Back in the 90s and 2000s, all Japanese role-playing games feature long turn-based battles, mostly against tough boss characters or elite mobs. These fights are meant to be gatekeepers so that they make sure you know the game’s battle mechanics inside and out, as well as check whether you’ve been diligent in powering up your party.

However, when you die, you have to head back to the last save point, which hopefully is just a few steps away. You also have to readjust your party a bit, and also pray to the random numbers generator (RNG) gods that the next boss fight doesn’t have the enemy critical hitting you to oblivion.

I don’t know why it took the genre this long until 2024, but Atlus added a new feature in its new JRPG Metaphor: ReFantazio that cuts down all the wasted time needed to get to your fights, and in instantaneous fashion. It’s called the Battle Rewind Feature, and it’s a nice quality-of-life addition that should be mandatory in future turn-based JRPGs.

Playback

In a nutshell, the Battle Rewind Feature (indicated by the “Retry: Turn Back The Clock” prompt on the bottom left of the Command Battle screen) lets you restart battles from the beginning. You usually use this if you feel like the current fight is not going in your favour, or if you feel like the boss you’re fighting is getting lucky with its critical hits than you are. No muss, no penalties, no fuss: you press and hold the L3 button until the battle restarts and just play the fight again until you’re satisfied with the outcome.

True, other JRPGs let you restart a big boss fight from the last checkpoint, but this is probably the only major instance in a triple-A game where I can rewind the fight I’m currently in without any additional transitions to different screens and states. Plus, you still keep track of your foes’ weaknesses even if you retry the battle again, so you don’t need to spend time casting spells in trial-and-error fashion again.

This mode is also made better & fair by the fact that (a) the overall battle pacing in Metaphor is really fast and snappy, and (b) it doesn’t completely give you free rein when it comes to switching Archetypes. You still need to prepare ahead of time and switch between Archetypes outside of battle, which is usually at the checkpoint bit before the big fight(s). Ergo, the Battle Rewind tool isn’t meant to eliminate pre-planning, which is a crucial step in JRPGing. It just cuts out the time needed for you to repeat battles with your surefire choices.

As an aside, kudos to Atlus for making sure we respawn just before the boss fight should our choices in battle lead us to multiple deaths despite the many Battle Rewindings we’ve done. These are among the many right decisions Atlus made when creating Metaphor: Refantazio’s gameplay and making it work smooth and very well. I do hope that in the coming years, we see JRPGs like Clair Obscure: Expedition 33, Penny Blood, and Atelier Yumia implement these kinds of additions to cut wasted time on repeated and prolonged battles. We only have so many hours of free time in a month, let alone a week or even day.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is out right now for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC. For more information, check out our review and guides here.