Metaphor: ReFantazio originally had a much more brutal battle system that took notes from the notoriously challenging 2003 JRPG Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne, but thankfully Atlus had mercy on players and dialed it back.
Speaking at year's Game Developers Conference, Metaphor: ReFantazio lead battle planner Kenichi Goto, who's been instrumental to Atlus combat systems going back to Shin Megami Tensei 3, said the original plan was to carry over that game's system of sometimes randomly deciding who goes first in a battle regardless of who initiated the fight.
In other words, usually when you initiate a fight in a JRPG, you get the privilege of being able to attack first, but Shin Megami Tensei 3 had an element of randomness that meant sometimes that rule didn't apply. Metaphor: ReFantazio originally did something similar, with Goto estimating there was about a 30% chance that the enemy would have that advantage despite not initiating the battle. Conversely, if enemies initiated battles, there was a similar chance that players would be given the upper hand.
However, in playtesting, players found this element "irrational," "punishing," and "just not fun."
"If the player initiated the fight, but the enemy got the first turn, I think we can all agree that players would find that irrational, but they also felt the same the other way around, when they got the first turn, even though they were ambushed in this situation, it's the player that's benefiting, but they still felt something was off."
Although I'm a big fan of more recent Atlus games, and by that I mean starting around 2011's Catherine, I've never played Shin Megami Tensei 3, and frankly, just hearing about this weird tweak to the combat system is infuriating. Thankfully, Atlus thought better of it and ultimately decided to have mercy on Metaphor: ReFantazio players by sticking to logic.
Metaphor: ReFantazio wanted to fix the JRPG grinding problem, but Atlus went too far at one point and accidentally broke the whole combat system.
