For fantasy JRPG Metaphor: ReFantazio, Persona director gave himself a crash course featuring classics like The Lord of the Rings, but "if we tried to copy that it would just be a copy"

Director Katsura Hashino wasn't as familiar ꦰmaking fantasy worlds, so he studied the best

Metaphor: ReFantazio's protagonist smiles at his fairy companion, Gallica in an anime-style cutscene.
(Image credit: Atlus / Sega)

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Metaphor: ReFantazio's fantasy world was created after director Katsura Hashino immersed himself in f♓antasy classics before designing it, although ultimately it sounds like this crash course had little impact on the final product.

In case you've missed the rave reviews, Atlus's new JRPG Metaphor: ReFantazio is one of the year's highest rated games on Metacritic currently, matching PlayStation's hit platformer 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Astro Bot for the top spot. If we're counting expansions, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Elden Ring's 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is the th🗹ird gam𓆏e this year to reach that 94 Metascore. 

, Hashino said it was a challenge creating a fantasy world from whole cloth after spending so much of his time creating universes set in the modern age. Hashino previously developed Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 5, and Catherine - all set in the modern day - at Atlus before he branched off and formed his own studio, Studio Zero, under the same publishing label. Metaphor: ReFantazio, by contrast, is set in a medieval fantasy realm called the United Kingdom of Euchronia.

In order to prep for Metaphor's development, Hashino studied classic fantasy IP by reading books like The Lord of the Ri🤡ngs. However, he ultimately decided that imitating other fantasy worlds wasn't the right direction for Metaphor.

"I realized that if we tried to imitate this in any way, in the charact💟ers or setting or world, it💦 wouldn’t really reach the originals," Hashino said. "If we tried to copy that it would just be a copy. So I thought: let’s try to make a fantasy game that only we can make."

Ultimately, of course, everything Hashino and the team at Studio Zero did culminated in a new dark horse contender for Game of the Year. GamesRadar+'s 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Metaphor: ReFantazio review slapped a tremendous 4.5 out of 5 stars on th🌺e game and called it "a triumphant evolution of Atlus' best."

Persona director and JRPG veteran says the amazing menus in Metaphor: ReFantazio were "really annoying" to make, just as Persona 5's were "impossible to read at first".

Jordan Gerblick
澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Jordan Gerblick

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a f🐷reelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.