If you’re a fan of Persona 5, which has a great life lesson about leaning on your friends, you’ll love Metaphor Refantazio.

At first when I started playing the game, I was wondering why they didn’t just spend the time to make Persona 6 and instead made this huge spin off game instead, but boy am I glad they did. Metaphor Refantazio conceptually is a lot like the Persona series, but in a fantasy setting. Humans in this game are actually the enemy, but they’re portrayed as grotesque looking monsters based on human body parts, like an ear, or a baby’s head.

Honestly I loved the way the monsters looked, and I think it’s hilarious that they’re humans (that’s the jaded part of me laughing).

The game circles around the theme of anxiety. One of it’s status ailments is even called anxiety, and it’s pretty annoying. You can’t choose what moves you use and attacks against you essentially are strengthened.

The game starts with the king dying and the kingdom becoming a free for all popularity contest to see who should be the next in line, regardless of bloodline. So basically high school on crack. Of course everyone is thrown into a panic, especially when the two most popular candidates are… slightly evil. But what’s new? That’s politicians and the government for you. (Thanks Gumshoos knockoff!) You unsurprisingly play a protagonist that’s also in the running for the throne, but for the right reasons—to create an peaceful, equal world devoid of racism! Big heroic.

In Metaphor Refantazio, magla, which is this game’s version of magic, is born from anxiety. But if left unchecked, it leads to bad outcomes. Too much magla everywhere makes everyone’s mind go crazy and unable to think straight.

Basically unmanaged anxiety turned people into literal monsters. Yeah sounds about right in real life too.

This game is all about you, the underdog, fighting through the anxiety riddled reality with a somewhat unrealistic vision of what the world should be like — e.g. a fantasy. But this dream, this fantasy of yours, is what attracts the rest of your party, what keeps you all going, and what empowers your team to fight against the evils of humanity and free them from anxiety (literally).

I’m not here to talk about how we should all have grandiose unrealistic dreams to combat the harsh truths of reality. That would be irresponsible of me.

Instead, I’d like to take it from a different aspect… how stepping AWAY from reality into a fantasy world can help us manage our anxieties.

The Life Lesson

I tend to lean away from movies or shows with very realistic endings or plots:

• romance where the main couple don’t stay together (if i wanted rejection i would just go to a bar)
• unsolved mysteries (life already leaves me hanging!!!)
• crime/violence that could probably happen in life, like home invasions (don’t take away my main safe space plis)

The main reason is that most of the time life sucks as is. The planet’s dying, my back aches from the smallest things, people at work drain all my energy, social media is toxic and spread with misinformation, and the list just goes on and on.

If it’s not gonna be a happy ending, it at least needs to be so dark and twisted that it makes me appreciate reality (like turning on all the lights and bonding in fear with friends after watching a supernatural horror movie :D).

I think that’s why my favorite movie of all time is Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s beautifully animated, has an iconic soundtrack, quirky characters/animals, is magical, romantic, has dark aspects to it, but also super cute and a happy ending.

On the other side, that’s also why I love RPG (role playing game) type video games because I get to immerse myself in a whole new world while I’m playing it. Video games don’t just whisk you away to a new world, they also help you feel relaxed and take your mind off things. That’s why sometimes when I dream, I just really don’t want to wake up, because the dream is so damn good.

I over worry and snowball about things ALL the time. Some I can’t control but I just can’t stop thinking about it. And yes CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) is all about managing this… but no matter how many therapy sessions I’ve been to, sometimes it just doesn’t help.

However… playing a really immersive game helps, where either I’m so invested in the gameplay, or the story, or it takes all of my physical and mental energies just to beat the boss.

It’s just such a shame that VR gives me so much motion sickness. Just wait until Sword Art Online becomes real. GOODBYE WORLD. (Not the ‘I’m stuck in this world and can die forever’ part, more of the ‘let’s live out fully immersive VR life’).

This isn’t running away from your problems. Anxiety is inevitable, but you have to be able to have the strength and right mindset to tackle it. How can you heal the toxins in your body (anxiety) if you’re still ingesting those same toxins?

Just like in Metaphor Refantazio, fantasies can reduce our anxiety, because they can be culminations of our hopes, dreams, ambitions, goals, motivation, and just everything good. Fantasies help us believe we can become who or what we want to be. And I’m not talking about becoming the next king of the world. These fantasies bring joy, even if they’re unrealistic. And that’s okay, because that’s what I want to be: content.