Atlus have become a Persona factory in recent years, producing not only the mainline urban fantasy RPGs but spin-offs like Persona 5 Strikers and the recently announced Persona 5 Tactica. Thankfully they're working on something entirely new, too.
During tonight's Xbox Games Showcase, Atlus announced Metaphor: ReFantazio, a new "high fantasy" RPG from Persona 5's director and character designer.
Here's the announcement trailer:
From the trailer I can glean that Metaphor: ReFantazio is a party RPG with turn-based combat and some seriously gaudy enemy designs. It also seems to include a handshake-based character bonding system, fairies, bunny girls, and, uh, sword-surfing on the surface of what looks like a spaceship. There's honestly not a lot of concrete information available, even on the official site.
Metaphor is the first project from Studio Zero, the name for a new internal Atlus team responsible for creating a game not connected to either Persona or Shin Megami Tensei. Despite that separation, the DNA from those games is definitely present. Katsura Hashino is directing the project and Shigenori Soejima is handling character design, and both worked together on Personas 3, 4 and 5.
Every frame of the trailer is pretty wild, but it's the wonderfully stylish menus that most excite me. I mean just look at this:
Metaphor: ReFantazio is aiming to release in 2024.
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