Our best RPG of 2024 is half off in the Lunar New Year sale, as are the adventures of Charlie Tunoku and countless other Sega series

If videogames are about anything, it's solving deep-rooted and overdetermined social problems by hitting them really hard and also sometimes magic. And few games have ever videogamed harder in that regard than Metaphor: ReFantazio, Atlus' polychromatic RPG from 2024 that puts you in the shoes of a young man on a quest to defeat racism forever via turn-based combat.

It's really quite good. 95% good, even, if you check our Metaphor: ReFantazio review, and I've subjected you to my meandering spiel about it because it's currently 50% off on Steam as part of Sega's Year of the Horse sale. That brings it down to $35 (£30), though that is without its profoundly inessential DLC that lets you dress up its characters in Persona-game school uniforms.

Is it worth it? I'd say so. It was, after all, PC Gamer's best RPG of 2024, and it's an engrossing and lavish thing. It was headed up by Katsura Hashino, a name you likely recognise as the director of Personas 3 through 5, and the whole thing really feels like Atlus just gave him and artist Shigenori Soejima a pile of money and let them do whatever the heck they wanted. If you've ever enjoyed a Persona game, odds are you'll have a good time with Metaphor.

If you haven't ever enjoyed a Persona game, because you've not played them, well what do you know? Persona stuff is on sale too. That Persona 3 remake is currently 60% off for $24 (£22), Persona 5 Royal is 70% off for $18 (£15), and offshoots like Persona 5 Tactica and Strikers are also discounted. Anyway, don't buy any of those.

Well, okay, you can buy those, but prioritise Persona 4 Golden, if you're only going to pick up a single Persona thing. Firstly, it's cheap as chips: a mere $10 (£9). Second, it's a classic.

Don't misunderstand me: parts of P4's design and narrative haven't aged great, but I fell in love with its ridiculous cast back in the Giant Bomb Endurance Run days and those kooks are as fun as ever. 100+ hours of punting tanks with Chie for 10 bucks? A bargain at twice the price.

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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