Doesn't feel like it's ready for primetime just yet | Review - Metria
✨Overview
Metria, an action RPG that first caught my attention during its testing phases in June and July, has finally made its global debut on November 7. This game showcases a vibrant, anime-inspired world with promises of hack and slash third-person combat.
🟩Pros
+Promising storyline
+Vibrant art style
🟥Cons
-Performance issues
-Broken monster spawns
-Stiff combat
-Uninspired mission design
-Lots of loading screens
-Lots of running around to do anything and repetitive fetch quests
⭐️Score: 3/10
📖Story and Premise
The storyline in Metria, even during the Alpha phase, intrigued me the most. It drew me in with its captivating narrative, starting with a daring escape from a burning castle involving main characters Rio, Lucas, and the princess. The intrigue didn't stop there, as the story quickly took unexpected turns, making it stand out among contemporaries in the action RPG genre.
There is no voice acting for all the dialogues, which made the animation filled cutscenes feel oddly silent. It felt like the foundation was laid for voiceacting with how the scenes are played out but the implementation was cancelled.
Furthermore, the dialogue presentation has its quirks, with unnatural pauses and sometimes odd text bubble placement, sometimes even putting the last word all alone into the next bubble. These issues affect the pacing of dialogues, which could be more polished. Despite these early issues, the storyline held promise.
🎨Graphics and Art Style
Metria's graphics and art style are defined by its cel-shaded, anime-inspired visuals. The game is presented with a colorful and vibrant world. However, it was evident that it lagged behind other high-end titles in terms of graphical fidelity, but its mostly serviceable and can even pass as a beautiful game.
🎮Gameplay
Metria primarily plays as a third-person hack-and-slash action RPG with seamless character switching, with a party of three. The game features traditional character tropes, each with their unique skills and playstyles, such as swordsmen, spearmen, mages, healers, and archers. There are two skills and one ultimate, all of which recharges without the need for mana. Players are to explore a world subdivided into small regions, and take on various quests to progress.
You can also engage in mundane tasks reminiscent of survival games, such as gathering flora, chopping down trees, and even fishing. These activities are used to craft armor for defense, prepare meals that temporarily boost your character's stats, or even build and upgrade facilities like blacksmiths. However, navigating the various activities at the home base can become tedious, as it involves a lot of walking, animations, and frequent loading screens, even for simple tasks like crafting. Implementing a simple menu system for these minor elements should be sufficient.
In addition to the general open-ish world questing and material crafting, players can also participate in extra content like the Level of Trials: a repeatable dungeon crawling element with daily rewards.
⚔️Combat
The combat system in Metria, however, is one of its weakest points. It felt stiff, with unresponsive controls and animations that lacked fluidity and coherence. However, it compensated for these issues with flashy and over-the-top moves and skills, which are typical of hack-and-slash RPGs. The combat system has seen some improvements in the global release but still carries the mark of stiffness.
📜Mission Design
The mission design in Metria is simply lackluster; everything feels uninspired, from the fetch quests to the main quests, which involves a lot of back-and-forth interactions with NPCs. Most of the quests I've encountered revolve around talking to an NPC, then reporting back to another, followed by more dialogue with additional characters, all oddly silent due to the lack of voice-overs. This results in extensive running around across the map, populated by neutral monsters that do not pose a threat. Multiple loading screens further contribute to the tedium of these interactions. It's a rather uninteresting experience.
If you decide to engage the wandering neutral creatures in combat, you'll indeed find some much needed action, but it quickly becomes apparent that the spawn mechanism for many monsters is broken. They respawn almost immediately after being defeated, making it impossible to clear areas of monsters, and make you feel like what you’re doing is totally worthless. This also creates an exploitable situation, as you can endlessly farm monsters in the same area since they continuously respawn.
One of the few enjoyable aspects of the game so far is the challenging boss fights, which require skill and strategy to beat. However, players may feel restricted by power level limitations as early as their first few hours of play, which can create pressure to utilize the gacha mechanics and spend real money to make progress.
⏫Progression and Gacha
The game features a gacha mechanic for character acquisition and Tarots, which enhance characters in which up to four per character can be equipped. This mechanic may feel necessary for progression, which is a common mechanic in gacha-based games. Banners for characters and Tarots are separate, allowing players to focus on specific aspects of their character lineup. There are also familiar live-service features like login bonuses, passes, and in-game currency to purchase in the store.
📊Technical Performance
Technical performance was a concern in both the Alpha and global release. The Alpha version experienced lag and performance issues, even on a device with the Snapdragon 888 chipset and with many of my settings set to low. Considering that the visuals are not on par with best-in-class games like Genshin Impact, this was unexpected. Additionally, there were graphical issues, and the user interface (UI) had an early 2000s aesthetic. In the global release, performance has improved slightly but still lags during large battles, even on high-end devices. Even the gacha draw animation also suffers from lag.
⚖️Conclusion
Metria is a game with a promising storyline, but it ultimately gets bogged down by technical issues, uninspired mission design, stiff combat, and a general lack of polish. While the global release has seen some improvements, Metria still doesn't feel fully ready for prime time. Players seeking a polished and well-rounded gaming experience may need to wait for future updates and improvements to fully enjoy what Metria has to offer.
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