{"id":16159,"date":"2024-10-09T14:37:28","date_gmt":"2024-10-09T12:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/09\/bold-bizarre-brilliant-metaphor-refantazio-is-everything-i-adore-about-japanese-rpgs\/"},"modified":"2024-10-09T14:37:28","modified_gmt":"2024-10-09T12:37:28","slug":"bold-bizarre-brilliant-metaphor-refantazio-is-everything-i-adore-about-japanese-rpgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/09\/bold-bizarre-brilliant-metaphor-refantazio-is-everything-i-adore-about-japanese-rpgs\/","title":{"rendered":"Bold, bizarre, brilliant \u2013 Metaphor: Refantazio is everything I adore about Japanese RPGs"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this week\u2019s newsletter: JRPGs can be an acquired taste \u2013 but fortunately it\u2019s one I can\u2019t get enough of. Plus, a bumper crop of games for horror fans<\/p>\n

\u2022 Don\u2019t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

What I have always admired about Japanese role-playing games is their unashamed grandiosity. The likes of Final Fantasy, Persona and Shin Megami Tensei don\u2019t restrict themselves to the familiar trappings of good v evil, wizards-and-goblins, swords-and-magic; they absorb all of those things, and plenty else besides, from science fiction and mythology and comic books and psychology and classical art and whatever else interests their creators, and construct these absurdly ambitious worlds and narratives out of them. The themes are never small, the playtimes never short. Think of them as the operas of the video game world: a theatrical synthesis of different virtual arts, from storytelling and stagecraft to music and movement. And as something of an acquired taste.<\/p>\n

Metaphor ReFantazio \u2013 out this week \u2013 is the most extravagant example of this genre that I\u2019ve played in many years. It is lavishly over-the-top. In the first few hours, you are introduced to a world segregated by a controlling monarchy, military and religion into strict racial hierachies, where people with cat ears and tails are subservient to those with horns, or longer elven ears. (Your perfectly manageable task? Dismantle all of this and bring forth a new age of equality.) Characters pull out their own metal hearts, engrave them and transform into robot-styled manifestations of their inner power. You encounter your enemies: monstrous, powerful chimeric grotesqueries, tangles of legs and tongues and spikes and teeth. They are called \u201chumans\u201d, and they are more powerful and crueller than any of the game\u2019s races. Subtlety is never on the table.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nIn this week\u2019s newsletter: JRPGs can be an acquired taste \u2013 but fortunately it\u2019s one I can\u2019t get enough of. Plus, a bumper crop of games for horror fans
\n\u2022 Don\u2019t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here
\nWhat I have always admired about Japanese role-playing games is their unashamed grandiosity. The likes of Final Fantasy, Persona and Shin Megami Tensei don\u2019t restrict themselves to the familiar trappings of good v evil, wizards-and-goblins, swords-and-magic; they absorb all of those things, and plenty else besides, from science fiction and mythology and comic books and psychology and classical art and whatever else interests their creators, and construct these absurdly ambitious worlds and narratives out of them. The themes are never small, the playtimes never short. Think of them as the operas of the video game world: a theatrical synthesis of different virtual arts, from storytelling and stagecraft to music and movement. And as something of an acquired taste.
\nMetaphor ReFantazio \u2013 out this week \u2013 is the most extravagant example of this genre that I\u2019ve played in many years. It is lavishly over-the-top. In the first few hours, you are introduced to a world segregated by a controlling monarchy, military and religion into strict racial hierachies, where people with cat ears and tails are subservient to those with horns, or longer elven ears. (Your perfectly manageable task? Dismantle all of this and bring forth a new age of equality.) Characters pull out their own metal hearts, engrave them and transform into robot-styled manifestations of their inner power. You encounter your enemies: monstrous, powerful chimeric grotesqueries, tangles of legs and tongues and spikes and teeth. They are called \u201chumans\u201d, and they are more powerful and crueller than any of the game\u2019s races. Subtlety is never on the table. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this week\u2019s newsletter: JRPGs can be an acquired taste \u2013 but fortunately it\u2019s one I can\u2019t get enough of. Plus, a bumper crop of games for horror fans \u2022 Don\u2019t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here What I have always admired about Japanese role-playing games is their unashamed grandiosity. The …<\/p>\n

Bold, bizarre, brilliant \u2013 Metaphor: Refantazio is everything I adore about Japanese RPGs<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16159"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}