As with any good story-driven RPG, Metaphor ReFantazio has multiple difficulties that suit players of all experience levels. If you love brutal turn-based combat with unforgiving bosses, you need to unlock the Regicide difficulty.
Unlocking Regicide in Metaphor ReFantazio isn’t for the faint of heart, as it requires a good amount of experience with the game. Here’s how to unlock Regicide, along with an explanation of the difference between every difficulty mode.
Metaphor ReFantazio Regicide difficulty explained
When you start Metaphor ReFantazio for the first time, you can pick from four different difficulty modes—Storyteller, Easy, Normal, and Hard. Regicide will be visible on the starting menu, but it won’t be available just yet.
Easy, Normal, and Hard are self-explanatory (if you’re a fan of turn-based combat but haven’t played anything Persona-adjacent, go with Normal), and Storyteller is the easiest mode that focuses on narrative and removes any real danger from combat encounters.
To unlock Regicide, finish the game with the true ending, avoiding the other possible bad endings and picking the right dialogue options when navigating the final sections of the story.
Once you finish the game with this ending, save your progress, head to the main menu, and start a new game. Regicide will be available as an option for you to choose in this new save file. Be prepared to restart fights over and over, as this difficulty setting has incredibly tricky combat encounters.
While it is possible to change your difficulty setting at any point during an Easy, Normal, or Hard run in this game, picking Regicide (or Storyteller) is a permanent option. If you pick Regicide when starting a new mode, you’re permanently stuck with that difficulty level.
If you complete Metaphor ReFantazio on Normal and get the true ending, it’s worth taking a look at Hard mode before jumping straight into Regicide to see whether you enjoy the trickier combat style.
You can find the bad endings at the Ancient Eldan Sanctum, the Skybound Avatar dungeon, and the conversation with More before the final boss battle. Avoiding these three bad endings will ensure that your save file is on the correct path to the good ending of Metaphor ReFantazio.
We won’t spoil the plot here, but pick the dialogue options that feel hopeful and optimistic despite the story to avoid bad endings and to keep the fantasy alive.
Make sure you don’t skip any dialogue in these three locations to avoid rushing and picking the bad options—they’re pivotal moments and unmissable for the quality of writing, too.