Rhell is a game bursting with love, personality, and creativity every second of it's runtime. Fun puzzles and secrets to discover. I was constantly blown away by the new ideas the game presented to me as I continued to move forward. This game is deceptively long, and has a depth of content that genuinely surprised me. Every time I thought the game was going to come to an end I would stumble into yet another set of areas that I had to puzzle my way through.

Each area you discover typically has a 'gimmick' that you can either solve in a (likely) intended way, or completely snap in half with the 41(+) runes you discover throughout the game. Shortly after you get out of the initial section of the game you are able to run in one of 5 different directions and start puzzling your way through the world to your hearts content.

The underlying mystery is engaging, the characters are all adorable and I love them, and Rhell herself is as charming as can be. Every bit of this game is crafted with love that you can feel throughout.

If you have an interest in imsims, puzzle games, Echoes of Wisdom, Scribblenauts, or Outer Wilds I'm sure this game will scratch some sort of itch for you.

Normally I have some long-winded things to say about games, but I can really only beg people to check this game out. It really deserves so much love and attention. I cannot recommend it enough, and I will continue to gush about it until it makes a Rhellbillion dollars! ! !

Kayfabe is a term in wrestling that describes the agreement between wrestlers and their audiences to believe that the story and actors being presented on stage are real. Even when everyone involved knows that it's an act. This allows people to become engrossed with the story that wrestlers are telling when they take the stage.

Metaphor presents itself in much the same way.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a game that has elements of discrimination, death, hope, fear, the power of friendship, and all of the modern trappings of what we've come to expect in a modern RPG. What Metaphor is about, though, is the power of Fantasy. The power of believing in a story that resonates with you so strongly that you wish for change.

For someone who has become engrossed with stories of fantasy for several decades now it can be very easy to see the media that you consume as just another story to add to the pile of media you've consumed throughout your lifetime. What if you could escape from your current situation? What if you could make fantasy a reality? What would that reality look like?

This is not a question that is often explored in media, and after reading reviews on this game I can tell that not everyone quite understood the core theme of the game, but I wanted to leave a review to say that I believe in the sincerity of Metaphor's story. I want to believe in the fantasy world it's created as much as I want to believe in a a better world for the people outside of it, too.

The gameplay elements are strong. I enjoyed my time with the archetype system for the most part. As someone who as always enjoyed SMT games. It's a mish mash of several ATLUS games crammed into one.

I've really enjoyed my time with this game, and I hope people will give it a chance, and believe in it's fantasy much the same way I did.

Metaphor has shot it's way up to become my favorite JRPG of all time. Maybe it just came out at the right time, and the themes are somewhat laser-targeted at my own desire to believe in fantasy and create worlds to escape to. It will always have a special place in my heart, though.