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Shows a lot of promise, but there are caveats | Alpha Review - Metria

1K View2023-06-14

METRIA

7.5

ActionRPGAdventureOpen WorldEditors' ChoiceMMORPG

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Metria is an action RPG currently in development for mobile devices. It is currently conducting an Alpha test from June 13, 2023, to June 20, 2023, and players are free to test out this title. Since this is an Alpha test, expect it to be in a very early state, far from being playable and enjoyable.

🟩Pros

+The story is interesting

+The world is vibrant and colorful

+Third person combat shows a lot of promise

🟥Cons

-Lots of loading screens

-Stiff combat

-Performances issues

Metria features cel-shaded, anime inspired graphics and a storyline that is actually gripping and worth tuning in for, based on my first impressions. It doesn’t look as visually impressive as other high-end similar games, lacking in many things such as motion blur, fluid effects, and an expansive open-world to explore. The graphics are already decent enough for its current early state, but it’s not without its current visual issues which are to be expected.

While the game's art style is vibrant and colorful, in my experience the overall experience felt dull and flat. Currently, there is no voice acting, although the game seems like it will have it based on how the dialogues are presented in the cutscenes. There is no background music implemented for these character dialogues for now, so that means character cutscenes are completely dead silent. The exploration and combat phases however, already feature a fitting orchestral background sound.

The story immediately intrigued me from the start, plunging our main characters, Rio, Lucas, and the princess, in the middle of an escape from a burning castle. It then quickly cuts to Rio in a faraway remote region, devoid of any memories of what transpired. As soon as these questions are answered, other more intriguing ones arise, making the storyline gripping compared to its contemporaries.

The game plays as a third person hack-and-slash, with seamless character switching consisting of a party of three. Since this was a test phase, I was already able to try out other characters even though they had not appeared yet in the story. It features your traditional character tropes usually seen in these kinds of games, each with their own set of skills and playstyles: swordsman, spearman, mages, archers, etc.

The combat feels a bit stiff, with unresponsive controls and animations that aren't fluid and don't mesh well with each other. However, it has all the flashy and over-the-top moves and skills, which are expected from a hack-and-slash RPG game. This is probably a temporary limitation, but for some reason, in some areas, you can control the camera horizontally only, no looking up or down.

The world is set to feature a huge map that is separated into instances of open areas where monsters of varying levels populate the landscape. This means that every time you switch areas, you are presented with a loading screen. They are pretty quick, but long enough to be annoying after going through a handful of times and realizing you have to continuously go through them — especially when partaking in missions and quests.

You can also undertake mundane tasks taken from survival games like picking up flora, chopping down trees, and even going on fishing, although they are pretty basic as far as functionality goes, and likely there as placeholder stuff to do for now. You can teleport back to your base, which is a nice looking city filled with NPC with shops and services like crafting, and extra content like the Level of Trials: a repeatable dungeon crawling element with daily rewards.

Other elements that are currently under development are gacha mechanics, which means your characters (and their quality) will predominantly come from these gacha pulls; online features, which will probably mean clans or playing with friends; and character leveling and upgrading systems using materials.

As for the technical analysis, it is currently very laggy, having below expected frame rates considering I am running on a Snapdragon 888 device and the game doesn’t look close to visually stunning games like Genshin Impact or Aether Gazer. There are also graphical issues present like a random artifacts appearing on screen, or the sky turning black. The UI is also a bit ugly early 2000s and barebones looking.

Conclusion:

Overall, this game shows a lot of promise with its gripping story coupled with its hack-and-slash gameplay, but I don’t like loading screens and how stiff the combat is currently. It’s hard to judge now with the game’s very early state, but they are transparent enough to showcase this game in an alpha state, so I hope they can build upon the feedback they will get and develop this game into a solid ARPG gacha game in time.

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METRIA

7.5

ActionRPGAdventureOpen WorldEditors' ChoiceMMORPG

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