
Metaphor: ReFantazio is out on Steam and consoles. Unfortunately, the PC port is far from perfect. Despite using low-poly visuals, it can be quite taxing even on midrange hardware. Furthermore, there’s the game doesn’t offer many options to tweak the graphics settings. Luckily, there are fixes available from third-party sources. Here’s our optimization guide for Metaphor ReFantazio.
Windows/System Settings to Optimize
- Enable Resizable BAR.
- Turn on Game Mode.
- Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) and Windowed Optimizations.
- Use the Windows “High Performance” power profile and set your GPU power management mode to the same.
- Disable Memory Integrity. Windows Menu->VBS->Device Security.
- Ensure you use the proper XMP/EXPO memory profile (if available).
- Overclock your GPU if you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark.
- Here’s a guide with more detailed instructions.
Metaphor ReFantazio: System Requirements
Metaphor ReFantazio requires modest hardware for a 1080p experience. You need a Core i7-7600 or a Ryzen 5 2600 paired with a GeForce GTX 970 or a Radeon RX 480 with 4 GB of VRAM. The game requires 8 GB of main memory and 93 GB of storage space. An AVX-capable CPU is required which includes all Ryzen and Intel Core CPUs released in the last 10 years.

Contents & Testing Methodology
- Benchmarks at a glance:
- Resolution scaling.
- Ambient occlusion.
- Anti-Aliasing: FXAA, SMAA, and TSMAA.
- Shadow Resolution & LOD.
- VRAM usage.
- CPU bottlenecks.
- Optimized settings for Metaphor: ReFantazio.
- Hardware setup used:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
- Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420.
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti.
- Motherboard: MSI MPG B650 Edge WiFi.
- Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.
Metaphor ReFantazio: Resolution Scaling
Metaphor: ReFantazio averaged 130.5 FPS on our test system at 4K and 187 FPS at 1080p and 1440p. Reducing the resolution scale to 75% at 4K produced an average of 176 FPS while increasing it to 125% yielded 88 FPS. Further pushing the scale up to 150% got us an average of 64.6 FPS with lows of 36 FPS.

1080p and 1440p produced similar lows of over 90 FPS, while native 4K dropped to 73.5 FPS. Reducing the resolution scale to 75% pushes the lows back over 90 FPS.
Ambient Occlusion Performance Optimization
Metaphor ReFantazio features a single graphics setting apart from “Textures.” Ambient occlusion, presumably SSAO is quite performance intensive, tanking framerates by over 25% even on high-end hardware. Worse still, you can only enable it at full resolution.

Fortunately, there’s a fix available that lets you change it and much more. You can download the MetaphorFix here. This little archive contains a variety of graphics tweaking, including shadows, LOD, ultrawide fixes, etc. You just need to extract the files into your game directory and edit the MetaphorFix.ini file as required:
- Open the file using Notepad or an equivalent app.
- Scroll down to the bottom, and find “[Ambient Occlusion]” under the graphics section.
- By default, the resolution is set to 1 (full resolution AO).
- Reducing it to 0.75 or 0.5 is sufficient, granting a 15-20% performance boost without noticeably deteriorating visual quality.
Anti-Aliasing: FXAA, SMAA, and TSMAA
We implemented anti-aliasing using ReShade. The default SweetFX shader package comes with FXAA and SMAA. We added TSMAA (temporal SMAA), including a variant that uses motion vectors, combining SMAA and temporal blending. The results are quite acceptable.
TSMAA2

You can choose between a single-pass shader that is fast and easy to implement but produces relatively worse results. You can download it from this GitHub repository. It also includes an enhanced version of SMAA and a faster implementation based on the original shader:
- Install ReShade into the Metaphor ReFantazio directory.
- Download the above archive from GitHub and paste the two folders (shaders & textures) into the “reshade-shaders” folder created by the ReShade installation.

- Run the game, load a save, and hit the “Home” button.
- Check TSMAA2, and you’re set.
- You can modify the shader configuration in the lower section of the ReShade window.
- Increasing “corner rounding” and “previous frame interpolation” reduces shimmering at the cost of increased blurring.
- You can combine it with FXAA, and a second SMAA pass by checking the respective shaders for a small performance dip.
- Here’s a comparison of how the game looks with TSMAA2 enabled (uncompressed images here):



TAA with Motion Vectors
The ReShade variant of TAA utilizing motion vectors can be downloaded from Nexusmods. Simply download the mod, and extract the archive into your game directory. You don’t have to download ReShade separately.

By default, the mod implements full-resolution motion vectors that kill performance. Unless you have a high-end GPU, reduce it to half or quarter resolution (under the shader settings). While you’re at it, increase the value under “Preprocessor definitions” to 7. Ensure the following load order is maintained:
- The SMAA shader needs to load first-> followed by the motion vectors-> and TFAA.

Here’s a comparison of how the game looks with and without TFAA (uncompressed images here). Like the previous shader, you can combine it with SMAA and FXAA for slightly improved results:





Shadow Resolution & LOD
The “MetaphorFix.ini” file can be tweaked to improve the shadow resolution and LOD. By default, the game sets the former to 2048 which can look blurry on bigger screens. We found that 4096 looks much better and doesn’t tank performance considerably.



LOD can be increased all the way up to 100, but it doesn’t really have a notable impact on quality or performance. Therefore, it’s best left at the default value.
Textures & VRAM Usage
Metaphor ReFantazio uses a modest amount of VRAM. At 1080p, we recorded a peak VRAM usage of under 2.5 GB, and about the same at 1440p. UHD or 4K increases the graphics memory consumption to 3.7 GB (Normal textures) and 4.2 GB (High textures).

Metaphor ReFantazio: CPU Bottlenecks
Metaphor: ReFantazio is primarily CPU-bound at 1080p and 1440p. We recorded a GPU-Busy deviation of 20-40% at these resolutions with an average FPS of 180-190 FPS.

Metaphor ReFantazio: Optimized Settings
Optimized Settings | High-end | Midrange | Low-end PC |
---|---|---|---|
Resolution | 4K (3840×2160) | 1440p (2560×1440) | 1080p (1920×1080) |
FPS Target | 120 FPS | 90 FPS | 60 FPS |
Ambient Occlusion | On | On | On |
Texture Quality | High | High | High |
Anti-Aliasing (.ini tweak) | TFAA+FXAA | TFAA+FXAA | TSMAA2 |
Ambient Occlusion (.ini tweak) | 1 | 0.75 | 0.5 |
Shadow Res (.ini tweak) | 4096 | 4096 | 2048 |
LOD (.ini tweak) | 10 | 10 | 10 |
CPU | Core i5-14600K/Ryzen 7 7700X | Core i5-12400/Ryzen 5 5600 | Core i5-11400/AMD Ryzen 5 3600 |
GPU | RTX 4070 Ti/RX 7900 XT | RTX 4070/RX 7800 XT | RTX 3060/RX 6600 |
Memory | 8 GB (dual-channel) | 8 GB | 4 GB |
High-end | Midrange | Low-end PC |