Unlike the Persona series, which was made by the same team as Metaphor: ReFantazio, the player is not given the ability to romance their party members. According to director Katsura Hashino, this is because the player character Will is more focused on his relationship with the people and trying to become king than starting a romantic relationship like the player characters in Persona games, and that they wanted to maintain a respective sense of realism between Metaphor and Persona's different settings: