Metaphor: ReFantazio has a demo coming, and you might already be able to get it as you’re reading this.
As reported by PersonaCentral, the demo was officially announced in the game’s official Tokyo Game Show Livestream. The game’s entire prologue will function as the demo, and it is estimated to be 5 hours long.
Given Atlus’ propensity for long turn based games, this may be just about enough time to introduce the game’s premise, main characters, game systems, and story to get you started. Five hours sounds pretty generous for a demo, but that will definitely only be a small taste of the full game.
In fact, director Katsura Hashino went on record in an interview that Metaphor: ReFantazio would be about as long as Persona 5. And most gamers played through that game in about 100 hours. So even with the many new things Atlus is trying with this game, it’s very similar to Persona in this sense.
And it seems that even hardcore Persona fans are going to need to download that demo, because it really is a completely different experience. The hybrid action and turn based combat system is already a lot to try to understand on its own. But, the big hidden world scenario of Metaphor: ReFantazio is also considerably harder to parse than the game premise for Persona, or for that matter, its parent series Shin Megami Tensei.
But even more than Atlus fans, this was likely a big decision Atlus made to help introduce their game, and their studio, to Xbox gamers. Microsoft seems to have acquired this game’s marketing rights, and it’s a big deal for both companies. But we don’t know if Xbox’s fans will take to it, and obviously they wouldn’t be sure either. We don’t know if it will be on Game Pass, but that may be something they decided to schedule a few months after launch. In any case, if Microsoft wants to make Xbox a home for JRPGs, they are going to have to make this deal work.
The demo was leaked a few days ago, but we didn’t really have to wait that long to confirm it. Xbox gamers in Korea were among the first to download and play it, and they stated that it is about 60 GB. As of this writing, we don’t know if the demo will be live in America or your region, but we do expect that it will become available within the next 24 to 48 hours.
Metaphor: ReFantazio is releasing on October 11, 2024, for the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Steam, and Microsoft Store.
