's utterly contemptful of his audience's intelligence; rather than letting you intuit anything through subtext or even context, the game constantly shows you a thing, then a character explains the thing to you in simple words, then another character (or two, or three) has to tell it to you again five seconds later just to make sure you get it. Literally every dialog 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 no, I withdraw that comparison; at least Dora's creators actually practice what they preach and their characters manage to talk like real people rather than charismaless Beetlejuices. This is a Sonichu comic with a budget. There, that's better.
People who write crap like this are completely self-serving; they're disingenuous armchair altruists who don't give a shit about anything beyond personal gain, but it's deathly important to them that you believe they're great guys and take everything they say at face value. They've never once led by example nor made any earnest attempt at changing anyone's views or ways, they just make up arguments in their heads so they can always 'win' and pretend they're the most educated, empathetic and morally righteous people who ever lived, actual facts be damned. They honestly believe they're the very first to come up with incredibly easy solutions to complex social issues, expecting everyone else to do all the work required to make them a reality while they take all the credit for 'inspiring' change by making shitty derivative art about it once every decade. Hashino has effectively corrupted Persona - once a brilliant and poignant franchise about being true to yourself and finding value in your life, relationships and humanity despite their inherent flaws and finity - into a celebration of his own narcissism and delusional grandeur. Don't think any of his fanboys/enablers will ever practice his preaching either; all they ever do is emulate him and become more reality-detached idea guys who think there's no difference between posturing about a thing in the realm of fiction (or the internet) and actually doing it. They only care about being perceived as good people to promote themselves, not about affecting any real change; if that happened how would they sell ebooks and podcasts about how everyone else needs to work harder to be empathetic, hard working and selfless just like they are? The fact that Sega has the gall to charge you another $70 for smug shit like this is just shameless too, especially when you can log on to any social media platform right now and get your fill of phony moral crusaders for free.
Oh and you can spare the lame fallacy about how I just hate this game because it's "woke"; I'm about as left-wing as you can get. I've also consumed plenty of media that espouses leftist views and given many of them positive appraisals, because they did so in an intelligent, empathetic and sincere way; you can find many examples on this very website if you actually bother to look instead of just cherrypicking enough out-of-context quotes to whip up a lynch mob on your Tumblr page. I just hate when corporate toadies like Hashino oversimplify the current political climate and coat it in a thin veneer of art so they can score brownie points with idiots who think virtue is measured in arbitrary stat bars and Likes. Hell, he doesn't even believe in the 'movement' he's selling you; it's all just part of his greater scheme to build a bigger pre-installed audience for his next game and reap more profits for the rich conservatives that hold Sega stock (who, surprise, don't believe in it either) so he can keep living the high life as an overpaid, overpraised hack. Any positive outreach or acts of vicious harassment and violence his works inspire are completely incidental to his own self-dealing, and there's about 500,000 times more of one than the other (I'll give you a hint: the good one ain't winning). So instead of spending $70 to live out someone else's vapid messiah fantasy, why not donate some of that money to MSF instead. Or buy something made by a talented indie dev or musician or artist who could probably really use even a tiny fraction of the revenue this garbage will generate to keep the lights on and afford groceries. Or hell, even drop a few dollars in a random person's Ko-Fi or Gofundme with no expectation of anything back. Any act of charity, no matter how small, is infinitely more noble than jerking yourself off and calling it heroism any day of the week...
Developer: Atlus Studio Zero
Publisher: Sega
Released: 2024
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, XBox Series
Note to publishers: If you want to give the impression that your game's really 'progressive' and 'woke' and avoid attracting the worst people on the planet to it, maybe don't have it describe an idealized utopia using phrases that sound uncomfortably similar to fascist slogans; like, say, "one united tribe". Or have a guy whose previous games contain homophobic and transphobic prejudice he's never apologized for deliver your big important message about unity, tolerance and caring for others...