Yes, Metaphor: ReFantazio Really is Fantasy Persona

See, is it too early to just say it was the metaphor was inside you the whole time?

Is it too early?

Am I jumping the gun?

I don't know.

I mean, you're definitely jumping the gun.

I don't think anybody's game.

We never do talk about the game in the introduction.

But in this case, I'm not talking about the game.

I'm talking about the very end of the game when you learn that the metaphor was inside you the whole time.

Oh, you're worried about spoiling that truth.

Yes.

Yes.

That's true.

Teddy from Persona 4 comes out at the end of this one and he's like the metaphor was you and love

and be cool to each other those are the three metaphors of metaphor refantasio

it um

did you have something else you wanted to talk about justin no i was just trying to think about better names for the video game because they could with anytime i was trying to come up with one oh sure let me let me try fantasy sword uh

you could do magic quest okay no no wait hold on wait wait wait wait wait wait sorry i need to stop for one second sure sure Is the name that you wanted to pitch?

Because I think it's strong.

Yeah, yeah.

You can do magic, hyphen, quest,

exclamation point.

You can do magic, colon, quest, exclamation point.

My position is that you could call the game hambone slam jam, and it would be probably a stronger, more meaningful type.

I adore this game.

In two years, I'm going to be like, what was that fucking game called again?

I think metaphor on its own is not bad.

And then you're going to have some like random ass Italian shit.

Re Fantasio sounds like this game has sent me an email and it wants to draw my attention to Fantasio.

It sounds like I should be playing Maracas while playing this game.

I think a little bit.

Maybe they could choose between Metaphor and Fantasio because they are both kick-ass names for video games.

Slip a re in there to bind them together.

The binding re.

My name is Justin McElroy.

I know the best games of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy.

I know the best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I think I know where the name of this game comes from.

And it would be a scoop on this episode because I don't think anybody else has figured it out yet.

This week, we're talking about metaphorical.

I think it'd be cool to get Russ on this one.

Let's get Russ up in this one.

Get your flavor on here.

Sorry, Plant threw it off by talking after his name, and I felt like the show had started.

No, I get it.

I get it.

Certainly, anyway, welcome to Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

It is a video game club, and just by listening,

you are a member.

We're talking about Metaphor Refantasio.

Chris Plant, what's that?

Metaphor refantasio is kind of like persona because it's made by the people who made the persona games but this time say goodbye to that wonderful japan high school experience say hello to fantasy heavily heavily influenced by the works of salvador dali and we're going to talk about it more after i see you

And then after that, the fun boys are back in town.

Rush Fresh Tick and our bringing back games.

We're going to have, We're going to get a game.

This episode is going to be a wrap.

Let's go to the break so we can establish the structure.

We here at Bessie's Incorporated take our human resources incredibly seriously.

And when you say human, you mean horrible monsters.

I mean horrible mutant monsters.

We take our human resources very seriously.

To get all four of us embedded elbow deep in a 90-hour long JRPG is simply not the best use of everyone's time.

And so some people weren't so styked about playing a 90-hour JRPG, they checked out other shit.

That's fine, and for what it's worth, some people did try to check out a 90-hour RPG.

I'd say a lot of people on this show tried, I'd say

about half the call.

I will say, I got my road dog over there, Chris Plant, over there.

I am sorry to talk with people who actually tried and not people who are going to tell me they tried.

Just can I say very quickly, just to set the parameters here, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

I come not to Crucify Metaphor Refontasio, it is 100% a case of like

my flavor.

Knew it wouldn't be my flavor going in.

You've played Persona games, right?

And you know that you haven't really loved a Persona game.

I have really loved several Persona games.

I've played 80 hours of a couple of different Persona games.

Oh, fuck me.

Jesus played this game.

It's good as shit.

This is not a Persona game.

No, no, no.

This is this.

Listen, I don't.

I just said that.

I just said that.

That's right.

No aggro, no aggro here.

I said away.

I could tell you why it didn't work for me, but I don't, who gives a shit?

Like, if you're going to like it, you're going to like it.

Let's circle back to that.

Let's circle back to that.

I also want to call my shot now that in

sometime in the next six months, I don't know when, Justin's going to come and tell us that he's actually started playing this and that he loves this game.

And it's going to be a good thing.

It's not.

I'm not going to guarantee you.

He's got his reasons, and I'm curious to hear them.

But before we do that, we should talk about this.

Yeah, and I want to say, Justin and I, like,

I'm going to just hang back for a while while you guys fucking drool over the game.

I know it seems like Russ and I have been talking for two minutes about how we're not going to talk, but just to set it up, Russ and I are really going to try to sit back a little bit.

I'll let you guys do it.

I think this game does a lot of stuff different from Persona.

So I would like, if I would say if you have

a summary about that, I can do it.

Griffin, do you want to start with like, what's the summary of the game?

So if I, if, if, genuinely, it is not reductive to call this fantasy persona, and you, you would know like 85% of what you need to know about the game.

Structurally, it's very similar.

It takes place in a calendar that passes.

You have to manage your time and your activities.

There are social links that inform the like, you know, core dungeon crawling gameplay.

All of that stuff is here.

And

what is different is the genre.

It is profoundly different than this like slick urban kind of

fantasy story that they have told in all the Persona games.

The Shimogami Tensei games are, I don't know.

I don't know how to classify them as a genre.

But this is straight up fantasy.

And it is like

really, really, I would say, traditional, extremely dark kind of fantasy.

A lot of really fucked up stuff happens in this game, which I think they can.

I tend to color it a bit like you keep, it's not high fantasy.

I would

mean more just like militaristic fantasy, like that sort of crony kind of thing.

No, not Game of Thrones.

I would say military.

Attack on Titan is the vibe that it was recently.

Final fantasy games, too, I think, have had.

The more recent season, yeah, sure.

I would say Game of Thrones season one.

Yeah, yeah.

Before.

There is some, some, some castle intro.

But this is much more modern.

Like, the aesthetics are not.

They speak in modern sort of

for the most part.

And they look cool, right?

They still look like fucking cool, cool people because, like, it is a P-Studio game, and that's, that's their jam.

Um,

I think this game sets itself apart in what it does differently than Persona and what it has honestly fixed about some of the stuff in Persona.

Yeah.

Uh, I think it is way easier to understand.

They've done away with a lot of of cruft from the persona format.

For example, gone is the like, you have to go out and collect these different demons and then fuse them.

And if your social link is strong enough here, you can make a stronger version of this.

That's all gone.

Now it's just like a class system.

Like you would see in like a like a, you know, Final Fantasy

5 or like whatever.

Imagine any game where you could, all the Dragon Quest games where you can pick different classes for each character.

Each character is totally customizable.

It's not like persona games where you just really can control your main guy and then whoever you hang with does their own thing.

And you can blend these different classes, right?

You can have a fighter with skills from the, you know, healer tree and so on and so forth.

And so your social links, they're called followers in this game.

When you level those up, it directly empowers those different classes, which I find a way more juicy and delicious carrot than like...

In Persona 5, it's like you talk to this guy and you spend half the day with him.

And then it's like, on Sundays, you get 50% off at the smoothie stand.

It's like, who fucking cares man in this one I feel like by simplifying that system they have made it way more appealing to I don't know do anything I found myself never without like something I wanted to do something I wanted to chase I think that improves the pacing of the game a lot um which is maybe its biggest accomplishment there's in every persona game even the ones i love it's like uh there will be times where it's like well i got 15 days to kill i guess i'll go to eat fucking beef with chie over and over and over and over again chris what do what was your take?

Well, for people who have not played a persona game, because I'm sure that there's going to be some of those listening, the calendar thing that Griffin talked about is the key to the game.

And I think is probably why

Hoops and Fresh maybe bounced off, because here's a problem with the game for most average people.

The calendar stuff doesn't really start until the 10-hour mark and doesn't really get going until the 20-hour mark.

And that is a totable, totally reasonable reason to bounce off this game.

Yeah, that is a huge ask of players.

But when you get to it, holy moly does it sing.

And the way it works is that you, let's say that there's a big dungeon that you need to go solve the mystery for, right?

You need to go beat the big boss in the scary dungeon.

And they will say, you have...

two weeks to do that.

And there's a countdown clock every day when you wake up.

And you have a thing that you can do in the afternoon or in the evening.

And you could go right to the dungeon and start blasting through it.

But the enemies will be really tough.

So what's probably better spent is chatting with your friends and unlocking these new powers or going and doing side quests because I think that's the other thing that this game does really well.

It gives you a ton of side things to do rather than just go into a endless

generative dungeon and playing it over and over again.

And they tried to do this with Persona 5, right?

Persona 5 had the labyrinth.

I forget what it was called.

But like if you were, if you didn't, you know, need to progress in the main dungeon, there was like this other dungeon you could go and level up in.

This game is, I mean, another sort of big genre difference is it's a travelogue.

It doesn't take place in one, it doesn't take place in Tokyo, and that's it.

You move through these different cities, and every time you get to a new city, it's like there's new side quests, new mini dungeons to explore, new,

you know, social links to form.

So it's, it always kind of feels

fresh.

I do think the dungeon stuff, like you do kind of have to be into that like

grindy.

If you don't like turn-based turn-based dungeon combat this game is not for you and i something clicked in my head with infinite wealth that got me into this stuff and

thank the heavens because i used to like despise this chunk of persona games and now i'm i'm really really into it um but i yeah i think the other thing that that fixes you mentioned the travelogue of it all

By making this a road trip video game effectively, it is allowed to do so much more more with those side dungeons creatively.

So another example of that is each time you go into a town, they have a series of like, oh, these people are terrorizing our town.

We want you to go and like fulfill this bounty, which is like not so different than any other bounty questing and an RPG.

But you will hear about those bounties from other random characters in the town.

You will like actually get a sense.

My son got eaten by the worms.

Like these things are barking at it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's very just clever.

And

I found that like once I got into it, once I got to that point, it was really hard to stop playing because it would be like, okay, well, I have 10 days free and I have this afternoon and this afternoon, oh, I can finally talk to my one of my like best colleagues who is going to I know unlock all these powers and I want to know more about their story.

And then I do that.

And then I, oh, damn, I really wanted to go fulfill that like one tiny dungeon.

And suddenly I've lost another hour doing that.

And time just completely gets away from you because there is always another relatively short thing to do with a like genuinely pleasurable story beat and reward.

I don't think it's a crunch, though, in the way that some Persona games, it feels like, oh, no, I don't have enough time to get everything.

I have felt like I'm way more generous to get this time.

Yeah.

One other thing.

that is sort of

generous with your time too.

It's generous with time to run.

One one other thing that i think is really kind of interesting about the game is sort of the subject matter that it dabbles in the main kind of like premise of the game is what if this world

that was basically like a sort of theocratic monarchy with all of these like systemic problems with racism and classism and

uh like deep deep entrenchment of of power uh that is sort of facilitates the the the racism and the classism.

What if overnight it became a democracy because of magic?

And that's, and then seeing people in this world, like no one knows how to fucking deal with this, right?

Like everyone, even the people who are like supposedly empowered to choose their next king are like, wait, but how does it, how does it work?

How do we do it?

And you meet a ton of characters that sort of represent these different sort of virtues that a ruler might have.

And it's like a great cast of characters too.

It beats you over the head with this stuff when you start playing.

It shows you like there's these nine tribes and there's lesser tribes and people are really racist against them.

And it feels like they are setting up this story that is just like

all of this bad stuff is bad.

When really it's more of a story of like, how do you fix the bad stuff?

And that is sort of what the that was the metaphor all along.

The main character has this book that is like a book that is sort of about this utopia that kind of reflects the real world, our world.

And that, that's so fucking interesting.

Like it is really fascinating to hear all of these different takes.

And it's not all like idealistic.

Like there's a really great moment where you talk to this one character and he reads the book and he's like, I don't know.

He's like, it's great to just say like everyone should be equal, but how do you like.

Does that mean we ignore what separates us and makes us different and the culture and all of the stuff that kind of like makes you, makes you unique?

It really kind of like, I don't know, it asks sort of thoughtful questions about this core conceit in a way that really surprised me because I don't think any Persona game has done that well in the past.

In Persona 5, it's like, the world sucks.

Fuck grown-ups.

That's about as far as you get in Persona 5.

It is funny.

It's funny to me in this because they lay it on so thick early on.

And again, I did not get deep into this, but they lay it on so thick where they're like, just a reminder, I know you're going to think you're playing a fantasy game.

But actually, connect it to what you got going on in real life and you'll see some similarities.

It's interesting, huh?

Isn't that interesting?

It's an interesting set.

We're doing some interesting things over here.

They do.

But I think that that hook does like a really good idea.

I know

whenever you meet a new character.

For sure.

But whenever you meet it, it is a lens through which you learn about like the characters who join your party because you always have a scene with them where it's like, check this book out.

And they're like, oh, interesting.

Shit.

Cool.

Okay.

How do you, how do you, okay.

I want to hear about your issue.

I want to hear it.

It doesn't matter.

I'm much more interested in you guys.

Okay.

How do you justify for yourselves?

And I'm not, I don't mean this in like an antagonistic way.

I'm saying like what you're talking about, a lot of this sounds like interesting, right?

I know that I, like, full stop was not enjoying myself while I was playing this game.

Right.

Well, I, it, the, the combat is a lot thinner than

for the, I don't know, five or six hours that I got through, a lot thinner than what was going on in Yakuza.

It's very much like Rock, Beat, Scissors.

Uh, yeah, Pokemon strong against weak.

I know what I play.

I'm only speaking my experience.

I'm not interested in shooting.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

So that was kind of boring to me.

There are so many games, movies, books, whatever that I could experience the totality of

before this got good.

So how do you, as people with limited time, say, well,

I can justify that initial buildup or ramp up

because the rest of it is so enjoyable.

I can't justify spin at this point in my life, I can't just justify spending any time where I'm like not enjoying it.

This isn't good, but it'll get good later.

That's all.

Well,

I mean, I have a few answers to that.

For me, I love this genre.

I love this developer and this style so much that I did, I don't think that the game takes 10 to 20 hours to get good.

You basically unlock the class system or whatever after an hour.

And the stuff leading up to that is just world building.

And I am willing to stick through a part of the game that I find a little bit dull because I trust that this developer has some really good shit coming down the line.

And that's and the reason I feel okay about spending as much time with this game as I do.

For one, it's been my fucking bike buddy.

And so like,

I've been rocking like an hour on my bike.

And I don't have a ton of other like game time unless I stay up late at night, which I have done quite a few times for this game.

This is not about amount of time either.

I have disgusting amounts of time on mini games.

But you could spend that doing any, you could, in the 90 hours it would take to beat this game, you could do so much shit, right?

Yeah.

I just love this.

I love this.

I love this series.

I love this developer.

I love this game.

Honestly, I'm fucking crazy about this game.

And so like, I don't know.

This is how I like to play games.

I don't mind getting stuck into a game because honestly prefer that.

That kind of stuff excites me a lot.

Can I ask, on the narrative side, and this specifically relates to time, when did you feel?

I'll take a step back.

I was immediately kind of drawn to the setting of both Persona 4 and Persona 5, just like off the jump.

A lot of it is like, oh, it's a real world setting, but not one that I know super well, but at least there's a grounded nature.

And I think the writing

kind of drew me in.

So when, how far into this game were you like, oh, I like this character or, oh, I'm into this story.

How long did that take?

Not so much the gameplay.

I do miss,

I will say, like, the thing missing for me is I do love the like virtual tourism shit of Persona four and five.

And I do think this setting is interesting.

Like all of the kind of like world building that they do around it is interesting, but I don't think it necessarily is as...

like vibrant or has that kind of like external familiarity as as persona four and and five had.

As far as like when the game gets like hooked me,

it was there is a moment sort of right before you get into the first major dungeon where like the plot of the game is established

and the plot and that's this sort of like, uh-oh, it's a democracy now, deal with it is like so the the way that comes about is so fucking wild.

And then I sort of realized the more I played, like, I didn't know what was going to happen next.

In the way that like Persona, you can't say that about.

In Persona, I always knew what's going to happen next a month is going to pass i'm going to find some weird kid i'm going to go into his heart and fix him or whatever and he's going to become my new party member in this one it's like i don't know man this story is doing a lot it's it's doing like political intrigue and it's it's a revenge story it's an underdog story it might have just been i think there's a moment of reassurance for me in a game when i reach what i think is the end of the loop that this game is built of like it's built of these loops and like with action games those are very short loops right i think the the original idea of these was was in context of Halo, right?

30 seconds, basically.

Yeah, 30 second loops.

But I think with this, like you want to see the structure of like

where this and for me, I didn't see that sort of like where I felt like this is the game.

Like I'm in the game now.

And I feel like that made it hard for me to feel like I was really, it's sort of like if the first episode of a podcast is really long and you don't finish it, it's like, well, I must hate this podcast.

Yeah, sure.

It's like, you know, I felt like.

Yeah, I just want to go back to the original question of like the 90 hours because I think there's two separate interesting things there.

First, why the game works.

I don't think it is a traditional loop video game.

And I don't think like that's the market that they are in.

And I think that's why it took five persona games for them to like really find success with that series because you have to like teach people what the game is.

And now we all take it for granted.

Like we know the Persona system.

We know it's going to pay off for us.

But like, I think it same thing with Monster Hunter, right?

Like, you would kind of have to try these games over and over again before you, like, learn to trust that, like, it's going to be worth it.

And I think that is a part of it here.

In terms of, like, that intro, I agree with Griffin.

Like, I thought after the first hour, I was like, very much into the game.

But the gameplay does take longer to get going.

But before then, I think the story is interesting.

I think the music is fantastic.

It's fucking wild.

I thought presentationally and the music.

It looks bad.

I thought the presentation.

Just the look of it.

Just the look of it, it's so busy that

it gave me a headache.

I think it looks bad to look at.

Just like the

amount of it on there, I found kind of grating, I would say.

Interesting.

I adore it.

I think it actually looks like art, and I think it's inspirations.

I think it's wild to play a game where

the inspirations are so clearly like Hieronymus bosch or salvador dolly or francis bacon the bosses are so small

i didn't realize

that is me that's on me because i didn't get the hieronymous bosh of it all and now that you're saying that that's unlocked sort of an enjoyment on my end yeah now you know now you've got the bosh in there you know i actually now that you've said bosh and dolly i'm like view it through a lens this is the techni bosch we're talking about right we are talking about yes that's 100 yeah bosch unleash i mean uh i but the other thing about the the 90 hours, I just want to talk to that really quick.

I think that is the forever problem of our enterprise, of us doing this show, of people liking video games in general.

You could always be doing something better with your time.

If you were playing this and you're like,

man, during this time, I could have read like Moby Dick four times over.

And then when reading Moby Dick, you could be like, man, doing this, I could have like opened an option.

I could have been playing Metaphor Refuntasi.

Yeah.

Like, I mean, there's always, there's always a better use of your time.

Time is inherently wasted.

And as long as it is bringing you pleasure, I think it matters.

I think it's like, I guess what I'm saying is like, it's a good question, but I think

kind of an ineffective one because it inherently brings your dislike of a thing.

I'm not saying it's just about you oops with like this game.

I'm saying I've done this for other games too.

Like, I know I say this often about like MMOs, but like other people are getting something out of it that I just personally cannot unlock.

So for me, it is a bad use of it.

But I'm saying that, I am saying that there is an artificiality in what we're talking about because that you only think it's worth the time in retrospect.

No,

I don't think not at all.

I was into it right away.

Chris Playette, earlier, you did say like you don't think the game necessarily is set like hits its point of mood until like 10 or 20 hours.

I think it becomes a like 10 out of 10 game at 20 hours.

And I'm also talking about the point where, I guess I'm talking to like y'all who want the gameplay loop, who want like that, that the thing that you're going to find pleasurable.

That's going to take a while to get to.

For me, I was enjoying the story.

I was enjoying the art.

There are other things that I like was enjoying in the game that.

I will say we kind of skipped over it.

The music, I fucking, I was like so into that fat.

The first time you get into a fight and you hear that, oh,

there's like crazy, like operatic shrieking happening throughout the whole thing.

So fucking cool.

I thought that was great.

I, I, I, this is, uh, probably gonna be my goatee with a bullet.

I'm uh, like, obsessed with it, and I want to spend every sort of like, I put almost 30 hours into it, and I'm rounding sort of like the third major dungeon.

Uh, and I just think it's great.

I think the writing's great.

I think the characters are great.

Have you met Heisme yet, Chris?

Oh, definitely.

Dude, it's fucking, that's like my favorite character in a game this side of like Chrono Trigger, I feel like.

There's a screenshot that I will put in the newsletter in a few weeks after the game has been out for a little while.

But it, to me, is real,

how did we get to this point in the world of video games that this screenshot both exists and makes sense and is affecting?

I think this is a pretty easy one.

If you like the Persona games, this is a fucking incredible one.

I want to finish it first, but I don't think a Persona game has like grabbed me and made me want to keep playing as much as this game does.

same yeah uh and if that is not your game i mean jrpgs are i think that's a pretty codified genre like fighting games or racing games like you know whether or not that's going to be your shit and it is extremely a j rpg um and a more traditional one i'm like i i mean it doesn't feel like infinite wealth is a traditional jrpg even though people no i mean it's doing a completely different thing right uh i think there are different approaches to that genre is what i'm saying and that fucking rules man like it rules that there's two, like, amazing JRPGs doing completely different things this year.

But yeah, I adore it.

What's that?

Oh, Jesus.

Is that the party boys at the door?

Oh, shit.

Oh, shit.

Are the party boys at the door?

Are they going to bust down the door?

Let's take a break and then we will come back and talk about what else is going on.

This week's episode of the besties is brought to you in part by Rocket Money.

Do you have a bunch of subscriptions that maybe you don't need?

Well, I have great news for you.

Rocket Money can round them all up, show them to you in a simple list and say, hey, which of these do you want to keep and which of these should you probably have canceled a long time ago?

It is a humongous help.

And Rocket Money has all sorts of other features.

Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.

It has been a huge help to me, which if you listen to this show, you are already aware of.

Rocket Money's 5 million members have saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features.

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.

Go to rocketmoney.com/slash festies today.

That's rocketmoney.com slash festies.

Rocketmoney.com slash besties.

So some people, some people like their games a little longer.

Some people like their games a little shorter and with more stuff that's fun earlier.

Is that fair so far?

Is that a fair thing so far?

It's very fair, I think.

They like it to be fun at the beginning as well as the middle and end.

It's interesting.

Yeah, that's different.

Russ, can you tell me?

Do you have any games in mind like that?

I don't want to put you on the spot, but just as an example for the discussion we're having.

Sure.

I played a game called Kill Knight.

Now, Russ, already

fucking aces, brother.

Better title than Metaphor.

Better title, not even close.

It's one of the best titles of video games I've heard in recent years.

It is spectacular.

Kill Knight is basically blending the gameplay of a Hades with the gameplay of like a Doom 2016.

It's like a very quick

murder a bunch of people in an isometric perspective.

In this case, you're murdering, I guess, demon type things.

And it uses

this very interesting combo system where you're...

using your sword to charge up your heavy shotgun attack, which then charges up a super power beam, and you're trying to kind of like combo one into the next, into the next.

It is much more of a score chase-y game than it is like a narrative-driven.

There's like very little narrative,

but it's a more

night.

Very little.

There's some meta stuff to it where you're unlocking like perks and new weapons and things like that.

But for the most part, it's like a score chase game.

And you're either going to like that immediately or you're not.

And it very much shows its hand in the first you know 10 seconds i will say it is like incredibly detailed and in-depth like the mechanics that are going on such that the tutorial which they recommend you play at the beginning

takes about 10 minutes it has about 15 steps to it of like this then this then this there's just like a lot of layers russ

are you sure you didn't play metaphor refund russ i don't want to kick you out of the fun party boys but it takes 10 minutes it's really i'm hearing a lot 10 minutes for kill Knight, though.

And then

you're killing all sorts of folks as Kill Knight.

You are Kill Knight.

You're not killing Knight.

I like that.

Don't get me wrong.

I like that.

Yeah.

I liked it.

15 steps in the TCP.

If you're a fan of,

again, Hades or Doom, that sort of speedy action stuff, this very much checks that.

I will say something that's interesting.

I've seen a few Hades alikes.

Assume that you are on board for a endgame Hades level of complexity because you liked Hades.

So you're ready for like 20 or 30 different mechanics at the very beginning.

You're like, Hades took a very long time to ramp up.

Yeah, this to me felt like that is the case where they're kind of throwing you all the tools right at the beginning.

I would recommend if you're just starting out, change the difficulty to whatever the easiest setting is.

They gave it some ridiculous name.

But that to me

let me get my feet wet a little more effectively.

So I strongly recommend that.

But it's like 12 bucks on Steam

and is also like the sort of game that you're going to know very quickly if you're into it.

So if it doesn't click with you in the first 20 minutes, just return it.

I like this.

That's the party boy motto, baby.

If it doesn't click with you in 20 minutes, return it.

Justin only plays games that you get on Instagram filters, just like fucking park the car or get the tile out of the box.

The one where you sing and you try to get the pitch of your voice to make the ball go through the gates.

That's the only game just.

That's what I have in the tire.

That's the only platform I buy book games on.

Vine length games, please.

Justin, you played something else.

Yeah.

And this is going to get started in quicker than 20 minutes, is what you're saying.

No, impossible.

No.

Yars Rising sounded like something I wouldn't be that interested in because I, you know, usually like retro stuff or retro remakes

don't really do it for me.

So I wanted to, if you're like me, I wanted to mention that Yars Rising is not really that.

It is a

search action game.

Do people even know what it's like a sequel to?

Oh, yeah, it's a really good point, actually.

So, Yars Revenge is a very old

arcade game that has different, like, sort of interesting mechanics that make it sort of a little bit unusual.

It's not a straight up and down, like, just shoot all the bad guys, like in, um, you know, like a centipede or whatever.

Yars Rising is a

search action game where you are a young hacker that is working for a company that finds out that the company is up to some nefarious stuff.

And you

start trying to bring this company down from the inside.

You are inside the corporation.

You have friends that are like in your earpiece trying to talk you through

your mission.

But what's cool, the hacking is you play Yars Revenge.

So when you go to hack a game, there is a like sort of mini section

of like a Yars Revenge level or a type of mode.

They're not all like really Yars Revenge, but like to give an example of a pretty basic one, your ship

is going up against a

like the the bad guy spaceship and it's encased in this like coating and you have to fly over there and eat through the coding with your spaceship and then once you've eaten through it enough you have to eat the boss a little bit and that charges up your energy that you fire a cannon from the other side of the screen and then you have to get out of the way of the shot that you just fired from the other side of the screen to hit the main guy.

That's just Yars Revenge.

It's a crazy game, but you are playing like every mini game is different.

It's like five seconds or 10 seconds of Yar's revenge that you're playing through.

And you actually like, as you're playing, you get these upgrades that

let you like increase the speed of your ship or like you eat through things faster.

Your blasters charge up faster, which makes the quote-unquote hacking easier.

But the wild thing about Yar's Rising is,

so in Yar's Revenge, there is a background story.

to Yar's Revenge, and it's about these, this race called the Yar that are up against their like the nemesis, the Kotile.

and the Yars get these powers that they use to defend their world against the Kotile and that's what the plot of the fuck like the Atari game Yar's Revenge is right yar's rising is in our world and it assumes that this young character met one of the yars in childhood and this yar gave her the ability to use their powers on earth.

So in addition to running around this facility and addition to being a hacker, you also have the same abilities that the Yar have.

So you have like, you can gain the ability to run on water and to shoot blasters from your hands and to do like, you know, bigger jumps and, and fly up and that kind of thing.

It's really, all the little like mini games are really fun.

It's actually really well written.

Like very early on, there's a bit where uh you're, it's in a 2D perspective and your character is crawling through this like little tunnel after going through this terrible like laser section of the game where you're dodging laser beams and stuff.

And as she's crawling through the tunnel, she says, Well, thank God we're past the laser part of this.

And then beneath her, because it's in 2D, you can see the area you're about to go into is like all laser traps.

And she's commenting about that, like as you're passing it, which you're able to see.

It's really cute.

It's really funny.

The plot is actually like

pretty sharply done.

It's it's compact.

It's not like a huge sprawling thing.

Um, but uh, I thought all the uh the and it also lets you turn off the

for the little hacking challenges

You can make them like unfailable if you want you can also make it so that if you fail one five times it turns on a prompt that lets you make it unfailable for that specific challenge

There's also as you play through

those hacking mini-games start to bring in other Atari

retro stuff.

So you start and you start running into bosses and enemies that like are inspired by Atari games there's a boss named Missile Commander that you have to fight like that's crazy it's such a good idea it's and it's by way forward is the developer Atari's actually publishing it so there's like a lot of like Atari uh whatever version of Atari I wonder who owns Atari right now Atari's done some interesting stuff lately with like the the reissuing things and doing a lot of weird merch and stuff like that anyway that hotel that they were gonna build that I think, was closed in disgrace.

They have a Bubsy collection coming out soon.

Yars Rising is an interesting video game that I,

more than interesting.

I think it's fun to play.

And I think on Steam Deck, what are you playing it on?

I'm playing it on, it's great

on Steam Deck.

It's $30, by the way.

It is great on Steam Deck.

I'm playing it on Steam Deck, and it is being great.

I don't even think I put it on the other consoles because it feels

so good as the Steam Deck game.

That came out September 10th.

and not a bunch of people are playing it it's only got 58 reviews it's a really good game

really tough time for games like that it is uh i i wanted to mention you saying that reminded me uh i did manage to get metaphor working on steam deck you do have to tweak some stuff which does make it easier to get to get through those 90 hours i didn't i didn't have to tweak very much at all actually maybe i played it on steam deck maybe i started it later than you did and they patched it but it worked fine for me i did get a pad and update so maybe i don't know i had to turn down some of the graphical stuff, but otherwise, it works pretty well.

Honorable mentions, let's do it.

Fresh, you have an audition

that you want to tell us about.

Hell yeah.

Thank you, Russ.

I forget if I talked about,

I know for sure that I've talked about Halls of Torment on this podcast before.

It is the best vampire survivors-like ever made.

I do not doubt that one bit.

It is fucking spectacular.

It's also $5.

Stop whatever you're doing and fucking download this game.

The 1.0 update released sometime in September, and I only recently got around to going back and playing it.

But it added all the things that have made this game so sticky in the past.

It basically lets you store items that you collect in runs, and then you can set up different builds for like the eight or nine different classes that are playable.

And now you can store like uncommon and rare items that like further let you min-max your things.

They're always giving you like a little carrot to like pull you ahead did you with quests and things like that it's just what's up juice did you try children of morta i didn't no i haven't played you would like you would really like it if if you would really like it's along similar lines like if you if you like halls of torment i think you'd really like children of mortar cool shot um

halls of torment is the best like if you haven't played that one it's it's really exceptional it's it really triggers the like my passion for diablo 2 era graphics like that time of graphics

I've tried it a few times.

It's never really grabbed me.

Have they added in this 1.0 stuff, like, I don't know, more?

Yeah, I found the runs to be a bit interminable.

Like, I was not really enjoying the sort of core loop, and I wasn't finding the like upgrades to be especially cool because it's like 3% attack boost or whatever.

I think the thing, and again, I don't know how deep you got into it.

The thing that hooked me was once I unlocked the ability to

rescue armor and items and make builds for the different characters, which I think I forget.

That's a thing, a gimmick where you have, if you get a really good piece of gear, you don't automatically unlock it.

You have to bring it back to the starting point and basically put it in a bucket.

Yeah.

It'll haul it up top for you, and then it unlocks it.

Yeah.

But you are,

you can use that for any other class.

But you're giving it up for that run.

Right.

So, like, if you get something really good, you have to make a decision right there.

Like, I'm going to send this back.

I have a really hard time when I'm playing a game for the first first like hour and I'm not like really enjoying it it sort of makes me

I will give it another shot I do think it is

I do feel good I thought it was a good I thought it was a great bit a great callback it and I killed so many flights for me I think I have 50 hours logged in that game it's fucking crazy whenever I have like just a little bit of time somewhere I just sink a run and it's it's fantastic I love that game do you find that that's one you can step away from for a while and return to oh 100 I hadn't played in like a year when 1.0 came out, and I jumped back into it, and it was like almost immediate.

She's a beat Children of Morta, I think.

It's spooky season.

And have I got a fucking recommendation for you?

The Toonami adaptation, anime adaptation of Uzumaki, Junji Ito.

No way I watch the trailer.

Absolutely not.

Yeah,

no.

It is, if you're not familiar with Junji Ito or Uzumaki, uh, it is sort of his, I would say, probably

magnum opus.

I've read a lot of his stuff, and he has a lot of really great stuff.

But Uzumaki is like one of his longest series, uh, and it is about a town that is afflicted by this spiral curse that makes spirals start appearing everywhere, and people get obsessed with spirals, and people sort of start to mutate because of these spirals.

It is a literal, just non-stop barrage of some of the most fucked up, scariest, like body horror shit ever, right?

The book was like that.

The book was that.

And so there have been, I think, a couple adaptations of this in the past that haven't really stuck.

The way that they bring the art of Uzumaki and Junji Ito's like style to life and make it move and breathe.

And

it's incredible.

It's amazing.

And I think it's honestly,

if you've never read Junji Ito, it's probably a pretty good starting point because it's extremely watchable and they keep shit coming at you pretty awesome.

Watchable.

Watch the trailer.

I watched the trailer.

I was like, absolutely.

I felt like I was losing my mind for 90 seconds.

What was it?

What was

just because of how scary the

man, just the vibe they established in the trailer.

It's impressive.

You feel unhinged from reality.

I watched it 60 seconds.

It don't even have colors.

No, it don't have colors.

That's a very good point, Justin.

It's not even in English, man.

It's still scary.

There is an English voice.

I also have a titanium.

I would never.

I also have a huge critique.

Swine.

I have a huge critique with Uzumaki as well because it is on Max.

And very recently, Max decided that the show World of Calm, which my son adores and has whales swimming in the ocean and shit, does not belong on the kids-only version of Max.

You have to go to the adults version of Max.

So when he requests

World of Calm, I have to very quickly scrub past the fucking Uzumaki trailer, which always pops up and it is really, really bad.

So fuck this show and fuck you, Griffin.

Papa, who's, why is that man all twisted up in a bucket?

Oh,

that's a different show.

Also, real quick, Travis has been trying to get us to watch Delicious in Dungeon for a long time.

Him and his wife, Teresa, tour through it.

I never really gave it a chance.

Rachel was out of town on a trip this past weekend.

I was like, yeah, I finished Uzumaki.

Let me see what the fuck's up with this.

It's so good.

Oh my God, it's good.

I'm loving this show.

The tone is like so

lighthearted and like positive.

The animation, it's studio trigger, so the animation is like fucking crazy.

And it's just like a show about a party going through a dungeon, and they cook things every episode.

Basically, it.

And they handle it like close-ups of gorgeously animated food with a level of like

it's like monster parts.

Yeah, it's like monster parts, right?

But the show gets into like, here's the ecology of this dungeon.

This monster eats this monster.

They eat these plants.

So we can actually use this to,

it gets into a lot of like fantasy stuff, but it's so thoughtfully done.

And the tone of the show is just, it's really, really great.

I've been, it is a hugely enjoyable experience just tearing through the show.

I wish I would make some shows that are like that, but for things that I don't know how to do.

Don't you wish there was a show like that that was about how a car works?

Oh, it was so great.

I'm not shitting you guys.

What if you watch a cartoon and you know how a car works?

Plant definitely knows an anime that has that.

This is like half of anime

and manga.

I am so ready to help you out.

There are so many manga and anime that are

learned everything that I know about like ice skating and how it is scored from Yuri on ice.

I feel like this is genuinely like a huge topic, a huge focus for there was one this season about bartending, and I learned so much about making a perfect pour of a good cocktail.

Anime rules, man.

Anime is really good.

Anime does rule.

That's the new title of our show.

Anime rules.

My quick thing is just, hey, it's Halloween time.

Great time to go to the public library.

So much good stuff.

It is a great trick during Halloween because, you know, you could go out and buy a whole bunch of cool new books or movies and stuff, but it's going to cost you money.

Or you can go to the library and get it for free.

And it's like the old stuff.

So when you get like a, you know, one of those like scary children's books from the 70s or the 80s, right?

And like, they don't even make them like this anymore.

This is the real freaky stuff.

Yeah, it's good.

I like that you described it as a trick because the treat is not going to the library.

What a bold position to take on.

Anti-library standards.

I love that.

You read the rest of the fact.

Wow.

Wow.

Who's how much you?

You got anything?

God.

Played a lot of yars.

Played that other thing.

From continues to delight, but I don't want to talk about from.

No, No, I feel like I did watch something, but it's gone out of my head.

Let me ask you a question about from.

Okay.

Now that you've watched a number of these shows, The Loss of the World, The whatever, where people are stuck in a weird place, have you reached the point where you know for sure that the end is not going to be satisfying and you just like, you're cool with it?

What I like about From is that it is so blatantly obvious that it will not be delivering any satisfying answers.

It regularly picks up plot lines and then discards them like so much refuse.

Yeah.

There was a very long, there was a long storyline about the lead character having parkinson's that i the show has not returned to for a season and a half just didn't just is it just doesn't mention maybe from cured his parkinsons

did the from magic cure his parkinson's issue at this point last night guys last night i saw the sheriff

walk through a tree and end up in a dungeon where old man with worms in his skin was in the dungeon and he rubbed his old bloody hand on the sheriff to give him his skin worms worms.

And then it turned out that the skin worms were a weapon

against the evil

in from.

So the skin worms cleared up the Parkinson's show.

The most things happen on from of any show.

It's got the Emmys to prove it.

Number one, most stuff happening in a series, an ongoing series, comedy or drama, from, it's won it for seven years straight with only two seasons completed.

So much stuff happening.

And it's basically hot topic, Twin Peaks.

Is that a good summary?

I am not convinced anyone on the show is a paid actor.

I am not convinced.

Last night they introduced the idea that maybe some people are, quote, in on it.

And nobody really knows what that means, but they're very excited about the possibility of some people being in on it.

And nobody knows what it means.

I mean, I don't know what that means, but I'm so excited about people turning on each other inside from.

Last night, I do want to mention a great Emmy winning scene in from

the old lady in Colony House, which is the house, was talking to a boy, the little boy whose mom dug up the basement trying to find out how the lights worked and made her house collapse.

And

the little boy said, I'm worried more houses are going to collapse.

And then the old lady that runs.

Colony House said, well, as long as your parents don't dig up any more basements, I think we're going to be okay.

From clowns on from

like three episodes ago, from gets so cocksure about how it like, remember how we used to be kind of crazy?

Anyway, the skin worms are a weapon.

I guess that's the wages of making up all the shit as you kind of go along.

It sounds like that is from

Holstees.

The first season of From is on Amazon Prime.

To get the second season, you have to get MGM Plus.

Crody.

If you want to keep up with the third season live, I hope you like fucking Tulsa King or whatever because you're going to get MGM Plus, maybe.

That is so from.

It's extremely from, man.

It's weird that people haven't watched the first season of from.

It's unwatchable.

Okay.

What do we talk about today?

That's so much fun.

Oh, my recommendation is you got to go get your flu shot.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, good.

It's October.

Go get your flu shot.

And if you're while you're in there, there's a new COVID.

Get that new COVID

shot, not the new COVID variant.

Yeah, get the shot.

And it just, it takes five minutes.

Just go do it because it's never going to seem like a good time.

Just go do it.

Stuff we talked about this week.

We talked about Metaphor, Refantasio, Yars Rising, Kill Knight, plus Halls of Torment 1.0, Uzumaki, Delicious in Dungeon, from

going to the library on Halloween or for Halloween, and most importantly, getting updated vaccines for flu and COVID-19, protecting yourself and protecting those that you love and the people you don't love because you're a member of society.

I want to thank the following patrons at our Patreon, which is reached at patreon.com/slash the besties.

We have Richard, we have DJ, we have a lot of J's coming at you.

Jerry J Jorts and Jar Jar R.

Martin.

Thank you for being Jar Jar R.

Martin.

That's really good.

That's really good.

Thank you for being patrons of the besties.

Thank you to everyone else for being patrons of the besties.

We have a new episode of The Resties out.

We also have this month's bracket episode of the best launch games ever.

We greatly appreciate all of you, and you're making it all happen.

Juice, what are we doing next week?

Don't even get me started because

Silent Hill is back again for the second time that's right silent hill 2 remake

the radio is buzzing and i don't remember anything else but the flashlights are flashing we're headed we're headed back into the staticky world of silent hill 2 this might be too scary for me we're gonna see but it might be too scary for me we'll see we'll see if no if it is i'll tell it i'll just tell you about it tell me i'll give you readers hug me uh that's gonna do it for us this week of the besties be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best game?

Besties.