Metria guide for new players

Fortunately for players eager to get to grips with a game to see whether they like it, Metria has a surprisingly light and easy tutorial section. You start with a quick cutscene explaining the game’s basic plot, and from there, you’re plopped into your starting area of the Jeno Grasslands.

The game will teach you the basics of combat, how to use your abilities and gather. From there you’ll slowly link back up with some of your teammates and meet some of the game’s story characters, uncovering what went wrong and deciding how to proceed forward…

Metria offers an interesting wrinkle on the typical JRPG format by offering you a roster of characters to choose from. It’s not too dissimilar from other games on mobile, but if you’re not used to it, it’s definitely unusual. And you won’t be ordering them one-by-one in turn-based combat either as the combat is instead in real-time!

Fortunately, despite Metria being a story-based RPG, you won’t be gated off from playing as characters you haven’t met in the story yet. You could have Dino well before you meet him, for example. However, you’ll have only one main character and two sub-characters to use throughout the game, so choose them wisely, depending on which is the most powerful or which you want to level up. As we’ll explain below, you won’t need to solely focus on a single character if you want them to level, however.

Some of the characters you unlock will be enhanced versions of your current crew, and are well worth switching out if you want the extra muscle. However, some of them will switch up their element entirely despite being ostensibly the same person. [Solid Aqua Shield] Begius for example is different to regular Begius in that his dominant element is water rather than earth, so be careful of that if your party is geared towards balancing elemental damage.

Your starting party will be the combination of Rio, Lucas and Aru – a sword, lance, and bow and arrow user respectively. You’ll meet Lucas during the first part of the game in Jeno Grasslands and find him fighting some Pickeleons, while you’ll encounter Aru when you find her defending Lunaria – the daughter of Begius – from more of these flying birds. If you ever need help picking the right characters, just check out our Metria tier list as they are all ranked accordingly.

During combat, you can freely switch between three characters, all of whom have unique attacks and abilities. As standard, you have a basic attack – which can be combo’d – as well as a dodge and jump. You can also use either a lock-on to focus on a single enemy or swipe along the screen to attack whichever enemy you choose at a time, but this can naturally be a bit finicky.

You’ll also have three skills called Skill 1, Skill 2 and EX skill. These aren’t as complicated as they sound, so don’t worry. Your EX skill is basically your ultimate, while your other two skills offer other effects such as buffs, projectiles or enhanced attacks which you link into through your combos.

Let’s move on to an example of your first encounter…

Metria doesn’t throw you into the deep end necessarily, but it also isn’t going to hold your hand. Let’s go through your first encounter within about the first five minutes of the game and give a basic flow…

You’ll first encounter creatures called Pickeleons – basically big Kiwis – which aren’t really all that dangerous. You’ll notice the game runs you through the attacks that you have in quick succession. Your best bet to do quick damage is to simply hit the enemy with normal attacks to form a combo which, naturally, finishes with a much harder-hitting attack. Try using the lock-on button (which will be pointed out to you) in order to focus on an enemy – tapping it will switch the lock-on to the enemy closest to you.

Pickeleons also have one special attack where they slowly rise into the air before lunging for you. This is a good time to begin practising the use of your dodge ability, as that’ll let you roll out of the way before they hit. Bear in mind that this is a homing attack, so simply running out of the way won’t work.

By combining simple attacks and dodges, you’ll easily be able to defeat these early-game enemies. However, don’t hesitate to use your abilities, especially your ultimate. In the case of Rio, this ability can easily dispatch a number of enemies and will prove extremely useful later on. While it may seem overkill to use them on Pickeleons, it’s far better to get used to it here than get mixed up later on.

Each character you unlock and play as – whether that be through the story or gacha – has unique attacks and damage types. These are based on elemental types, such as air, water, fire etc. The opposing element will eliminate another more easily, while the element that opposes that will resist damage from it.

As you play, you’ll gain EXP and level-up, naturally, but you should be aware the lion’s share of EXP will go to the character you defeat enemies as. Your party will also receive some of the rewards of course, so they’re not going to be too under-levelled, but a possible workaround is to do the majority of damage as one character and then switch to the character you want to level faster for the killing blow.

If you want to get stronger, the easiest way is, of course, to just level up and fight more enemies. You can level up either naturally, by accruing EXP through quests, fights and whatnots, or use skillbooks. If you go into the edit character menu, it will give you the option to use special books to raise your level, with higher-rarity books raising your EXP further. Naturally, these are acquired via gacha.

You’ll start getting your own skill books and accruing EXP from the start of the game, but you’ll want to check in daily to get your log-ins. Since the current game server runs on Japanese time, that does mean you can actually claim your rewards early, as midnight in Japan is early afternoon in the UK, for example. But that does mean you should be quick to get your rewards in the morning!

Beyond that, you can also equip new gear that enhances your stats or…you can equip tarot cards.

Despite the name, tarot doesn’t actually have anything to do with the fortune-telling cards (remember what we said about JRPG tropes?), but are instead equippable upgrades. Each card has a different effect – for example, it could boost your HP and your water element damage, as well as granting extra attack.

However, each card also has a tarot effect – these are specialised effects that sometimes only apply to specific characters or characters attached to a specific element. These represent incremental upgrades at first, but tarot cards can also be upgraded over time in order to raise these stats.

Each tarot card has a level cap that is reached, meaning you can’t upgrade it further. Instead, you can “awaken” that card and further increase its level cap, thus allowing you to then upgrade it even further than before.

Naturally, given the prevalence of these mechanics recently, you can also gather ingredients and resources for various purposes. Loot from enemies is gathered automatically, while with certain resource nodes like trees, you’ll need to equip a gathering tool, in this case, an axe. Other things such as herbs you can simply gather off the ground using a button which will pop up when you approach.

You’ll first be able to do this when you get to Begius’ house and are given a quest to gather Maple Wood from the surrounding trees. You’ll get given an axe to do this, which is a slightly better version of the one you find lying around. All you need to do is leave the Begius House area and approach one of the trees, and you’ll see a button to ‘gather’, which lets you use the axe to attack – be sure you’ve followed the tooltips to go into the menu and equip your axe. You can use the worse axe you’ve found around Begius’ house in order to preserve the slightly better tool for later.

While you can wait for these to be introduced organically, there’s nothing stopping you from getting a head start by nabbing some tools that are lying around the starting area, like Begius’ House! So get chopping, and then get an extra tool as a compliment when mechanics like fishing and tree-felling are introduced.

Metria is a game which shows strong promise and has a decent enough story and intriguing art style to be well worth your time. Click with it or bounce off – it doesn’t matter. But hopefully, our Metria guide lets you puzzle out the basics when you jump in and give it a go! To learn more about the game, here are all of the currencies in Metria explained to the last detail.