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Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne Description:

Pending

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1276 in Video Games
• Brand: Atlus Software
• Released on: 2004-09-13
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: PlayStation2
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .75″ h x 5.25″ w x 7.50″ l, .25 pounds

Features

• Persuade more than 100 different demons to join your party
• Some demons evolve into new forms or fuse to form more powerful demons
• Customize your character with Magatama, living parasites that grant the host demonic powers
• Your choices will lead you to follow one of several ideologies which ultimately will determine the fate of the entire world
• Play more than 50 hours of gameplay

Customer Reviews:

A great character collectio RPG
Nocturne is one of the most interesting (both plot and gameplay-wise) RPGs I have ever played. Having borrowed a successful monster collecting formula from Pokemon, and a plot line out of a horror movie, this game definitely monopolized my attention over some other recent RPGs.

Nocturne introduces the players into a strange post-apocalypse world where the hero becomes a demon after the rest of the world is destroyed. There are no princesses to save here, nor are you some do-gooder so typical of other RPGs. Basically you are trying to survive in a world full of demons, and you get to choose your own destiny. Most of the choices are pretty dark though.

Gameplay-wise Nocturne is a lot like Pokemon, but taken to the next level. The hero starts off alone and must recruit other demons as allies. The hero’s party can either talk/bribe/kidnap demons to join, or to use a system called “fusion” which allows the player to fuse two or three demons together so to create a brand new demon. There are around 180 demons total in this game, seperated into multiple classes and levels. There are also around 100 (very rough guess) different attacks/skills here shared by these demons. When you fuse demons, you can randomly combine different skills of the parent demons. Of course, the gimmick here is that you can only keep up to 8 demons, and for each demon you can keep only 8 different attacks/spells.

Understanding of different attacks and spells make up bulk of the strategy here. Attacks are divided into phyical, fire/ice/lighting/wind elemental, curse/mind, and light/dark magical types. In addition you have stat buffing/debuffing spells. Since most of the enemies you fight against will have certain weaknesses, finding a weakness will not only allow the player to do more damage, but it will also allows the player to attack an extra turn. This mechanism means that even if the player’s demons are leveled up high, the player can still easily lose to low level demons if the demon lineups are wrong. Having said this, it’s very difficult to beat this game without dying many times, since you wouldn’t know what to expect from most demons/bosses the first time.

Graphic-wise this game is Cell-shaded (reminds me of the game Breath of Fire V dragon quarters), and very stylish in terms of character designs. The overhead world is a bit blend though. Unlikely Final Fantasy you wont see 2 mintue summons or outlandish spells when you fight enemies and the attacks are mostly unspectular. Nothing too good or bad in this department.

The music for this game is very good if you can stand heavy metal/industrial. I actually like most of the pieces alot. The sound is fairly crisp. When you destroy some enemies they will moan, while others just simply disappear. Nothing too impressive here either.

My biggest complaint about this game is the naming convention used in this game. The monsters’ names are mostly confusing and there are no numbers IDs assigned to each monster. This makes fusing a bit confusing/difficult for beginners. It’s not too bad though if you get used to it.

Last but not the least, this game is definitely not for kids. The demons in this game do not only swear and use the F-word on a regular basis, this game also has many occult references which will certainly offend most religious fanatics. The Demons include Christian Biblical figures, far east deities, and various mythological creatures. This game’s story line features alot of philosophical mumbo jumbo which will be difficult to understand to some, and possibly to be considered satanic to those who do understand.

This game will take a while to finish. Probably 50-60 hours the first time through, and alot more if you are planning to collect all of the demons in the game. Overall I recommend this to any RPG fan who are not too religious or easily offended.

Not Your Run of the Mill RPG
This turned out to be an interesting game in a genre that can quickly become a slaughterfest. You and two friends visit hteir teacher in the hospital, and, just as you all arrive, the world (or at least Tokyo) comes to an end. In a peculiar version of the rapture, everyone dies and finds themselves in limbo. Now the various forces at play, demon, ex-human, angel, etc,, start a struggle for the power to create a new world. And right in the middle of all this is you, converted to a semi-demon, and a pawn in what could very easily be the last conflict.

You wander about a post-apocalyptic Tokyo making pacts with demons, enticing those you meet to help you, and tracking down your friends. Needless to say you do a huge amount of fighting as well. The battle system is complex because as the game progresses you gain the power to create demons of your own out of those you meet and miscellaneous accessories you can buy. Then you can develop those you like with their own special talents and spells. And you, you lucky person, get to add skills and powers by eating magatama, which bear an uncomfortable resemblance to bugs. Since the demons you meet also have a range of powers, fighting never quite becomes routine.

This is a very large game with a long story line. As you play, you will find that your friends are marching to their own drummers, and that they to are trying to win the power to create a new world. You can make major decisions about how you want to ally yourself that will effect the entore progress of the game. The bosses you fight are an imaginative selection of gods and legendary figures, many Japanese, but many others are from quite close to home. This game has a whole cosmology behind its story line.

Despite being no more violent than most RPGs and considerably less sex oriented than many, Nocturne is a very dark story. It’s whether the good guys win or not, but that there really aren’t any good guys. And you start out on the wrong side of the divine ledger, and pretty much stay there. The real question is how much you want to be in command of your own fate, and this is the first game I know of that addresses that as a story consideration.

Another good feature of the game is the large number of puzzles and mazes that make dungeon progress much less boring than a pure hack and slash approach. Most of the design inventiveness and eye candy awards goes into the huge number of monsters and bosses. Scenery is adequate, but not breathtaking. Animation is smooth and player control is quite natural. And just when you think you’ve seen everything up comes Dante from Devil May Cry. Wheee!

Casual gamers need not apply
The last two years has seen some unorthodox RPGs. With Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and now the two Digital Devil Sagas, the Final Fantasys and other Square-Enix games have some creative competition.

After reading all the reviews and looking into this game, I was really excited to try it. I am about 20 hours (my characters are around lvl 44) into the game and for all intents and purposes I think I’ve only scratched the surface. I wanted to give my current review of the game up to this moment to let people uncertain if they want to purchase it what the game is about.

It has aptly been called a dark pokemon game. This is true in that you must negotiate with demons and find ways to recruit them to your side. However, a downfall to this sytem is that it boils down to you giving up hard won items like healing items, items to ressurect your people, 100s of Macca (the currency). And normally it goes, “that is not enough, give me 1 life stone…I’m still not convinced give me 500 Macca…okay you’re starting to piss me off, give me 1 revival bead…no, I’m sorry but I don’t want to join you.” So you just wasted 500 Macca, 1 life stone and 1 revival bead on someone who just vanishes. If at any time you say no, the negotiations stop. Now, other demons you get can learn skills to help in the negotiation process. But, sometimes it’s hard to justify an ability like Nag that is supposed to help get uncertain demons when you can only have 6 skills. If it comes down to learning that next heal spell or Nag, I’m going to have to go with the healing spell over Nag. So it can be frustrating to get some demons to your side. Other times it’s s snap.

Then, you are able to fuse these demons together to create more powerful demons that share some of the qualities and skills of the previous two you had. More depth is added by the change of the moon cycle and the ability to sacrifice a third demon to make your demons even more powerful. It’s a cool concept that works really well for the most part. IF you know what you’re doing.

Which leads me to my biggest problem with the game. If you don’t carefully plan out your demons and your demon fusing even early in the game, you will have a very hard time as the game progresses. You see, another concept that figures heavy into the battle system is the weakness/strength based on skills. Some enemies are weak to your skills, some nullify certain skills, some drain hp from skills, some reflect these abilities, etc etc. If you score a hit the enemy is weak against, you gain another turn to act in your round. If your attack is nullified, you lose turns. The same happens to you. So, if you end up fusing demons together and have to fight a boss that your new demon is weak to, problems can occur. Especially if that demon is your healer and is killed in round two…

On top of that, when you fuse demons you don’t get all of the skills the previous demons had. You get a random assortment based on luck and what levels your demons are. The higher the level the more skills transfer. The result is that you end up getting two demons chosen for fusing, don’t like the abilities, so leave the fusing process and go back in until you get a mix of skills you want. Also, each demon can only hold a certain amount of skills and when they learn new skills and the demon is maxed, you have to get rid of one of their skills. And that skill is gone forever. Chances are, you’ll need that skill that you just lost at a future time. What seems unimportant now, can end up saving your life later. And it can be frustrating, trying to create your characters as the best of what they can do and then have normal enemies or boss battles trounce you in two rounds.

I have been playing RPGs since the very first Final Fantasy graced our shores. I have never found an RPG as hard as this one. In fact, with the exception being a COUPLE boss battles that I can count on one hand, I almost never die in an RPG. This game gives you two settings to choose from at the beginning, normal and hard. I chose normal. Traveling in the over world map, in areas where a character of my level is supposed to be can become death traps if you happen to run into an enemy that has attacks your party is weak against. Or, heaven forbid, your main character is weak against. Ran into a group of characters who have a death attack. I had spent about an hour grinding in the field (you’ll also be doing that a lot by the way) only to have someone cast Mudo, a death type spell, on my main character. He’s not weak to the attack but the attack went through, character died, there went 1 hour of my leveling. You can only save in terminals, not on the world map and in this instance I was pretty far from a terminal and didn’t want to spend the extra travel time just to get back and save. Be warned, save often!

Also, in reference to the weakness/strength problem, you are given the skill Analyze. It will give you the enemies hp/mp and their strengths and weaknesses. So this is good, right? Well it doesn’t work on bosses which can become a trial and error as you probably won’t have the right combination of people the first time you fight the boss. Chances are, you will wipe. The guide book is more helpful in this area and can usually help you prepare better (see my book comment below).

The game can be classified as a dungeon crawl. Not in the typical sense, but in the sense that no matter where you go chances are there will be enemies to fight. Finding areas of safety where you won’t run into random encounters are few and far between. In my 20 hours of playtime I have run into less than 5 I believe. Most “towns” (I use that term loosely) where you can save/heal/buy/sell/fuse/etc have enemy encounters. On top of that, the encounter rates are higher than most RPGs. Sometimes you can run through a room with little or no encounters. Other times, you can run into battle after battle. There is a glowing compas on your UI that is supposed to alert you by changing colors as it gets closer to an encounter but that’s not always truthful. It has gone from yellow (the first step) to red (the last) in one step and a battle starts.

So far, the story is pretty linear and honestly not too exciting. As far as I know, it’s mainly a quest to find this guy and stop his plans of unleashing a very bad weapon. Yes, the story is dark, deals with the end of the world and also has angels and demons and familiar religious mantra in it but at this point in time it’s not too terribly exciting. I’m hoping that something will happen that will change the focus of the story.

I cannot recommend this game to RPG newbies. You will be frustrated and might not ever play an RPG again. This is not a starter’s RPG; it’s made for the hard core group of people as you have to put a lot of time and effort into it. I would also recommend picking up the strategy guide. I don’t normally do or recommend that, but at 400 pages it is almost essential in creating the best demon combinations and working your way through some really tough bosses.

If you are new to the Shin Megami Tensei series, personally I would recommend the newer Digital Devil Saga (and its forthcoming sequel). Almost all of my complaints above are addressed and fixed in that game; it also adds sorely needed voice actors and at this juncture in time has a better plot.

I know it seems as if there are a lot of “complaints” in my review which might seem incongruous with my score of 4. But I’m not exactly complaining; I just want to make sure that those who are on the fence with this game know all of the good and bad inside. I think it has the ability to really frustrate some players and I would hate to have new RPGers come to this game and decide the genre is not for them. I am enjoying the game for the most part, though I think I might enjoy Digital Devil Saga I and II better. Truth be told, the dugeon I’m currently in (the Obelisk for those who know) is kicking my ass which made me turn to Digital Devil Saga. For Nocturne, the combat system is deep and rewarding for those who play right, the dungeons are (mostly) long but fun and I have a feeling the plot is going to rachet up another level soon. But casual gamers need not apply.

**By the way, don’t you dare spend the $60-80 on this game that the people are selling theirs through this site! That’s outrageous that people are already selling it at that price. Check out Ebgames or Gamestop, etc. I got mine a few weeks ago for $44.

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