Okay. To make a point first I'll mention why people liked Persona 4 and Persona 5.
Persona 4 has a thing for interesting you with small town vibes and murder mystery. When I like Twin Peaks and I have a specific interest for murder mystery the game from the start hooked me up. But I even say that the murder mystery felt flat and lost my insterest too soon. However perhaps why Persona 4 is a good game is in the way how characters interract with each other and honestly these character dynamic make you feel happy because lots of fun stuff happens. Perhaps this is why I like certain RPGs despite I dislike them as a video game. In the end Persona 4 stopped being a game for me, I just wanted to keep having fun with what funny and heart-warming situations going on with Persona 4. I felt the similar thing when I played Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. When characters are interesting, realistic, feels "really alive" and when they are "larger than life" it always makes you hooked up to RPGs despite you may dislike rest of the game and gameplay is not fun at all. Persona 4 gameplay is boring and I wish there was a way to skip the dungeons.
However Persona 5 is a very different game. All characters feels empty and what they do doesn't feel natural as how Persona 4 is, it's more like someone tried to copy Persona 4 but had no idea why Persona 4 was liked. Everything in the game feels fake regarding what characters does, how they behave. For example in Persona 4 the natural friendship that happened makes sense, but in Persona 5 it doesn't make sense that characters act so close to each other. They are not well written at all. But why Persona 5 is liked? As an art form it's peak in video gaming as visual style, soundtrack and better way of using Carl Jung's ideas and turn them into an art form so the story and situations are deep and different in good way. Other than these, if you have no thing for psychology and have no care of Kaitou Kid-like video game only reason you would be interested in the game is how cool it's and school kid simulator aspects.
As for Metaphor: ReFantazio, honestly the game seems like some random kid really loved Persona 5 as in visual style and tried to copy-paste that style but failed miserably. Visual arts-wise it's so bad, everything just hurts your eyes. It's like the game is a kid trying to be a wannabe cooler person. Other than these the game is more like a visual novel way worse than Persona 5. For example Persona 4 had great harmony between visual novel and gameplay aspects. You didn't have to read much. But Persona 5 make you read same texts over and over again as people talk a lot and say lots of obvious reasons. They felt like for whatever happens characters has to talk about it and this is why I skipped conversations in Persona 5 a lot. At least in Persona 4 people talked but it was interesting, funny, heart-warming, cool, informative, et cetera. In Persona 5 people talk to talk. In Metaphor: ReFantazio they clearly wanted to develop a visual novel but they decided to add gameplay aspects at last minute. Gameplay is bad, you get stuck in places just because you cannot jump in the game. The whole game is a huge fan service to Japanese people. Lots of characters talks and talks, and talks and then the talk but they saying nothing. The issue is not empty conversation or they drag it a lot when they can be concise. They just talk like a headless chicken to make you enjoy the act of reading as how some visual novels are. As a game it's a game and generic one at it. It try to be cool as much as Persona 5 but it cannot be. I have lots to say about the game but I'll keep short and will say everything about the game developed badly but if you like its style and how different it looks like you would like it. However this is not a game "as you play it you'll like it more game" as much as Persona 4, instead you will dislike Metaphor: ReFantazio and as you go you will hate your whole existence for lol. The whole game is like trying to like a food that make you wanna puke as you eat it. No flavor or something that comes later to make you enjoy your experience. For example Persona 5 gets "bigger than it was" as you play it but in Metaphor: ReFantazio the quality drops when already the game had no quality to begin with. Even its graphics are so bad due to style choice it hurts your eyes eventually.
