Metaphor: ReFantazio Optimization & Known Fixes

This guide will give you the best settings for optimization as well as known fixes for Metaphor: ReFantazio

Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is 'Sumi'. I am a guide creator. My goal here is to make this guide as simple to follow and as accurate as possible, it's good to remember that we all make mistakes, even those who push to be perfect.

If this guide helped you it would be heavily appreciated if you liked, favorited or commented on it!

If you're feeling charitable feel free to give me some steam points ~ check below to learn how!

Optimized Quality Settings

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a new game so all of this is subject to change (and will be updated accordingly in time). It seems that users are running into a variety of issues with this game and Atlus is aware of performance issues. For now, let's see how well we can alleviate those issues.

I will try my best to periodically update but I WILL miss things. Please leave a comment if you know of a fix I missed, know a correction to one of my fixes or have some insight to provide on my settings.

Graphic & Display Settings

Rendering Scale - Leave this at 100%. If your PC is beefy try 200%.
Ambient Occlusion - Off (can lead to 40% or more FPS gains)
Texture Quality - High
Frame Rate Cap - Uncapped (or your monitor's display rate)
VSync - Off (On gives more frames for some users)

Reasoning: Ambient Occlusion doesn't really add much but is supposedly the culprit for so much performance loss. As always, if you want you can test with it on, however I have found better results on my system with it off and it seems many share that experience as well.


Here is an example of Ambient Occlusion on (left) and off (right).

Steam Deck Settings

I always try my best to include Steam Deck settings for these guides, because I know a good chunk of the base on Steam are Deck users (I even own one!) so I've gone ahead and found the recommended settings for Steam Deck, and have tested them myself. As always sources are listed at the bottom of the guide.

Graphic & Display Settings [30 FPS]

Rendering Scale - Leave this at 100%
Ambient Occlusion - Off
Texture Quality - High
Frame Rate Cap - 30
VSync - Off

Graphic & Display Settings [60 FPS]

Rendering Scale - Drop to 75%
Ambient Occlusion - Off
Texture Quality - Normal
Frame Rate Cap - 60
VSync - Off

AMD - AFMF2 (Frame Generation)

According to some users, if you absolutely want to squeeze out some FPS gains you can use AFMF2 (Frame Generation).

Note: You need a specific GPU and/OR CPU to use AFMF2 but it absolutely does work and I have seen gains of 100+ FPS in some games, so this is worth a try if you have any of the following tech. I have tested Metaphor with my 6900xt and see a jump from 130 FPS to 220 FPS on average.

Graphics cards:

• AMD Radeon RX 6000
  
• RX 7000
  
• 700M
  
• 800M

Processors:

• AMD Ryzen 6000/7000 with integrated 700M graphics
  
• Ryzen AI 300 series processors

1. Open AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition
2. Select the "Gaming" tab and find Metaphor: ReFantazio
2b. If you can't find it, try refreshing and if that doesn't work, click the three dots in the top right and manually add the .exe from your game folder.
3. Under "Graphics" turn on AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2 - Manual.
4. For Search Mode try Auto or High.

This is not guaranteed to increase your frames and may look wonky depending on your system, but it is absolutely worth a try for those who own the listed tech above as it takes ~2 minutes to test.

Ultrawide Fixer

Ultrawide user here (getting sick of this haha). For some reason games nowadays tend to just.. not have ultrawide support, but fortunately people like Lyall exist and create patches for these games almost immediately.

Please note that this is still very experimental and you will run into some issue, but that's just the price we have to pay to utilize our displays I guess!

This fix includes the following:

• Support for any resolution/aspect ratio.
  
• Fix cropped FOV at <16:9.
  
• Correctly scaled movies.

If you want to remove or edit any of the fixes listed you can simply do so via the MetaphorFix.ini located in your game folder.

1. Download "MetaphorFix_vX.zip" over at this link[github.com].
2. Navigate to your game folder, this is normally located over at:
Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Metaphor ReFantazio
3. Extract the MetaphorFix_vX.zip in this folder.

Temporal Anti-Aliasing

For some reason, Metaphor: ReFantazio lacks Anti-Aliasing. As seen here, Anti-Aliasing can make the game look significantly better pretty much across the board, however it may cost you performance, especially if you are on Steam Deck or a lower end system.

Warning: This can cause a LOT of ghosting on text, but some people may not mind this.

You will require two things prior to downloading this:

• ReShade[reshade.me]
  
• Metaphor FIX[github.com]

While Metaphor FIX is not absolutely required, it is recommended to have it.
1. Click 'Download' and then download ReShade
2. Launch the executable file named ReShade_Setup_[x]
3. Find 'Metaphor: ReFantazio (METAPHOR.exe)' and select it
4. Click 'Next' and then 'Next' again and then 'Next' again and finally 'Finish'
5. Download the 'High End', 'Normal' or 'Low End' preset file here[greatondeck.net].
6. Navigate to your game folder, which is usually:
Steam\steamapps\common\METAPHOR

Note: I highly recommend you make backups of the files that these will replace, just in case you change your mind. Verifying integrity of files should work, but this is just faster.

7. Take the Shaders and Textures folders and put them in the corresponding folder in your game folder.


8. Take the rest of the files and put them in your game folder.

Miscellaneous Fixes

This is the exact same file as the Ultrawide Fix, but I figured it would be appropriate to give Ultrawide users their own section so people don't get confused, this fix includes the following:

• Intro skip.
  
• Disabled ALT+F4/exit handler.
  
• Remove 60fps cap in menus.
  
• Fix 8-way analog movement.
  
• Custom resolution scale.
  
• Adjust resolution of ambient occlusion.
  
• Disable dash blur + speed lines.
  
• Adjust level of detail distance.
  
• Disable black outlines.

If you want to remove or edit any of the fixes listed you can simply do so via the MetaphorFix.ini located in your game folder.

1. Download "MetaphorFix_vX.zip" over at this link[github.com].
2. Navigate to your game folder, this is normally located over at:
Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Metaphor ReFantazio
3. Extract the MetaphorFix_vX.zip in this folder.

Credit Links

Thanks to the following individuals for creating the necessary information for this guide to exist.

u/YouOnly-LiveOnce - AFMF2 Information

Lyall - MetaphorFix[github.com]

Noah Kupetsky - Steam Deck Optimization[steamdeckhq.com]

Closing Remarks

Donations would be greatly appreciated, thanks so much for reading my guide!!

https://ko-fi.com/nullas

If you have any questions regarding ANY of the above fixes or content please feel free to leave a comment below or add me on Steam and DM me. I also recommend checking out my other guides here to see if there are any guides for games you actively play or would like to play!

[MadeLimes]

Hey FBK thanks for sharing. I have heard this happen to others but I forgot to add it to the guide, which I'll do now. Thank you again!

[WHITEROSE4]

something to note- i turned vsync on and my frames went up. i have no idea why this is but i was getting 30 fps in game and strained my eyes alot but its fine with vsync

[Botan]

hey does using the ultra wide fixer disable the steam achievements?

[MadeLimes]

You’re welcome :)

[porto]

spoke too soon, whatever is in those fixes made it perfect!! atlus please just integrate it or something im dying

[porto]

i dont know why, but the animated cutscenes seem to LOVE to jitter, i have been unable to find a working fix for this and at this point i am desperate.

[MadeLimes]

Of course!

[chowe]

thx Sumi

As I have not started the full game yet (demo aside), I just wanted to doublecheck before ;)
I'll have a first look without the fixes stated above and give it a shot the next day

[MadeLimes]

Chowe, that depends entirely upon performance. If the issues listed in the guide are no longer plaguing you (or have never plagued you) then there is no reason to go ahead with the fixes, however I see no reason not to try them if you are still having problems.

[chowe]

Would you still recommend to install the Fixes in this guide (for Steam Deck), even after the official Patches and Client Updates by Valve?