We Play, You Play: Metaphor: ReFantazio

This is a head gun podcast.

All right, we have a time limit for this operation.

We only have 12 days to infiltrate the cathedral and kill the vicious human that is threatening the town.

Okay, okay.

12 days, 12 days.

We got to focus.

We got to set our priorities straight.

There's a lot in the line here, and if we don't get this done within the allotted time, things are going to be really bad, really fast.

And honestly, I think we should spend this time like preparing.

Yes.

You know, like get, get our meds, get our armor, get whatever it is that we need taken care of so that we can roll in and lay that human out.

Yes, we don't need to rush right in.

No.

We should make sure we are adequately prepared for this ultimately decisive battle.

Maybe even increase our courage and intelligence and things like that.

Yeah, that would be really handy.

Yeah.

All right.

So,

I don't know.

What do you guys want to do today?

I was thinking we go to like the Build-A-Bear workshop, build some bears that look like us yeah i could i could build a bear to it's just one day of the many days that we have yeah i mean yeah we've got 12 days and there's no reason we can't just build a bear today time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer

all right we have 11 days left

11 days 11 days 11 days okay okay i don't feel like yesterday was a waste i want to say i love my bear yeah i feel i feel slightly more like imagination that i have like a little bit more of imagination yeah we got to be creative so that was actually really really good um okay Things we have to do.

We got to get medicines.

We have to get recipes.

We have to get armor.

We should have to get.

I want to go to the mag trader.

I think there was some side quests we needed to do.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Also, I just, I really want to try the new Jersey Mike's pastrami.

I feel like it's going to be a pretty heavy meal, so you know, we should kind of budget a lot of time for it.

I could eat.

I could, I could eat some pastrami.

I could eat.

I could eat.

We've got a lot of time.

Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer.

All right, 10 10 days until we need to infiltrate the cathedral and kill the human.

Days.

You know what?

The bear was good, but the sandwich was really, really good.

Sandwich is slow.

You know, I'm going to say, with only 10 days remaining, what I think we should do is go back to that Jersey Mike's and try that sandwich again.

Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer.

I wasn't as good the second time.

No, it was like it's way better the first time, but I think the difference.

Yeah, that's the thing.

We should have eaten it on site.

We shouldn't have have brought it back well I don't I don't see why we can't I agree and I don't see why we can't do that today because I feel like we wasted that sandwich third time's the charm perhaps excuse me adventurers adventurers my son is trapped in a building can you rescue him shut up we've got to get to jersey mics time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer

Okay, it was really, really good this time.

Yeah, it was good.

I think it's a good sandwich.

I think I'm going to land on good.

Yep.

Maybe not like extremely good, but like good.

But it was hitting this time.

I know we have, I think, seven days left.

Nine?

Eight?

Eight.

Where are we in?

It doesn't fucking be.

I don't even know what day.

Who even knows?

But I just know that whatever.

I cannot do any of the prep today.

I'm just so tired.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I need to look at that.

We just need to fucking chill.

I just want to look at my phone.

You know, I've got this cool 90s commercials compilation on YouTube that I want to show you.

You want to watch that?

Yeah, we can watch that.

All right, cool.

Now we've mixed yummy chips of chocolate in a creamy vanilla frosting.

New chocolate chip, dunkaroos.

Hip hip for chocolate chip.

Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer.

Man, after watching those commercials, I kind of want to eBay some dunkaroos.

Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer.

Oh, cool, the dunkaroos are here.

Let's eat them.

Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer.

Hey guys, I think I got food poisoning from either the Jersey Mics or the dunkaroos yeah

i gotta go the urgent care i feel awful yeah i think i think i got it too yeah let's let's let's you know what let's all let's all take a sick day let's go to urgent care we'll get them tomorrow time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer man i feel way better i feel so good i think i'm actually ready to you know put my best foot forward and start to maybe think about doing some of the things we got to do to prepare yeah definitely because we definitely don't want to find ourselves under the gun So, you know, we could divide and conquer here.

We could get some medicine.

We could get armor.

We could get.

Yeah, go to the mag trader, maybe check the weather.

I was thinking, I don't know about you, but

this might be a battle that could cost us our lives to save this town.

Yep.

Fighting this human.

I don't want to die without knowing what happens in Gladiator 2.

And it's an IMAX.

So.

I mean,

it's not going to be an IMAX for long.

I mean,

if we watch it, we might get better at fighting we might get inspired time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer

gladiator slapped it was really good

hell yeah ice cream truck ice cream truck ice cream truck time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer

it was an ambulance i was confused time marches on and the age of a new king draws nearer

guys guys we fucked up we fucked up.

We gotta fight this thing tomorrow.

Oh, my God.

It's a good thing.

Oh, my God.

It's a deadlock.

We gotta fight tomorrow.

Oh, fuck.

We're not prepared at all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We ate so many sandwiches and built so many bears.

Oh, my God.

I love my bears.

Did you know?

Did I tell you guys I named one Jersey and one Mike?

That's good.

So cute.

Pretty good, huh?

Time marches on, and the age of a new king draws nearer.

Fantasy is dead.

We surf on a sword and experience discrimination as we play you play one of the year's best games, Metaphor Refantasio, this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Weiger.

I'm here with our third host, Matt Abadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Premiere Video Game Podcast, where we are talking about one of the biggest games of the year.

And we mean that both in terms of quality and in our age.

It's Metaphor Refantasio.

It's a big boy, and we got a lot to say.

We got a lot to say about the big boy.

What can we say?

I've got a lot to say about a big boy.

Like proud parents, we got a lot to say about a big boy.

My friend had a baby.

Oh, how about that?

Yeah, and it's a big boy.

Wow.

It's a huge boy.

Like,

the baby is six months old and it's wearing the clothes of a three-year-old toddler.

Wow.

How about that?

It's a huge, big baby.

I don't know their birth weights i was a big baby uh i was 10 pounds six ounces

fucking huge that's nuts yeah uh i was uh a set of twins so the combined weight quite large of course however i was very small when i was born i had to stay behind wow in the uh the niku to get healthy before i could go home not to bring us down but my brother tried to kill me in the womb oh boy i tried to kill myself in the womb i uh my mom had to have a c-section because i wrapped the umbilical cord around around my neck.

I was trying to hang myself as she gave birth.

Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

Could you

see what the future was going to tell?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I did that thing from Martyrs.

You can see the other side.

Oh my God.

So Rochelle Chen, our regular producer, Ranch, is out this week.

But with us is

our able guest engineer, our buddy Sam Rogich.

Hi, Sam.

Good to have you.

Hi, Sam.

Hey, guys.

Thanks for having me.

Of course.

Sam, your band Guck has a new single out.

check it out streaming there you go hey uh we got a lot to talk about with metaphor but first let's talk about some other video games we've been playing it's what are you playing what are you playing hey it's me the resident evil merchant and i'm here to answer the question of the week what are you playing

what

you didn't usually you tee it up

like who's gonna go and you kind of just were looking at both of us like yeah with a blank waiting to be one for one of us to be teed

Do I do that?

Or one of any of us?

You usually say to one of

us, usually me or Matt, but sometimes Heather, you kind of kind of just toss some sort of an underhand pitch.

Do you want me to go again?

You don't need to do another take.

Honestly, everything you said up to there was good.

We just need to add on to it.

Dear audience, I'm sorry.

No, it does.

Apologies, not warranted.

You don't have to read from your notes app.

I've made some mistakes over the last few years, and I say this with full recompense that I am diligently trying to change my behavior.

I take no onus for what has been done, but instead allow myself to fully foot the blame.

My apologies, and that's the truth.

Rather than you removing.

That was like, that was from the heart.

Look, it was very, it was very heartfelt, and if it makes you feel better, then I think it was a good use of our time.

But yeah, sess.

You think I could use that to get uncancelled?

You weren't canceled.

No, yeah.

Yeah, but I'm going to be.

No, you're not going to be.

You're going to be fine, Resonation.

Yeah, don't relish this late.

I've got some plans.

It's going to say, I'm going to cancel thus far.

Yeah.

I think you're going to be fine.

I will say,

while we're in this period of

giving notes,

it is, you've been doing this job for so long.

Yeah.

It's kind of shocking that you would make a mistake like this far.

Yeah, yeah, interesting.

Are you

out of my mind?

I adopted a cat.

Oh, that's nice.

I'm a cat lover.

Oh, yeah.

I have two cats myself.

What flavor is your litter?

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Why, I only use pretty litter, of course.

Delicious.

All right.

Uh,

Nick, why don't you tell me what are you playing?

Resident Evil Merchant, thank you so much.

You're welcome.

I want to talk about UFO 50, which is a a game that came out earlier this year that I've spent some time with.

UFO 50, for those who don't know, is a collection of 50 games crafted by different indie developers.

The conceit of it, it is presented as...

It's basically like the fictional library for a fictional

console.

And it's presented in this framing device where you have a bunch of fictional details.

I keep saying the word fictional, but it's just

how well realized this is, that this is all stuff that's

invented but feels real.

And that says like the release dates, when these games came out in the early 80s, who the developers were, what the reception was, what the historical context was for it.

For instance, like this game used new hardware to enable more colors per sprite.

So this game in particular has particularly detailed characters, or that's their justification for it.

And all that stuff is really fun.

The console hardware capabilities that everyone is is working with is somewhere,

I feel like above Atari 2600, but below Famicom NES, if that makes sense.

It's kind of like a, you know, not quite as old school as

those first couple console gen, but also not quite an 8-bit gen.

And that presents some really cool designs and aesthetic choices.

I mean, I think it has like, yeah, I don't know if it's a 16-color palette or an 8-color palette.

It's not a ton of colors that are that are being worked with, but it's like,

it's cool to see all the different variations that are made.

And the same sort of thing with whatever the sound chip emulation or the, you know,

the limited number of sounds that can be

emitted from whatever they're using as a baseline,

you know, there's a bunch of different takes on how to

take advantage of that.

My thought on this game overall, and I do enjoy it, and I do think it's really cool, and I do think it's an an incredible art piece but you know with an Indiana Jones game

in the zeitgeist right now

this belongs in a museum

I guess that's that's what I'd say because what I admire about it is that the games collectively nail the look and feel of early game design where there's so much quirkiness and awkwardness uh you know gameplay stopping abruptly when you acquire an item for no certain no particular reason it's like you got an energy cube and like the all gameplay stops and the text slowly comes up on screen.

Or just, you know, when you die and it's like, like, you have failed, you know, whatever.

Like, it's, it's like kind of messaging that feels a little bit,

everything just feels a little bit awkward, possibly like poorly localized at times.

Yeah.

Also, but also kind of charming in that way.

And then a lot of these are games that are.

They feel like either arcade games or, you know, the kind of early console games that were adapted from arcade design where it was hey we're going to try to have a punishing difficulty curve we are going to have short gameplay sessions um and maybe you know you get one life and then you die and then you're done there's no continues or maybe you get a limited number of lives but you're set up to fail because we want you to pump more quarters into this some bitch um also things like you know games that have like super slow walk cycles and like clunky like slow attack animations with weird hitboxes

it's like intentionally cumbersome to evoke what it was like to play a game from that era.

I think it's absolutely awesome at that.

But it also means that some of these games are not super fun to play.

And

I don't even think that's like the developers doing a bad job.

I think that's them trying to be like, hey, we're trying to present a game as it was in this era.

We're trying to invent.

Yeah.

Not a, not, not a retro game that feels modern, but a retro game that actually feels retro.

It's not just an aesthetic choice.

It also is a core part of the gameplay.

One example I'll give.

A game I overall enjoyed, but a game that I don't really have an urge to play more of, Onion Driver, which is,

it's like a game, it's basically a top-down crazy taxi.

You're going around making deliveries to a bunch of different targets on a map.

But it's one of those things that's clearly like meant to present like, hey, we didn't quite know how to do controls for driving games yet.

So there is an acceleration or reverse button, but the steering is extraordinarily clunky.

And it's just a very cumbersome game to play.

But it also has things like it has like, you know, you're an alien and there's

a cutscene with there.

There's cut scenes with the aliens explaining, you know, what the what the weather conditions are today or whatever, what's or what's going on right now.

And all that shit is really cool.

And, you know, just, again, just makes it feel like a real game.

Also, there's some games that I do really like enjoy their appreciate, like, really appreciate because they're not just like

demos.

They're like fully realized games.

Uh, there's this one game, Bug Hunter, that I think is just the second game in the collection.

Um, that's like a turn-based strategy game, and it's genuinely really fun.

And I found myself spending a lot of time with it.

Uh, and so I don't know, I think this is worth experiencing if you love games.

I'm just not sure how

much

I'll ultimately come back to this one.

I'm more just like happy that it exists.

And I think just anyone who, I think both of you should play it at some point because I think it's just a cool thing to see

what it's attempting and what it's succeeding at.

Are all 50 of the games like available at like

no?

There's no like...

There's no progression like you have to play through the first game to unlock the next set or anything like that.

You can go straight to the 50th game in the collection.

And in fact, I think a great way to play it is either to just go through them all in sequence and spend some time with them.

I mean,

you know, you don't, I, some of these games you don't have to spend a ton of time with to get what they're trying to do, uh, or just go like scattershot like completely out of order and just like play number 49 and then play number 23 or whatever.

It's been on my radar.

I just haven't committed to doing it, but maybe I should just

get it on the Steam Deck and see what's going on.

I think it'd be a great Steam Deck game.

I imagine it runs well.

It doesn't seem technically intensive.

I wish I still had my Steam Deck, which was Nick's Steam Deck.

Yeah.

Because this is exactly the right game for it.

Yeah.

And

I feel fool.

You feel fool?

I feel fool.

I'm fool.

Anyway, that's what I've been playing, UFO 50.

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I guess I could go next.

Yeah, Heather, what are you playing?

So recently,

my manager, who is my professional representative, got me a gift.

And it was of, I believe it's called the R40S Pro, which is a handheld device that comes pre-loaded with a ton of

emulated games on it.

It's got like emulation station pre-built in.

You turn it on out of the box.

The box is from Amazon.

You know, it's not like, oh, I had to order this through some clandestine serpentine.

Yeah.

Like he got it off Amazon.

It comes to my house.

I open up the box.

I'm like, wow, what's this?

I turn it on.

And

this fucking thing has 3,000 or 30,000.

I don't know what it is.

Yeah.

Games built into it.

How the fuck is this legal?

Like, how is it that you can buy this thing?

Because, like, usually when I'm like

preloading emulators onto a thing and like, then you got to find the ROMs.

And, oh, I already own this game, so I don't feel bad about it.

Or it's discontinued and there's no other way to play it.

But, like, there's a lot of like hoops you have to jump through.

Are there some like big gaps of like, oh, well, it's clearly missing games from these developers or whatever?

No, I mean, fucking thing has Dreamcast on it.

I open up Dreamcast and it's got crazy taxi.

They're like massive games.

It's not like, I mean, not that crazy taxi is the massivest game.

It had everything from Super NES, everything from Genesis, like full software libraries.

It might just not be legal.

I mean, that's the thing.

It might just be that Amazon's just selling something that's illegal or an Amazon third-party seller.

Well, how, well, it comes in the official Amazon with the smile box, right?

I don't know what to tell you.

I mean, like,

I just, I,

I can't imagine that that was fully above board and officially licensed, knowing how

licensing is.

I mean, because even the version of Crazy Taxi that's on Steam is like not the version that's on Dreamcast.

Oh, it's got fucking, oh, it's got the music.

It's got the idea.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there's no way this thing is above board.

But, like, how can you get that?

I mean, like.

I don't want me to sound naive, but I imagine a store like Amazon isn't the kind of place where you can go to just buy illegal goods, right?

I think because they have such an enormous inventory that maybe that

they err on the side of allowing things up as opposed to being restrictive on what can be listed.

And so probably you do end up with situations like that.

I'm sure on eBay, the same, you can buy all sorts of, you know, semi-legal stuff.

eBay seems a lot more like obvious to me.

Like you can get modded hardware, modded software, like all that shit on eBay, and it doesn't make me bat an eye.

It's weird to go to what is effectively online Sears and buy like every super NES game for 50 bucks.

But you can like buy like AI written biographies about people who are like alive.

Like it's like it's it's

I don't know.

It's it's that's it's weird.

Like

I guess I say that to say anything could be on.

I could put something on Amazon.

Like it's probably coming from a third-party seller.

It's not like a verified Amazon seller necessarily.

Isn't that strange?

It's weird, but it's weird.

Like you can buy similar similar things on like Etsy of like people like, you know, just like loading up flash carts again with

ROMs or whatever.

Etsy makes sense to me because it feels like I'm going to a garage

more user-generated.

Like, it's like, oh,

somebody's selling a Vita with every

PlayStation and

PSP game already built in.

That tracks because I feel like, oh, I've wandered into somebody's garage and this is a small pseudo-business where they are probably not

saying that they got all the money that they got to the IRS, right?

But it's fucking Amazon.

In the listing, does it say like comes with every game you've ever heard of?

Yes.

Because I love that.

That's what I just looked up.

I was like, before I go on this rant, I should, I should see what, what, what is, like, it features fuck, like, Super Nintendo graphics in the fucking picture of the thing.

Yeah, because I feel like when you buy, like, a flash cart or something, it'll be like for dumping your previously owned ROMs onto, like, then you sort of can fill in the blanks like from there.

If you were to

get a bunch of things.

With a built-in 256 gigabyte storage space and pre-installed with 30,000 games, as well as support for 20 emulators, you'll be able to revisit a vast array of classic games.

That's telling you what it is.

Yeah, but I guess it's not saying like explicitly what it is.

Like 30,000 games could mean anything.

Yeah.

It's wild.

Yeah.

There's some loophole that it's being exploited of course all i know is a few years back someone uploaded the 2016 nba doug contest to pornhub so we shouldn't just expect things to be in their right place on amate on on on the internet i can't jack off to this

or can here

anyway that's what i've been playing um it's perfect for trips

It seems cool.

A picture you showed of it, it was actually like pretty slick looking.

It's so slick looking.

The screen is like an OLED screen, like an IPS OLED screen or some like yeah it looks like you're looking at like the screen of an iphone kind of makes me mad because of all the uh little devices that i've bought that are exactly like that that i had to do it all myself no you can just go on amazon and click yeah click purchase and honestly it's like a hundred dollars at most fifty dollars for most of them yeah fifty bucks for the whole world in your hand pretty nice Matt, what are you playing?

Oh, look, I rolled a new character in Diablo 4.

I bought the expansion.

I love it.

I rolled a spirit-born character.

But what I'm realizing is it's taking me straight through to the Vessel of Hatred expansion.

Yeah, so by default, it basically does the,

and I should have talked about this when I talked about my playthrough of Vessel of Hatred, but by default, it skips the main game content.

It just sort of starts you out in the post-game slash Vessel of Hatred content.

I do kind of wish that flag was a little bit more forefronted when you make that character, because I kind of had the same sort of thing.

I was like, oh, I had forgotten some of the specifics of the base game, and I kind of wanted to go through some of that story again with the Spirit Born.

Because my previous character was a sorcerer,

which I was enjoying, but just kind of bounced off of it at the time.

And

the seasonal stuff wasn't happening yet.

So

it's kind of like it's an offline character, basically.

So when I try to load that one up, it's like your progression's not going to carry through for X, Y, and Z or whatever through the seasonal stuff.

You're You're not going to be able to participate in the seasonal rewards things or whatever.

I kind of want to do that.

Yeah, sure.

So maybe I maybe what I'm supposed to do is start

another character that's not the

DLC character first, go through that stuff, and then come back to my spirit-born character.

I think you can go through the

store.

I think you just need to

uncheck whatever the box or check the box that makes it so you'll skip the campaign.

God.

I think you can still play through the single-player campaign or single-player campaign, the regular, the main campaign, the main game campaign as a Spirit Born.

I'll have to look because I am enjoying it.

It's such a

cool new abilities, cool new

fighting style and stuff.

And I just like, it's, it's, I, like, I double-dipped on this because it was on sale in the PlayStation store with the with the bundle with both.

So I'm playing it on my PS5 and on my portal.

Um, and it's great.

I'm having a blast with it.

I can't wait to sink some more time into it because I forgot about this part of playing Diablo.

Yeah.

Is that it doesn't it

does require some

it requires your attention and your participation, of course, but it doesn't require that much thought kind of.

Like, I kind of don't really care about the story of Diablo, like of what's happening in the, in, in the story.

I will say, as someone who's played all the Diablo games, games, I generally don't care too much about the story either.

It's just kind of functional, but I do think the story in Diablo 4 is pretty strong.

And I think it's good in Vessel of Hatred as well.

I'll be paying attention to stuff, and I'm like, I kind of just want to be

clicking a bunch of buttons and killing a bunch of guys.

That's just what's fun.

And it's a very good second screen.

sort of experience like playing it on my portal and like you know we're watching like survivor or something it's like just me mashing buttons and uh doing something else it's it's it's i

I fell back in love with it.

I'm excited to continue playing it.

Hell yeah.

I wish there was a beam.

All that to say, I'm really enjoying Diablo 4, and I can't wait to get back into it.

But yeah, I do wish the sorcerer had a beam is the thing.

There was a great, one of my favorite beams of all time in Diablo 3.

Yeah.

And it's just not, it's just not in there.

And I wish it was.

Yeah, I don't think anyone didn't use all the spirit born abilities, but I don't think there's a beam, but there's a gorilla.

I do like that.

Yeah.

Gorillas.

What?

Gorillas.

Gorillas.

Guys, fall is here.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

All right, let's get to business.

Our WePlay, you play of Metaphor Refon Tazio, developed by Studio Zero, released this year by Atlas and Sega, directed by Katsura Hoshino, character designs by Shigenori Sojima, and music by Shoji Meguro and some other people on the team.

It is essentially a Persona 5 total conversion mod, but nothing wrong with that.

And a game that I don't think was on any of our radars.

I don't think it was on the larger gaming press's radars.

It comes out, obviously, now one of the Game Awards nominees for Game of the Year.

Not that they're the arbiter of

all of game criticism, but I think it's a pretty good indicator of just how prominent in this discourse this game

became.

Again, just kind of as a total shock.

Former, former guest on the pod, Gene Park, has called it like a life-changing game, like one of like his, his, I mean, that's not a direct quote, or maybe it is,

but he's gone on effusively about how much this game meant to him and how and how much fun he had playing with it and that's kind of what uh i don't know uh beaconed me to the um to the to the game yeah

yeah i was not i had you know i was aware of it was like

kind like you know after we did like um

Persona 5 Royal on the show.

Like it wasn't like a shock to me that Atlas was like cooking up another like big RPG, but I was just like probably not very interested in it.

And then when everybody's saying that it's like so good, I was like,

I got to get my hands in there.

See what's going on.

I wonder if when you're sitting on a game like that at Atlas, if you're concerned about the reception or if you know you've got a banger.

Like if you, if you, if you know that you've got a great joke and you're a stand-up and you know you're about to land that joke, like you know, you're, you're, you're ramping up to the delivery.

And I wonder if Atlas is like, we fucking know what we've got and I can't wait to unleash it on the world.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'd be interested because I'm, obviously, they

would have playtested the shit out of this internally, but, you know, who knows?

I don't think they could have anticipated this reception.

Look,

I love this game.

I mean, I just, I, I think it's a, it's, what a fucking video game.

I think it's a masterpiece.

I think it's really awesome.

I don't like it as much as Persona 5 Royal for what it's worth.

And I finished Persona 5 Royal about 130 hours into it.

But I,

uh, but I, there, there's probably like 30 games I've played in my life that I like as much as Persona 5 Royal, so you know, that's that's not necessarily any sort of indemnification of this.

I do have a few gripes, and I kind of want to just like front-load my gripes.

And maybe, if we have any other grievances, we can just sort of get those out of the way.

Because I think that it's, it's, it's a game that has, I think anyone who's played it, who's listening to this, all has moments where you're kind of like, this game rocks, but ugh, come on.

You know what I mean?

Like, there's a few, there's a few bits of frustration.

Here's my list.

There's some weird UX inconsistencies, particularly when shopping.

There's some merchants where they have an inventory of different things you can buy, others that

sell one or two ingredients, like reagents, and that's just like,

it's presented in a completely different way, and I find it disorienting.

There's some superfluous stealth 101 sections and just like outright bad action sequences that I feel like are in there just to

break things up.

And I just don't know why they're in there.

And that ties in with there's some unclear signposting in terms of how some of this stuff works.

For instance, there's one stealth section I was going through kind of in the back end of the game where

I didn't realize once there were some items and I was like, okay, well, once I take out all of these enemies then they need to take out, then I'll go back and collect these items.

I didn't realize as soon as I took out that last enemy, it just like brought me into a cinematic that took me out of that area and that stuff was just, it was just backgated off.

So it's just stuff like that.

I didn't know that was coming.

And, you know, honestly, from a signposting standpoint, there's also times where it's like, I didn't know this was a place I could enter.

You know what I mean?

Like, there's just like some shops that don't have a clear indication that you could go into it or taverns.

There's cooking in this game, and I don't find it particularly rewarding.

Same deal with the fishing.

And it's also kind of sluggish because it's based around these repeated NPC interactions that

are one of the things for a game with a lot of dialogue.

Those are the times where I'm like, I kind of wish there was a little bit less of this.

Also, on that note,

like Persona 5 Royal, it has an unnamed protagonist that you name, like Persona 5, like a lot of JRPGs.

Unlike those games, the protagonist actually has some voiced dialogue, which I find really disorienting and really takes me out of it.

And also, because it's sparse, it's just like kind of interspersed a little bit, just enough where I'm kind of like, I kind of feel like you could have figured out a way to not do this at all.

And maybe there'll ultimately be an update where they just take that stuff out because it feels like it doesn't need to be there.

Wait, I'm confused about that complaint.

Yeah.

So when the protagonist, even though you've named him,

you don't like that he speaks?

Like his voice acting?

I don't, I, no, I just don't think that care.

I like the mute protagonist.

Oh, okay.

I'd rather it be like Chrono and Chrono Trigger.

I also don't love that there's some in between these acts.

So basically like, you know, when you move from

town to town, which is kind of how it anchors each of the different acts of this game,

it's such a prolonged sequence.

Like it's just like these super duper long.

One of them, I had like my save between the two of them was three hours apart.

I was like, I couldn't believe how long it took to transition from one act to the next.

And a lot of it is not interactive.

A lot of it is just one big long cutscene.

Maybe there'll be like, hey, here's a mini boss fight.

And then we go back to more and more cutscene.

Hey, maybe it's a little bit where you can control your character.

But my main issue is, and I know I'm front-loading the things with the laundry list of grievances, but this is my last one.

The performance I wish was a little better, especially on PC.

I returned, and my rig is no slouch, but I returned the PC version because I was getting a lot of

really bad performance

and

graphically, and then just some like a bunch of audio bugs that really took me out of it.

Like, I couldn't even tell, I didn't even know there was spoken dialogue for in-game because it was mixed so low on the PC version, it was something I could never ultimately resolve.

So, I returned that version and rebought on PS5, which has also not been great performance-wise, but it is a much more functional version of the game.

So those are my complaints.

Well, you were saying, too, before we started that you wish it was still set in a high school.

All right.

I will say, a big part of

this is this is one of those things where, so this is like more of like a high fantasy sort of approach as opposed to Persona 5, the real world, you know, the persona sort of real world Shinmegami-tensei approach.

And I just, I do just kind of like aesthetically, I do like the setting and the look and the feel of the persona games more than this.

But I do think this is really effective and has some really cool art direction.

Yeah, I guess if I'm thinking about it, I do like

fake fantasy setting less than like actual Japan.

Like that's like, that's a little less interesting to me.

Yeah, I guess.

I guess when you're walking around Tokyo, and this is like a genre on TikTok of like people who walk around Tokyo and they put the persona music behind their walking around and they're like, feels like I'm in persona, that there is a little bit of that

lack of,

I don't know, tethering to the IP that

it fosters this sort of

deep dive feeling that you have when you play persona because then like you can play persona and then go to a place that's like persona but with this you unless you're going to like i don't know one town in england it's not really

it doesn't scale sort of and and honestly it's not even like a town in england it's just fucking bonkers yeah it's a it's its own thing but all like again i just want to say those complaints aside i i think this game is awesome i think it's a masterpiece i really love it This is not necessarily a complaint, but something that stresses me out when I'm playing this game.

I've played, I'll say I've put like 30 hours into this, so I'm not particularly very far into it, but

I've played a lot of it, like, you know, hours-wise.

Something that stresses me out in games like this,

that really only happens in Atlas games, I've noticed, for me.

At like hour 20, I'm getting new pop-ups for like new things I can do.

Like, okay, now you can do, here's this new mechanic that we're introducing.

I was like, stop showing me new stuff, please.

It gets like so, like, I don't know, like, because I feel like I've learned how to play the game.

And now they're like, now you can do this.

Here's a way you can synthesize this thing or whatever.

And it's like, this stuff that I've had this whole time, now I can do something completely different with it.

And I'm trying not to, like,

I don't know.

Like with a game like this, I wish there wasn't so much going on.

It feels like there's like too many different systems and mechanics for me to like, I just want to hit and walk around and stuff, you know?

Man, I

love all the I love how many mechanics there are but sorry keep going either I was gonna say similarly and this is something I voiced on our our text thread um this game stresses me out in general because I spend all day like managing relationships and turning in documents and uh making a phone call or whatever and at the end of the day the last thing I want to do is then synthet like do a synthetic version of that like where I'm like okay, who am I going to prioritize today?

And if I don't get to them in time for the deadline,

am I ever going to be able to get back to talking to that person?

Or is that quest going to be fully gated and locked behind me in perpetuity?

Like it's really,

it evokes the same feeling of stress that I have at work.

And that's part of why I don't, I haven't finished a persona game yet is because at some point I'm just like, oh my God, I just want to relax.

Yeah.

But

I am on Nick's side where like the drip feed of all of the different mechanics and all the different systems and the menus within menus, like I am a junkie for that stuff.

I just, if I could change one thing about the games, which would make it thoroughly un-persona-esque, it would be to just take the deadline away, man.

Just fucking let me like go around whenever I want.

Oh, man.

I love it so much.

And I think we talked about this Heather, but this is just the place where you and I are in different planets, but we just, we just have, I think, different tastes with this sort of thing.

For me, it's like,

you know,

it's the same reason I love dialogue trees.

Like, that's how I have conversations in my brain.

And like, when I'm this, it's just like, okay, yeah, doing one thing means you're not doing something else.

I have to choose priorities.

If I can gamify that, that's like a thing for my life.

I love it.

And I think it's so fun.

And I think it's so satisfying to figure out what is the best way to optimize my time with the 19 days I have before the big event.

Because all these, all the different acts are structured: is that you'll go to a town, there'll be some big thing that's going to happen

and some big mission.

This is exactly what happens in Persona.

And

in their intermediary time, you have to figure out what you want to do, whether you want to go take that on head-on immediately, or if you want to do a bunch of side quests, if you want to build relationships with your party members and other NPCs,

if you want to go, uh, you know,

uh, uh, kill monsters or, or, or fight in a coliseum, uh, you know, ways to increase your level and treasure and gear and everything.

There's all these sorts of like, you know, spinning plates you have going, and it's just a matter of

how you want to prioritize that.

And I love it because you get one chunk a day, you get, you get the, you get the daytime, you get the nighttime, and um, certain NPCs are available in each window.

Uh, and uh, I don't know.

I think it's really fascinating to try to make those calculations.

I also feel like

the game is pretty generous in terms of

you really are going to be able to do what you need to do.

You just can't do everything.

Yeah.

If that makes sense.

Well, that's the, for me, I'm like, did I just fuck over the entire game because I didn't do that thing?

You know, like, yeah, I would say, I would say, no, there's not a way to do that in this game.

And look, I'll also say I was really hoping to have finished this game.

I had jury duty, which effectively ate up two weeks of time I was going to dedicate to playing this.

I am 50 hours in, so I'm pretty far into it.

But I, and I'm on the back end.

And

like several, like a while ago, it kind of felt like the game stopped adding major mechanics.

There'll be things like, you know, hey, here's a new archetype that plays in this different way.

But I feel like I basically have.

everything at my disposal right now.

I mean,

the deadlines don't really bother me.

It's like when...

And also, by the way,

whatever the main quest for the act has a deadline.

And then also there's some side quests that will have their own deadlines that you have to track.

My daughter's going to die in a day.

Can you get me a leaf?

You know what?

This is another thing.

And since you just brought that up, this game does not pull any punches.

No.

It'll be like...

My son died.

It's like the game starts and very early on, you go and you witness an execution.

And the execution is someone unjustly being like hanged because of their race it is like fucking heavy shit that this game is dealing with but because it has this layer of of high fantasy on top of it it it's like able to grapple with some of these uh like like really really dark themes um in in an approachable way but sorry keep going well It has stuff like that, but it's also then helped, then it has stuff like, help me make this soup for the tavern.

Well, yeah, there's also that.

I mean, then look, that's just like,

that's just like all the like a dragon Yakuza games.

Did you see that guy get executed?

I need carrots.

I need this special water.

Like the deadline stuff,

I do kind of like the deadline stuff only because I don't really think about

my life with like deadlines like that.

I've never really like,

I mean, I guess with big stuff, sure.

Like I'm going to Disneyland in a week and I'm like, well, it's only a week away until I go to Disneyland.

That's pretty cool.

Only seven days remain.

Like, I don't really think about other stuff like that, unless it's like a monumental sort of like thing that I know is, you know, on the horizon or whatever.

But, like, I'm not like 365 days until the next year.

But I like that this game also like interrupts your flow a little bit with with like in some of the side stuff.

And then it's up to you to police yourself whether or not you have enough time to

go talk to this little girl instead of

do

you you know the main task that you're uh uh you know on call for basically like it'll be like oh i hear a i'm hearing a voice uh oh that's uh that's maria i better go spend some time with maria and then you can either do that or not and most of the time i had to for the first time ignore her and i felt bad

i felt so sad about it no i i mean this is the thing it's like it's like you can't be with everybody at all times, especially as your party starts to grow.

You'll have like a half dozen different characters that were that are all like chirping at you at once.

And it's a matter of choosing who you're going to

go spend time with.

But that does have a gameplay effect because this game is based off of the archetype system, which is analogous to the persona system and the persona games, but it is

more like a job system, more like like, you know, your characters class and subclasses and switching between them and then having abilities that you you can mix and match abilities from different classes, inherit different abilities.

And if you spend time with, for instance, Maria,

then that helps everything that's in the healer class lineage.

And so

all your healer abilities are enhanced, or you have additional slots for skills to inherit, or what have you.

So part of that is also a calculation of like, hmm, do I need more stats for my gunner or do I need more stats for my thief?

You know, like, like, those decisions go go into it as well.

But also,

all of those characters, like, primarily, most of their, their, their quest lines involve something personal to them that, again, is oftentimes extraordinarily tragic.

Yes.

Like, Maria is dealing with the loss of a parent guardian figure, you know, and it's just, and she's a little girl

who's facing discrimination.

It's just like, it's like, it's like, again, just intense shit.

I saw you talking to that little girl.

That seems sad.

I need a basket.

And then there's also like the

what's his name?

The little freak, the little, the little guy.

Well, I mean, like, there's a few different little guys.

I don't know which one you're talking about.

I think his name is, is it Heisme?

Yes, yes.

Heisme is my guy.

He's, I mean, he's my guy.

I love him.

So it's like, it's interesting.

Heisme is very, very frog from Chrono Trigger code.

Yes.

Extremely frog, uh, frog coded.

Uh, it's just interesting, like, what all this, what this game,

the sum of all of of its parts like what it could actually just be

I'm very much enjoying it.

It is just like there was like a I don't know with a game like this There's just so much going on that there it feels like there's just a sort of outside sort of like pressure to like see all of it and like do all of it, but I just know that like the days are not gonna

sort out that way that I'm just not gonna be able to do every single thing.

So that some people will be disappointed.

But then also, I mean, you know

this game unfortunately came out at a very interesting time uh because like it has like a it's uh you know you're trying to you stop uh a bad election in this game and so like i know that a lot of people that when we said that we were uh going to be covering this game were sort of like uh how much of it is like

you know how much of it is that part of it and it's you know it's kind of all of it but it is uh you know it feels it does feel good to be on a good side of something and being like, I have to stop this bad thing from occurring.

Like that to me is like, it's, it's, it's sort of in the same way that like when

Death Stranded came out and then a couple months later, this pandemic started and changed everything.

And then the Last of Us 2 happens while it's going on.

And it's like, this, you know, you're sort of just dealing with these things too.

So this game as a

form of processing real life has been honestly like very helpful and very welcome.

Yeah, it makes you feel a little bit more empowered.

Yes.

Well, I also think this game does not treat you like an idiot.

No.

And by that, I mean I think the game trusts the user to understand nuance and to understand complex themes and to understand that someone can

maybe be fundamentally

you know, a decent person, but have some

instincts that make them or some history that makes them have some some racist or some classist leanings and because this is all abstracted through a bunch of fantasy races that also are not like not only are these fantasy races not cleanly mapped on to like oh I see what I you know I know what that's supposed to be good choice exactly it's not cleanly mapped onto real you know ethnicities in our world it's also not cleanly mapped onto existing uh fantasy tropes like it's not like like like like, there are, like, oh, I guess that's a kind of akin to the elf, to an elven race, but it's not like elf, dwarf, orc.

They aren't these, these cliché fantasy races that we're familiar with.

There's the Klemar, the Roussant, the Yujief,

the Nydia,

the Mustari, who all wear masks.

There's, there's Elda, which your character, the player character is, and the Elda is the most human-looking, and the Elda is also the one that's like kind of like the

lowest in the hierarchy and and the most exotic to everyone, which is an interesting situation for the, you know, to play as a human being in real life.

And you say human looking, even though humans in this game are absolutely do not look like humans.

That's the other thing.

So there are humans and the humans are the

abominations, these these horrific monsters that are these these this enormous existential threat.

They're basically treated like kaiju.

And so and I love that because all the time they're talking about like, I'm terrified of that vicious human.

Like, it's like anytime that comes up, I'm just absolutely tickled by it.

I think it's such an awesome choice just to call them the humans.

And the art design on those guys, sorry, Matt.

No, I was going to say the exact same thing you're about to say.

Yeah, the art design on the humans is fucked.

Yeah.

Like, it'll be like an egg with an eyeball and a crown and one leg.

It'll, it, like, it looks like somebody did

cell-shaded versions of

Shadow of the Erg tree bosses.

Like, they're they're fucked up dudes.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like

it is, it's one of my favorite parts of it is that like, and that's what something I loved in Persona 5 is that like Atlas just like, just goes for it with character design.

Oh, that's just a dick in a chariot.

All right.

Yeah.

I want to circle back to something that you were saying about the

having the protagonist having voiced lines.

Yes.

When you're faced with making a

giving your character a name in a in a game like this where it's supposed to be a sort of just like blank slate kind of thing I always struck because also you have to give yourself a name at the beginning of the game and it's it's a it's a self outside of the game yes it's like who are you who are playing this adventure so it's like give your own name and then who is the character and the the I imagine it comes up when when I'm I'm in the end game or maybe it doesn't but I but that but that has not been forefronted.

If it never comes back, very funny, but it never comes back.

I would be mad only because I was like, okay, well, I can't name my character Matt now because I said I'm Matt.

Yeah.

So it can't have two of these Matts running around.

So I remember like wanting to like, like, have a, a name for a character in this game that sort of like felt like in-world.

So I was like looking up like before I started like, what would you name like a metaphor character?

And I stumbled upon they like data mined what this guy's name is, what the nameless, uh

like uh what the nameless protagonist's name is and it's not even interesting it's just Will

Will's not bad it's not it's not bad and I did pick it I was like I just

kind of fun I'll just pick the like the in-game name for it instead and I'm sure it's gonna you know he it's gonna be a

you know a metaphor if you yeah I wonder if it was if that was like kind of like internally that has some effect I mean like like the the one I think of Baldur's Gate 3 is tav is like the default character name doesn't really seem to have an inherent meaning.

But here like

that would tie into another key figure in this is the character who is kind of like when you go to the the academia,

when you go to like the the liminal space where you can upgrade your archetypes,

there's an individual Moore.

Yes.

M-O-R-E is the name.

And Moore

is revealed.

I think this is early enough in the game.

We're not quite into spoiler country.

Moore is revealed as the author of the novel that the player character

has,

the nameless protagonist is reading.

And let me tell you, the first time we started hearing stories from that novel, and again, I don't think this is spoiler countries early on in the game.

And they were about what was effectively, like you're in this fantasy world with like, dudes with like horns on their head and other people wear boxes on their face and things look like elves and things that can fly, and humans are in an egg.

And it's like, what's in your book?

The UG for like Heisme are like bat-like creatures.

What's in your book?

My gate, my guy was called Wolfgang.

What's in your book, Wolfgang?

And he's like, Here, let me show you.

And he opens up the book, and it's like fucking New York City.

It's great.

It's like it's like our reality.

What the fuck is happening?

I love it.

And it's like taxis and cars, and like, and you're reading this fantasy novel with your dude.

And it's like, in this world, people all had conversations about stuff.

It's a utopian version of like New York City.

It's so fucking weird.

And I, it's such a great hook to draw you in even further.

No, I, I, I, I love it.

And, and then I also like that there's just like, you know, like the Klimar who are the one, who have horns and are, are kind of like the, the, the default in the world.

They, they are kind of like, them and the Roussant are kind of like, hey, these are the, these are the top of the food chain.

And then, you know, you end up with like the Peripus, who are like, I think this is a great game for anyone out there who's a furry.

It probably has found some characters that they've latched onto here.

But the Peripus are all like kind of like kind of dog creatures, right?

They're kind of like dog/slash human kind of hybrids.

They've got humanoid features, but like, you know, dog ears.

And again, I got to be careful using the word human here because I don't mean human, the, you know,

the Bosch-like abominations, the H.R.

Gieger, you know, designs.

I mean like

our sense of humanity.

Yes.

They're humanoid with

dog ears and dog tails.

But they're very, very much like treated like gutter people.

And

they are abused and a lot of them live on the street or impoverished or are treated as criminals or denied employment.

And in fact, your character as an Elda is denied,

like he, he won't be served at some shops

at first because they're just like, I don't, you know, we don't serve your kind.

It's like you're literally on the receiving end of that, which is just, again, I mean, it's like, it's a little bit of a weightier thing than a lot of games tend to delve into.

I really love the,

to speak about the, um,

the combat system in this game.

It's,

um, you use an argument.

Every character is assigned an archetype.

You can pick like basically different classes for each of the characters, but some of the characters have specific ones that they're pre-assigned that you can change.

Every character has a default one.

Yeah.

But it is like you do have the flexibility

to jump between

a bunch of different, to change classes a bunch of different times and ultimately land on some sort of hybrid class for each character.

They're definitely ones that they're meant, they're intended like because of their stat spread.

Hey, this character probably should be more of a magic character.

This character should be more of a thief character.

But like you still have some, you still have a good amount of customizability.

And also, some of the archetypes are pretty distinct, like the merchant or the commander.

You know, these are these are support classes that are like pretty different than what you'd typically see in a job system.

I wouldn't use that word as much as you can in here.

What word?

Merchant.

Let's just, yeah, let's just let him

go.

Okay, all right.

Let's change it to shopkeeper.

Yeah.

Some sort of trades person.

Yeah.

I am, I was rocking a healer archetype for a while.

With your main character?

With my main character, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, like, the main character is for the first part of the game is like your best magic user.

So I feel like you kind of end up defaulting to having him be kind of like a mage cleric sort of hybrid.

But now that I have a party of four,

I've been rocking.

I think Seeker is the default for the

main character.

Kind of a melee slash support class that uses wind magic.

And also,

like the Persona series vulnerabilities are such a huge part of it yeah so like you know what that's character might be strong against wind but then they'll be vulnerable to i don't remember what elm is let's just say say thunder and those vulnerabilities take the shape of anxieties in your your battles where like if you take a ton of damage your dude just can't do anything anymore he's like got an anxiety attack and he's like i forgot how to do my stuff like yeah forgetting is one of the ailments you can have yeah yeah there's psychological and physical ones that you can deal with.

But yeah, one of them is just anxiety.

I like the idea.

This is where having so many systems is actually good and fun because you can do any like fight in so many different ways.

Like there's different, you can either just use like a melee attack, you can use an archetype attack, or you can use a synthesis attack, which is when two.

two archetypes in your party combine to do like a basically like a super attack.

And all of it is so fun and so cool.

Yeah, those are really fun and they're really powerful.

And they also like have animations that are perfect length where like they look cool, but they're not so long that I want to skip them.

Yes.

And you use them infrequently enough that I don't want to skip them.

But also like...

You all this is a calculation because you have a limited number of turns to work with and using a synthesis attack eats up more turns.

Yeah, but also you can get additional turns by inflicting damage on an enemy's weakness.

And that's where this is another thing I think this game's combat system does really well.

It really incentivizes using a lot of consumables, both like healing items and support items, but also like attack items, because it doesn't matter if this is only doing 100 points of damage to an enemy.

If it's hitting their weakness,

you're getting more turns.

So it may

be

a good

move from

an action economy standpoint,

because then your characters who are more suited to this encounter may get additional attacks i want to say two things about just uh basic design that i really appreciate one is that before you tackle the bosses there's often a way to get to the i'll call it junctioning room academia whatever the fuck you want to call it like little cats there and it's like you talk to the cat pet the cat and it'll take you to the library and then you can like read love that cat cat game

The cat in this game is kind of like the thing that's keeping me going, honestly.

Every time I go into the academia, I pet the cat.

I have to pet the cat.

You got to pet the cat.

But

you get so, it's forgiving with like, hey, you can save here.

You don't have to go back to the beginning of this dungeon.

You can try a different setup for your party.

Like, I felt like

there was often a little bit of forgiveness on the placement of that.

And that was really, really,

I was grateful for that.

Because the last thing I want to do is get all the way down to the bottom of something and then be like, fucked.

Well, there's also a lot of forgiveness within the battles themselves because there's just an option at any point in the battle.

You can start it over.

As long as you toggle that before a complete party wipe,

you can start the battle over and use a different strategy.

You can't like respec right before that or like give yourself more items or even like heal yourself more before that.

But it's sometimes you can just either change up your strategy like Nick was saying, with the consumable attack items instead, give yourself more

turns, or you can just figure out a different

attack order instead or something.

I think, like, I don't think this game is

difficult really, but I do think it is a game that rewards

optimized choices, both in terms of party construction and within your turns.

And that feels very satisfying when you feel like

you're doing things properly and you're taking advantage of the game systems uh could we could change the subject real quick because i i know we probably have more to talk about with uh the gameplay of it which i do think is very strong and and this is another thing i will just say to i've had some friends who are like not really into turn-based combat and but are like interested in this game because of the buzz I do feel like this is a game where there's just a lot of turn-based JRPs in combat.

I do think it's like the best, the funnest, most fluid, fastest version of it.

But if it's a thing that's going to make you bounce off of it, I just, I don't know if this is going to be the game for you.

Yeah, and there's some.

There's so much of it.

There's some

like overworld combat.

That's right.

That's a good point.

I'm getting to point out.

Like, it's very limited.

It's like basically just like

single strikes at an enemy.

And sometimes, depending on the level of the enemy that you're encountering, you can hit them once and then that sort of takes them out.

But then sometimes.

Yeah, you don't even skip the combat encounter entirely because you just, you just, and I think that the targeting and the, you know, the

uh, the attacks you have are pretty elementary, but it is, it does, it does mean that you can breeze through lower-level enemies without going through a bunch of tedious turn-based encounters.

I want to ask about if, if y'all went subs versus dubs, because I started off with a subtitle version, and then I read some, some takes that were saying,

um,

although this is a Japanese language original game, uh, first off, the English dub is very strong.

Uh, it's really well localized.

I do think this is a great localization, even just text-wise.

But also, because this game is so much about racism and classism, the accents are class signifiers, and you pick that up more in a language that you understand.

So I switched over to English, and I don't regret it.

Honestly, I'm like very happy with the English language VO.

But what did y'all do?

I started...

in subs actually as well and then realized that if I was going to have a fighting chance of like really understanding what was going going on,

I had to switch.

Yeah, because it's dense and there's a lot of made-up vocabulary.

Yeah, there's a lot, a lot going on.

Yeah.

I'm still with subs, but

I don't know.

That's enticing

to maybe try it a little bit in dubbed and see if I liked it.

Yeah, because I did, I played Persona 5 Royal entirely in Japanese.

I did try a little bit of it with the English language track and I didn't really care for it.

But here I think I do think it's just a better way to to experience it.

I do think the sound is really, is really strong in this game.

You know, the addition of

the voice performances, we've talked at length about the combat theme, but I think the score in general is great.

And I think there's some town themes that are really really strong, really solid.

A lot of stuff that like plays a number of times, but you never get sick of.

And then also just like the variety of music in terms of,

you know, just coloring whatever environment you're in, I think is really, really well done.

Something that hasn't come up that I also really, really love,

I love the anime cutscenes.

I love how

they'll hit you out of nowhere.

It's just like I'm in the middle of this thing that I thought was kind of inconsequential.

It's like, oh shit, there's a fully animated full-screen cutscene.

Yeah.

And that looks pretty great.

I mean, like, yeah, I really like that.

I really like the quantity of it.

And some of them are not short.

They're not short.

No, someone go on for a while.

Like, they did a lot of work for this.

yeah i know and that's that's another thing where it's just like

you know i i think goes back to that some of those happen in that those lengthy between act breaks where you're just

a a lot of narrative is being dispensed to you i have a complaint go for it um i have my complaint is that you can't pause uh in cutscenes yeah like if you press what you think is going to be the pause button it skips everything

all the way to the end and you're like what the what fuck it should be hold to skip skip, you know?

This is a game-wide thing.

This is just a thing that we need to figure out with games in general.

You should be able to stop and resume at any point without losing any progress.

I know that's a bit of a

technically daunting thing, but cutscenes absolutely need to be paused.

Like, I just like, I, I, yeah, that, that absolutely bothers me when you can't do that.

Like, I feel like you can pause them in, like, Death Stranded.

You can pause them in a lot of games, but, but it's not like a thing that's expected by default.

It should be, it should be mandatory by law.

Fully agree.

Do we like the little, do we like the fairy Galaka?

Gallica is a lot of fun.

I love Gallica.

Gallica's great.

She's good.

And she's so helpful.

Yeah, she's good.

There's a mechanic where it's like, you can talk to her and she'll tell you, like, oh, like check in on your supporters, check in on your quests or whatever.

And she always knows exactly what you're supposed to be doing, where you should go.

It's great.

It's really, really helpful.

I find myself just hitting the triangle button in town a lot because she'll just chime in and say, give you some options of what you could be doing.

Because, again, this is a game where there's just like a huge volume of possibilities.

So the other thing that we're, and we were talking about this earlier, Heather, in terms of the game being, you know, forgiving, and I think this also ties in with its difficulty, is

so there are,

I don't know, gossips.

There are, there are, they're plugged in characters that you can find in taverns that you can pay off and buy intel from.

The intel isn't particularly expensive, and that will usually tell you, like, hey, you're going to be fighting this guy.

Here are some things you can do.

And sometimes it's as simple as, here's what their vulnerabilities are, here's what they're strong against.

Don't use a sword.

Exactly.

Yes, yes, yes.

Don't wield a staff because that will agitate, you know, and then you'll be like, Okay, I got to change my character, my character's classes.

So it's not a staff-wielding character because I know that these

goblins are terrified of magic users and they'll attack ferociously.

So, like, like, you can get that intel going in, um, and that can help you,

you know, overcome whatever obstacles you got.

I also like, um, and I think this is a, something that was in Persona also.

Yeah, I'm positive it is, where you'll see like two people talking to each other, and you'll see like

little like murmurs floating over their heads, and you walk past them, and you can, like, overhear their conversations.

Or sometimes you can like lean into those conversations and like really listen in.

And then those people will sometimes become aware of you and be like, hey, what the fuck are you doing?

All of that color is so it's it's lovely.

Look at that boy, he doesn't have horns.

I like on that note.

So, one thing you can do that is so gloriously stupid, I love it, is that you can surf on your sword, and that's kind of a way you can speed through.

There's all sorts of ways of traversal in this game, which we can talk about, but you can like way you can kind of speed through environments is by just hopping on your sword like it's a hoverboard, and then you'll inevitably see dialogue in in in bubbles as you're going by of like, like, like riding on a sword?

What is he up to?

You know, like, like, I like that they think it's so crazy.

But also, it is insane.

It's wild.

Also, I will say, I don't like that when you're on the sword, you can't trigger dialogue, that you have to hop off the sword.

But hopping off the sword looks so cool that I love like peeling up to somebody on the sword and then like kicking it off and like talking to them like like casually.

Yes.

Pretty great.

Traversal in general is actually pretty good because there's so many ways to

fast travel without having to like engage with the fast travel system.

Like in the when Galica is like, oh, go talk to Maria, but Maria is in Grand Trad and you're in the other city or whatever.

You can just jump straight to that without having to go to your ship and then go to the whole thing.

Well, that happens later.

And you just hit on ship.

So that's a big thing, that you get the gauntlet runner, the gauntlet runner, which allows you to

traverse the overworld.

Yes.

And I mean, this is just like a ship with legs.

It's really dumb, but it's really cool.

I actually like, think the gauntlet runner is awesome.

And I think it's an awesome thing to be inside of.

And

then when you're on the gauntlet runner, like it'll take like, hey, it's going to take three days to go from here to here.

So you got to figure out how to manage your time.

That's another place where it's like, I can hang out with my bros.

I can go take a bath, you know, and get my stats up.

I can go read a book and get my stats up.

You can make all of those decisions.

But yes, that also leads to you also having a method of fast travel, which is a teleportation thing that lets you travel between the major hub worlds.

Although, if you are going to go to one of the outlying areas, you still have to take the gauntlet runner, and that could still take a number of days.

So, you're talking about you can basically do like two things per day, kind of.

Pretty much.

And I kind of wish that it was a little bit, a little bit more granular because some of the things that like because you'll start your day your morning is basically a debrief of with your team basically like talking about things that you've done and things that you have to do yeah so that's your morning then your afternoon is like your main part of your day where you can like go you know potentially travel toward a dungeon or of some kind or an area that you need to explore or you know go around the city and and talk to people and then if you it takes you back to the your your

uh the tavern or like the the hotel that you're staying at or whatever and you can go back outside and and do another thing i think you should be able to do two things in the afternoon the afternoons are long are long enough where you could feasibly do two things i think having one conversation with like a lady about baking bread to get your imagination up

there's no way that takes an entire day it's probably a very interesting conversation But I think you should be able to do two things.

Yeah, and sometimes what your thing is, is like, hey, we're going to we got to go over to this village and like, like, you know, like, like, see I got to shake these people down.

You know, sometimes it's a lot bigger.

It's like, wait, that feels like that would take more than an afternoon.

You know what I mean?

So yeah,

every unit of time is kind of treated in the same way.

But I don't know.

I don't really mind that.

I kind of buy that as a conceit of these sorts of games.

Or at least like some things should take longer than others.

Like, yeah, going to another area to, you know, explore, maybe that takes the afternoon or whatever.

But if I just have like one conversation, let me have a second conversation in the afternoon.

Well, there are things like, and just to be clear, like for boot 11, play the game, you don't mean like if you talk to any NPC about anything, that does not necessarily eat up your entire day.

But there are certain designated, like, and it will give you, here's where it will be signposted, and there will be like an icon that will indicate that it will take a chunk of time.

Yes.

That it'll be like, hey, do you want to learn about the, you know, the Mistari people and the discrimination we face?

And then it will give you a conversation and that will take up part of your day and that will increase some stat.

And

yeah,

there are ones, though, there are like, hey, if I'm gonna go explore this dungeon, that will take up both units.

That will take up both the day, the day and the night.

Yes.

And the thing I really like is at the end of that, Galica's like, well, we finished that dungeon.

Let's go get some dinner.

Yeah.

And then there's a cutscene where you all like have a nice dinner together.

I do.

I do love that.

I do love that.

And I love the stuff on the ship that you can just kind of like hang out.

Yes.

Yeah.

You know,

polish your sword with stroll or whatever or like uh talk to play chess with uh hulkenberg yeah or whatever uh i haven't spent too much time with the the guy that uh pilots the ship because i don't like him that much i like chris i think he's great i like the button you can press to see what other people who've played the game have done that's a great heather that's a great thing to bring up like you can you can press a button and it'll be like here is the level at which people were when they finished this quest and here's how some people spent their day in this town and i think that's a really i don't know charming feature no i think that's rad and i like i like seeing like oh okay 19 of people uh you know did the main thing today so like i'm actually not i don't feel like i'm in a rush where like i have to do this right now i have some some you know uh

you'll you'll oftentimes see that that that it'll almost be reassuring because you'll see that that most people are going to do what you were planning on doing yes uh every game is a strand game now isn't it yeah it's true i love it.

That's a menu that

I always accidentally open.

Another thematic thing I really like in this, another

kind of story thing.

So there's effectively a state religion, sanctism, and this game is, which seems very much like it's meant to be Catholicism.

There's effectively a Pope character who is also running to be the leader in this Democratic election.

And

the game seems to be not explicitly saying so, but exploring the tension between having effectively a state religion and also a system of democracy.

That you kind of can't have this legal code that's based on popular will that coexists with, like, hey, here's this doctrinal religion that is telling you what is morally right and wrong.

Like, like these things are, these things are in tension.

Like, you can't have

like basically like one system that overrides the democratic system in people's brains because it is

like like because that is the will of some higher being.

You can't have that be also sanctioned by the state.

And like, I just, I feel like, oh, that's again, like a kind of a sophisticated, like, heady topic for a video game to be exploring, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

It is like,

I am often like, while I've been playing it, been like, this is some crazy stuff.

Because, like, usually, like, usually in, like, I don't know, it's a little more cut and dry, a little more

less subtle, right?

Where it's like, it's, it's, you know,

Final Fantasy VII is like this guy.

Well, I guess there's like more subtleties in there.

You are an eco-terrorist than that kid.

But, like, in

other games where it's just like, it's a very clear line of just like, you're good.

This is bad.

Go to the bad thing.

Be good.

Stop bad thing.

There's a lot of like, there's a lot of nuance in this game, which is very interesting.

I, I, I, I think it kind of um is a condemn condemnation of

gaming at large.

That you can go into a bookstore and there's like a lot of books that are subtle.

And then there are like

another section that's like not so subtle.

It's wild how few subtle games are of this,

um,

like this much reach and like the popularity of this IP, like that there are so few games that touch on some of these themes and with the subtlety that this game does so, because it seems to me like there is an audience hungry for that.

You like, I don't need every game to be Zelda.

Like it would be cool if there was a game that was like Zelda, but when you went in to have a conversation with somebody, the whole game became about the relationship to that person.

Like, who knows?

But it,

it's surprising to me

how surprising it is that this game is interesting because often you write off the story.

Right.

I'm, I've been thinking about this as a, as a take.

I mean, it's not fully formed.

I'm thinking about like the big three

JRPG franchises.

I'm thinking Final Fantasy is obviously like in that conversation, probably number one.

Dragon Quest is probably two in there.

Are Atlas games third now?

I mean, I don't know if there's, if you want to,

if you can say, because you're talking about two different franchises and then you're talking about a company.

So it's like kind of like, you know, if you want to say persona is a franchise.

Yeah, that's maybe what I mean more.

Yeah, I mean, because it also depends on how

do you want to classify like a dragon, you know, but I don't know.

I think certainly Persona 5 in terms of cultural cachet is definitely up there.

There's like, yeah, like three different Persona 5 games.

Yeah, but is this like,

this is not really explicitly part of the

persona franchise?

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't quite know how to answer that.

I do want to say one more thing on the sanctism side, and this is not necessarily related to the themes, but it's like, so there is a church in this game, and then you can, there's a mechanic that I found, that I really

like,

found really interesting, which is that you can find an item, and this will be a usable item that

can oftentimes be powerful, but also you can purify it.

If you find some, you know, some rare items and then you spend a good amount of currency at the church, they can purify that item and then the item will be even more powerful and will have additional stats.

And I just, I think that's really cool and that's really satisfying when you purify something.

I like when you go into the church for the first time and they're like, get the fuck out of here.

Yeah, no, we don't serve your kind.

And then eventually they're like, all right, look, we don't like you, but we will take your money.

Oh, that's, that sounds like the church.

I think it's a good mechanic because it incentivizes going to church.

Oh, boy.

There's a.

Okay.

There's also like the a big part of it is that that most

magic users in the game use these things called igniters, which are extremely expensive items.

And I do like how much they cost where just like early on they're just like, oh, that's like a down payment for a house.

I don't even afford a fucking igniter and but like your characters have magic abilities but you can get your hands on some igniters and igniters are a way that you could again just add to your uh available skills um

so like if you don't have a darks if you don't have a

a a a way to inflict dark damage and you're going to be facing some enemies that are you know effect weak to dark uh you can equip that uh igniter and and have that ability Yeah,

it just feels like it's it's really it's really well thought out, all of the possibilities in terms terms of how you can play your character.

It's also because of the time structure that I don't like.

It prevents you from being able to power level your way to be able to avoid conflict

by having spent a million years grinding in a dungeon.

Yeah.

If you clear the enemies out of a dungeon, very few of them return.

Like, it'll be like, if you clear out a room, maybe like one guy will come back and he'll be wandering around.

But for the most part, that room room is cleared permanently.

So I actually had to use a day to go back to a dungeon I'd already cleared because there's also there's another quest that involves finding relics.

And I somehow missed a relic that was at this location.

And so.

What I found there is that it was a completely inefficient use of my time.

And like, I just was kind of like, I just kind of got to eat it because I got to advance this side quest and this will let me increase my, you know, relationship with this particular character.

So it's worth doing.

But yeah, you go back to this dungeon.

And first off, all the enemies are now lower level than you, so you're not getting any valuable experience from them.

And also, like, everything has been cleared out, and there's a lot fewer of these enemies.

So, it's like, yeah, it's

you're right.

It's not a thing you can just sort of grind and like, oh, I'm just going to keep going to the same, uh, the same well repeatedly and just try to get my XP up.

That being said, I, the, my first dungeon in that first town or second town, whatever it is, the first dungeon that you get assigned to like go do a quest in, I clear the dungeon it's it's not easy but it's not super hard no and then that boss wiped the fucking floor with me over and over and over again no matter how many times i restarted that like i'm like am i am i miss am i forgetting like a major mechanic i had to eat that whole day like eventually i was like I can't beat this fucking boss with whatever it is that I have.

And I have to go all the way back into town and eat dinner with these guys.

And I'm going to have to come back to this dungeon to fight this guy all over again.

Yeah, I found, look, when I played Persona 5 Royal, the way I liked to do it was for my own brain, I like to take off, take care of the main part of the quest early, like whatever the major task was for this month, for this stretch of time.

I like to take care of it early in the calendar.

And then so I have the rest of the time just like that, that weight's off my shoulders.

I can just focus on side quests the rest of the way and character relationships.

Here I found that it actually was to my benefit to invert that and to take like really like the game is trying to tell you to do that too.

The game is saying like, let's make sure we're powerful enough because, you know, you can get better gear, you can get

more advanced archetypes, you can get new abilities.

And so I found myself just sort of like.

backloading it and trying to do all the side quests, do all the character relationships.

And then with just a few days left until the deadline, that's when I finally tackle things.

And actually, it's mostly been a breeze when I've done it that way.

So, yeah, but it is

yeah you can hit you can hit some roadblocks depending on how you you play it

I yeah I had to there was this one side quest that I was doing

where I had to like

I had to just like I had to kill this like troll king or whatever it was called I can't remember what it was it's like an imp king I think it was and

It was like a thing that I had to go around this like open area and like fight a bunch of other little imps and then the big imp king would then be like summoned to me and I would have to like have a conversation with him and then and then fight him and and and kill him but I kept getting like destroyed by the imp king because I just wasn't like strong enough but then it would reset and I'd have to it would be um

sort of like random when he would appear kind of like sometimes he would appear after one like encounter with some uh some of the other imps and then sometimes it would be like four or five encounters and he would come so I often was never prepared uh

for him because I didn't have enough like magla pills to give myself uh um to refill my magic so i'd be like spent on that stuff it was just like a bad time uh and yeah because because you can't because like Magla pills are the other abilities that restore uh you know your MP are not like things you can purchase.

Those are things you have to find, acquire as treasure, and sometimes craft through cooking.

And so it's, they're they're really scarce.

And so part of this game is in terms of getting through these very lengthy dungeons, especially for the magic quests, is to, is conserving your resources and not using too many of your,

you know, blowing, you know, blowing your wad, so to speak, in terms of using all your MP and using some of your more standard attacks.

Yeah.

So I eventually, I eventually got over that hump.

I was concerned.

that that was going to be the hump, that that was going to end it for me because I had it such a hard, I had to keep resetting and like redoing this fight and it was just not i was not making much progress but then i started to figure out

um getting more uh attack charges for um

using the weakness uh against it then i started to then i locked in and was able to take him down in just like a couple of turns um but i this game is so big um but i am still like committed to wanting to finish it.

I want to get in there.

I want to actually finish one of these.

Oh, I love it so much.

I'm 100% going to finish this game.

I can't wait to see where the story ends up.

I wish I had finished it by the time we did this episode, but you know, I'm rambling so much and

borderline incoherent anyway because I'm trying to just get all my thoughts out that I think if I'd played more of this game,

I'd do an even worse job than I'm doing.

But I think this is the thing we run into is that when you're talking about something you really like, it's just oftentimes harder than talking about something you have a lot of complaints about.

And I do have have some complaints about this game, but ultimately they're pretty minor and they're dwarfed by what I just think what a triumph of both gameplay and narrative this is.

And

we haven't even touched on how beautiful the art direction is.

Yes, thank you, Heather.

It's just like it's such a

gorgeous game.

I think these character designs are awesome.

Hulkenberg is such a cool-looking character.

What an amazing, commanding presence.

This, this, this, this towering Roussant, who is just like so regal and so intimidating.

And, you know, like, like, I, I just, I think it's just such a cool,

like, like, like, strolls arc, who you meet very early on.

It starts off, and you're kind of like, this guy seems like kind of a, like an uppercrust dick.

And then you get his actual story and how, like, tragic it is, and how much he's just like trying to like find some sense of redemption.

Um,

it's, uh, it's, it's, all that shit is really, is really cool.

And I think that even though some of these characters kind of tread the same ground, like some of these party members are all kind of dealing with the same sort of thing of like personal or professional failure or having lost a loved one in some tragic way.

They all are distinct enough and they all also are

distinct enough both visually and in terms of their characterization that it really feels like they each have their own their own arcs.

Yeah, I think that's all great.

And again, I can't get over how great, what an awesome choice it is to make the menacing enemies the humans.

I love it.

So good.

Yeah.

Just like this thing, here's this thing that pops out of the ocean that's like a squid with stone-cold Steve Austin's head.

It's great.

I fucking love this shit.

After this episode, when I'm commuting home, I am no doubt going to think of a dozen things that I meant to say and forgot.

That's the nature of trying to cover a game like this.

It is so at once so dense and so sprawling that I think it's just impossible to be comprehensive.

But maybe some of those thoughts will be covered by you, the listeners.

It's time for the you play of our We Play U Play.

It's your review crew, the Ryu crew for Metaphor Refantasio.

Hello, Girl!

It is all sourced from our Discord, discord.gg slash get played.

This first one is from Daisuki Danny.

Hi, Daisuki.

And

Daisuki Danny writes, if I had Galica with me at all times, like the protagonist, I think he would solve all of my problems.

Gallica, the fairy, the familiar, who is accompanying you and always offering you advice.

And hey, sometimes the key aspects of those advice are presented in a red, bold text.

And I feel like if I got what I needed to do at a given time in red, bold text, I wouldn't fuck up so much.

No, yeah, I certainly would be doing a much better job in general.

This next one is from Tater LaRue.

I'm Tater LaRue.

Tater writes, I die for Heisme, cute little guy with an utterly heartbreaking backstory.

Absolutely.

Yeah, Heismei rocks, also like a really fun character,

obviously is steered towards one archetype at first, has a, you know, but like I kind of feel like because Heisme is his stats are so geared towards agility, there's a few different ways to play it.

Yeah.

And I think where I ended up with that character,

I don't know.

I'm not looking at any spreadsheets.

I'm not looking at any YouTube tutorials in terms of how to min-max the characters.

I'm kind of curious to see what that looks like after I finish my playthrough to see, like, oh, I see what I should have done.

I should have had

a faker general hybrid.

I would never have thought to do that, but

whatever.

As far as I'm figuring it out, I'm enjoying the way I'm playing it.

Hell yeah.

This next one's from Koopa Trupa.

Hi, Koopa Trupa.

As someone who has played every persona game so far,

as they came out and multiple times,

I have to say there are things that are really refreshingly different about Metaphor.

Lots of good gameplay choices.

I think the battle system might be my favorite iteration of the Atlas game formula.

And like all great games, the ending has stuck with me and given me things to think about.

No game is perfect, and that's okay because it means we get interesting, unique, and unique games.

And this is absolutely one of them.

I think that's really well said.

Yeah, extremely well said.

And hey, that's making me look more forward to the ending than I already am.

i i think that the yes i do think this is one thing that i talked about as comparison to persona five royal i do think the that i actually like the combat better i do think the archetype system is just a more effective yes more extensible uh you know

way to have uh jrpg combat yeah i remember playing when we were doing persona five i like didn't use the personas that much because it's like kind of weird i would just do like the regular attacks more i feel like

well there's your problem yeah it's probably why i never finished it uh having a hard time This next one's from Simoni.

Hi, Simoni.

Hi, Simony.

I finished the game twice now.

Wow, shit.

Metaphor is one of Atlas's top-tier games.

Gameplay is an amazing combo of persona and SMT that creates a fun, new challenge for players.

I like that while there is still a time element to interactions in the game, they are not as demanding as personas are.

I was able to complete everything in the game with about eight days to spare.

I love the story in the game.

While there are times it can be very on the nose with its message, I like that the characters look at the idea of a utopia with a very optimistic but realistic view on the challenges and making it happen.

I cannot recommend this game enough to everyone, especially fans of previous Atlas games.

Nice.

Yeah, I think it's

look,

I think it's a really unique experience.

And yeah, I do think a lot of the characters, because of their reality, are pretty clear-eyed about

what might befall them.

I think that the

all this, the idea of just like a

a nation that has lived under a monarchy grappling with democracy for the first time and what it means and not quite even understanding it is is really interesting shit.

Yeah.

Um

this next one is from Joey Guy7.

Hi, Joey Guy7.

And Joey Guy7 writes, a persona game you can recommend your friends without sending them a disclaimer first.

Some of the stuff in persona games, I'll say,

ages like milk, we'll say, but some of it is also very, very good.

Delicious.

Yeah, the older a milk gets, everybody knows it untaps, it unlocks that untapped flavor.

I don't think there's anything wrong with your teacher taking a second job as a sexy maid.

I think that's fine.

And if you want to date her, that's fine too.

I was going to say the first part of that, yeah, there is nothing wrong with that.

What follows is

not great.

And then finally, X Dream Triple Zero, right?

X Dream Triple Zero.

The way the game approaches social dynamics and how it conveys how real fantasy can be makes this one of the most thought-provoking games I've played.

Wow.

It definitely, like, I don't know.

It's, yeah, you're thinking and feeling things.

And that's what's...

That's

what should happen when you engage with art.

Yeah, that's what art's all about.

That's what life's all about, baby.

Feeling stuff.

Feeling, thinking, and having emotions.

Yeah.

I'm having emotions right now.

What are your emotions, Nick?

Disappointed in myself.

I did a bad job.

No, you did a great job.

It's hard to talk about that.

You said a lot of really great stuff.

Yeah.

Ah, man.

I forgot to say a bunch of shit I was supposed to say.

That's okay.

No, Nick, you did a great job.

What are you talking about?

You did a fantastic job, Nick.

I'm no better than a lowly peripace.

Ooh, I hate the parapace.

Took the wrong lesson for the game.

No, wait, no, no.

Oh, those are bad people.

Get them out of here.

No, Nick, you did an amazing job.

And it is difficult to talk about a game so sprawling, such as this, but I think you hit on the stuff that was important to you right now.

And I think

that's more than adequate.

You're a great podcast.

Well, thank you for saying that.

I was fishing for that.

Hey, that's this week's Get Played.

Special thanks to Sam Rogic for helping us out.

Everyone, check out Guck.

Does Guck have social media?

Yeah, it's at Guck Band on Instagram.

Awesome.

Check that out.

Listen to the new single.

Our producers are Shell Chen.

Ranch, Yard underscore, underscore sard.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And hey, check out our Patreon, patreon.com/slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-head gum back catalog, plus ad-free main feed episodes, and also our Patreon exclusive show, Get Animated.

Matt, what's up this week?

This week, I'll tell you what we're doing.

We're doing our pilot presentation, and Heather and I, we watched a show called Gurin Lagan.

Gurren Lagan.

Wow.

And it's a show that I feel like a lot of people in the Discord have requested us watch.

So it's very exciting that we watched it a while ago for it to finally come out now.

And let me tell you something.

Strap in.

If you haven't seen it, watch it along with us so you can hear what our thoughts were on the pilot.

Yeah, it's a pilot presentation is a set of episodes where I introduce Nick and Matt to an anime I loved.

They watch the pilot, they give me their thoughts and tell me whether or not they want to pick it up.

Patreon.com slash get played.

And hey, we also have merch now.

That's right.

Brother, that's a great point.

We do have merch now.

We have merch now?

We have merch now.

We have merch now.

It's at kinshipgoods.com slash get played.

And you can get yourself a freaking t-shirt.

You can get yourself

a shirt, a long-sleeve shirt with the Resident Evil 4 merchant on it, though I think that one is selling out in some sizes, which I is very, very cool.

There's a hoodie with the logo on it, there's a hat, sticker, buttons.

Get whatever you're get, whatever you want over there.

Kinshipgoods.com/slash get played, baby.

Hell yeah.

And you know what?

Fantasy got played.

Hmm.

Here, I thought that fantasy was dead.

It's not, it's, it got played, actually.

Hmm.

Does that mean it's dead?

It got played to death, yeah.

Oh, fuck.

Fantasy is dead.

Fantasy's dead.

That was a hit gum podcast.