Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

The Shin Megami Tensei series has always been rather obscure in the US, and practically non-existent in Europe, even though the games are pretty big in Japan. This has changed recently with the release of SMT: Nocturne (or Lucifer’s Call, as it was named in Europe), which was well received by gamers who were looking for a more challenging RPG, besides other recently released games. Before this game, I personally hadn’t heard from the series, but since I’m quite pleased with Nocturne, I’ve taken an interest in the previous games, like Persona 1 and 2, and feature games, like Digital Devil Saga, or Devil Summoner.

Story
The first thing that needs to be said about the SMT games is that their appeal is based on the gameplay, most notably the battle system, and not on the story. This doesn’t mean that the story is neglected. Au contraire, I found the overall story to be rather interesting, although there are some factors that prevent the gamer from getting attached to the characters. You start the game as a nameless teenager, who heads out with a couple of friends to visit a sick teacher in the hospital. When they arrive there, the place is abandoned, and there’s no sign of their teacher. The main character goes out to see what’s going on, and he encounters a mysterious man, Hikawa, blabbering about the rebirth of the world. When he’s about to send a demon after you, your teacher steps in to rescue you. She takes you outside of the hospital, to witness the an dark wave sweeping over the city, that she calls the Conception.

Still in the dark about everything, you soon realize that you are actually witnessing the destruction of the world. When everything’s over, you encounter a strange little boy, who gives you a Magatama, a weird insect that gives you the power of a demon. After this, you head out in the devastated world, to search for your friends, to find out why the world had to be destroyed, and what will happen next.

I really love this story, since it involves the player. During the course of the game, it becomes clear that the world will soon be reborn, and that you, the main character, will play a rather vital role in this process. You will see that there are several paths, each with their own vision on how to shape the new world, and you will have to make a choice. I personally couldn’t find one that was appealing to me in any of these visions, since they were a bit too one-sided for me, they all present complete opposites (full acceptance or rejection), but the game provides you with another option, a secret ending added in the US version of the game, which has some of the most challenging requirements in order to achieve it. Even though the game has several endings, they were a bit of a letdown for me, but I guess that’s what you get with a SMT game.

There are, however, a few problems with the story. One of the most important factors to me was the absence of voice acting. In recent PS2 games, the voice acting always helped me to grow attached to the characters, and to get more involved in the story. Unfortunately, Nocturne has none of this, and combined with the next problem, this can make the story unappealing for certain gamers. The additional problem is that major events are handled rather casually. Something as big as the destruction of the world is passed off in five minutes. Other major catalysts that may take hours in other RPGs to unfold are over in a matter of minutes in Nocturne, which can be a relief, in some ways. But it can also make the player feel apathetic towards the whole story.

Characters
Main character development can be summed up in one word: non-existent. The hero does not talk, and gets only a few decisions to make during the entire game. The result is that near the end, you have no idea what’s going on inside the main character's head. In other games with a mute main character, he can get some development by the supporting cast, but there isn’t any in this game. The entire game, you battle with your hero, and demons that he recruits (more on this further on). The visions that can shape the new world are presented by several characters. These get some development, as you find out why they actually believe in that option for the restoration of the world (at least Hikawa’s case). Some of these characters are fairly interesting, although there’s one emo-kid whose reasoning behind his choice really irritated me during the game.

Looks
Graphically speaking, Nocturne is not revolutionary, but I loved the art style. Environments can look rather bland, and since you’ll spend most of your time running through corridors, this can be a bit boring at moments. the real eye candy comes from the character and monster designs. Nocturne has a rather distinctive style. Characters get a nice, clean design, and don’t look like the usual anime clichés typical of Japanese games. Although the monster designs might not be as original as the ones in a game like Shadow Hearts, for example, they do all have a distinctive demonic look, and there are several, like the Succubus, and Shiva, who just look awesome. Animation effects are nice, but nothing astonishing. Still, they are better than some seen in other recent games.

Sound
The music during the battles in fantastic, but the background music is nothing to write home about, unfortunately. Cutscenes are also accompanied by some music, and although some tunes are memorable, there are others that are lacking. As I said before, the battle music is great, which is always one of my fears in an RPG, since you will be spending most of your time in battle. There’s enough variety in the themes overall, and the boss battle music can certainly give already cool fights an extra edge.

Gameplay
As I’ve said in my introduction somewhere, the most important part of a Shin Megami Tensei game is the gameplay, which is why this will most likely be the biggest part of my review. First up, the battle system. Nocturne uses a press turn system, combined with a turn based system (first your party attacks, than the enemy and so on). Your party starts off with four press turns, each action consumes a turn. It sounds simple, but it’s more complicated than that. When you hit an enemy’s weakness, you only consume half a turn, allowing you to take an extra action. When you hit an enemy's strong point (he voids, repels or even worse, absorbs it), you lose two turns instead of one. This makes it necessary to find out what a foe’s weaknesses are as fast as possible, since the enemy will surely take the chance to obliterate your party. This brings me to one of the strongest points of the game: the challenge. It has been a long time since I played a game that could be so hard at times. Regular battles will have you constantly on your guard, since enemies will exploit your weaknesses, use special skills that double their press turns, and unleash powerful attacks that you don’t even have access to upon you. This gets even worse in boss battles, as these will take all the skill that a normal battle requires, but now the enemy is ten times stronger, has fewer weaknesses, and automatically gets more press turns than normal.

There are only a few minor flaws with the battle system, and although I personally wasn’t bothered with them, I think that they should at least be mentioned. First, physical attacks consume HP, and Magic attacks MP. With a basic system like this, it would have been nice if it was expanded a bit, by giving you the chance to damage to enemy’s MP more effectively, like the system in Star Ocean 3. Now you can only die when your HP reaches zero, while MP plays the traditional role. If a system like Star Ocean 3's was implanted, it would make the battles more strategic in my opinion. The second minor flaw is that the game is over when the main character dies. This normally isn’t a problem, since he’ll most likely be the strongest one in your party, but it can be bothersome if an enemy uses instant death attacks, and only the hero’s affected while the rest of the party’s still capable of fighting.

Aside from the battles, the other major aspect of the gameplay is the demon recruiting process. During your various battles, you have the option to talk to your enemies. In return for money or items, they may or may not decide to join your party. In the beginning, this is the only way to get more party members, aside from a pixie who joins you automatically. But there’s more. After a while, you’ll get access to a so-called Cathedral of Shadows, where you fuse your demons to create new, stronger ones, or to enhance their stats in combination with a specific demon. After some advancement in the game, the demons you encounter will be too weak for you to recruit, or too strong, in which case they won’t even listen to your offer, so the fusing process is the best way to get a better party. It gets even a bit more complicated than this, since you also have the option to sacrifice a demon during the fusing process, in which case the new demon will have enhanced stats and some of the skills the sacrificed demon possessed.

Most of the time outside of battles will be spent fusing demons, getting new ones to fuse, leveling so that you can get stronger demons. There are tons of demons to create, the combinations are endless. My entire gameplay clocked in around 60 hours, and I barely had half of the demonic compendium filled. This is mainly for two reasons. The first is that getting skills on your demons takes time, because they only receive one when they gain a level, so in order to create an effective demon with all the necessary skills, you’ll be spending a lot of time levelling them up. Second, you can get demons that you previously captured, but fused already back out of the archive, but for a price. While you’ll have enough money in the beginning, prices can get pretty steep in the second half of the game, and since the amount of money you get from battles is not that much, you’ll not only be battling to level your demons, but also to get the money to create new ones.

Extras
The game has, aside from usual sidequests like a few optional bosses and a minigame, a huge optional dungeon, called the Amala Network, consisting of five levels with powerful enemies, and some of the strongest bosses in the game. I easily spent 10 hours in this dungeon alone. This dungeon not only offers more gameplay, but it also gives background on various aspects of the stories, and it is the major requirement for the hidden ending. I really liked exploring this dungeon, since it was a welcome diversion from the story sometimes, and because it was good training, when I was stuck at a place with stronger enemies.

Conclusion
Overall, I can easily say that Nocturne is one of the most fun games that I have played lately. It was a welcome challenge out of a bunch of easy games that I recently finished, and it has sparked my interest in the rest of the Shin Megami Tensei series. If you’re looking for a challenging RPG, relying heavily on gameplay instead of story, I’m sure that Nocturne will please you.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yeah, I've been wanting to try this for myself, but I haven't picked up yet. I HAD, however, tried Shin Megami Tensei for the SNES a while ago and I really liked the overall style of it, being an RPG placed in the present, rather than the future(sci fi) or the past(fantasy) as most other RPGs are.

I'll probably pick Nocturne up one of these days. After reading more about it I think it deserves a shot.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I used headings for my review as well. After reading yours I think they break up the article nicely for articles of this length. For myself, the headings would make it convenient to compare games reviewed by the same author if the same headings are consistently used. This review was well-written and useful to me: since I tend to favor character development and story over gameplay, I might avoid this title.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I tend to be way too longwinded, and I know that people don't like to be confronted by a huge wall of text, so the headings are the best way to keep it easy to read. Thanks for the feedback!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Edited review:

Spoiler:

The Shin Megami Tensei series has always been rather obscure in the US, and practically non-existent in Europe, even though the games are pretty big in Japan. This has changed recently with the release of SMT: Nocturne (or Lucifer’s Call, as it was named in Europe), which was well received by gamers who were looking for a more challenging RPG, besides other recently released games. Before this game, I personally hadn’t heard from the series, but since I’m quite pleased with Nocturne, I’ve taken an interest in [the] previous games, like Persona 1 and 2, and feature games, like Digital Devil Saga, or Devil Summoner.

Story
The first thing that needs to be said about the SMT games[no comma] is that their appeal is based on the gameplay, most notably the battle system, and not on the story. This doesn’t mean that the story is neglected[.] Au contraire (Italics), I found the story to be rather interesting, although major events are always passed off [fairly] casually, which prevents the gamer [from getting/becoming] really attached to the characters. You start the game as a nameless teenager, who heads out with a couple of friends to visit a sick teacher in the hospital. When they arrive there, the place is abandoned, and there’s no sign of their teacher. The main character goes out to see what’s going on, and he encounters a mysterious man, Hikawa, blabbering about the rebirth of the world. When he’s about to send a demon after you, your teacher steps in to rescue you. She takes you outside of the hospital, to witness the Conception. (You might try to be more visual here. Explain what's going on so that the reader doesn't have to abstract and infer so much from a single word. Then you can lead into explaining what exactly the Conception means.)

Still in the dark about everything, you soon realize that you are actually witnessing the destruction of the world. When everything’s over, you encounter a strange little boy, who gives you a Magatama, a weird insect that gives you the power of a demon. After this, you head out in the devastated world, to search for your friends, to find out why the world had to be destroyed, and what will happen next.

I really love this story, since it involves the player. During the course of the game, it becomes clear that the world will soon be reborn, and that you, the main character, will play a rather vital role in this process. You will see that there are several paths, each with their own vision on how to shape the new world, and you will have to make a choice. I personally couldn’t [find myself] (How about "Find one that was appealing to you" instead?) in any of these visions, since they were a bit too one-sided for me (Can you explain any more without giving anything away?), but the game provides you with another option, a secret ending added in the US version of the game, which has some of the most challenging requirements in order to achieve it. (And you found this one satisfactory?)

There are, however, a few problems with the story[.] One of the most important [factors] to me was the absence of voice acting. In recent PS2 games, the voice acting always helped me to grow attached to the characters, [and] to get more involved in the story. Unfortunately, Nocturne has [none] of this, and combined with the next problem, this can make the story unappealing for certain gamers. The [additional] problem is that major events are handled rather casually. (You mentioned this earlier. You might consider taking it out there if you want it to have more impact here, or to keep it from being redundant.) Something as big as the destruction of the world[] (no comma) is passed off in five minutes[.] The extinction of an entire faction (I never saw a reference to factions before now. Can you explain this concept without giving away too much, or can you simply move this comment to another section like gameplay?) doesn’t get a lot of light shed upon. (See if you can rephrase this. Maybe "doesn't see much attention" or "was largely ignored.") [Other RPGs might see these events unfold over a matter of hours, but Nocturne pays little attention to] (rephrased) this (Try to stay away from too many ambiguous pronouns. What exactly are you talking about again?), which can be a relief, [in some ways]. But it can also make the player feel [apathetic] towards the whole story.

Characters
Main character development can be summed up in one word: non-existent. The hero does not talk, [and] gets only a few decisions to make during the entire game[.] [The result is that] near the end, you have no idea what’s going on inside [the main character's] head. In other games with a mute main character, he can get some development by the supporting cast, but there isn’t any in this game. The entire game, you battle with your hero, and demons that he recruits (more on this further on). [The characters that define the various paths that you can choose do get some development, as you see how they come to find this path, and where they came from (at least in Hikawa’s case). Some of these are fairly interesting, although there’s one emo-kid whose vision really irritated me during the game.] (This is all very vague. "This path"? "some of these"? what "vision"?)

Looks
Graphically speaking, Nocturne is not [revolutionary], but I loved the art style. Environment[s] can look rather bland, and since you’ll spend most of your time running through corridors, this can be a bit boring at moments. Now the real eye candy comes from the character and monster designs. Nocturne has a rather distinctive style[.] [Characters get a nice, clean design, and don’t look like the usual anime clichés typical of Japanese games. Although the monster designs might not be as original as the ones in a game like Shadow Hearts, for example, they do all have a [alien/futuristic/insectile/etc.] look, and there are several, like the Succubus, and Shiva, who just look awesome.] (rephrase) Animation effects are nice, [but] nothing astonishing[. Still, they are] better than some seen in other recent games.

Sound
As for sound, I’ve already mentioned my disappointment about the lack of voice acting, I don’t see a need to express this again. (If you're going to keep the review divided like this, you might even want to consider moving it down here.) The music during the battles in fantastic, but the background music is nothing to write home about, unfortunately. Cutscenes [are also] accompanied by some music, and although some tunes are memorable, there are others that are lacking. As I said before, the battle music is great, which is always one of my fears in an RPG, since you will be spending most of your time in battle. There’s enough variety in the themes [overall,] and especially the boss battle music can certainly give already cool fights an extra edge.

Gameplay
As I’ve said in my introduction somewhere, the most important part of a Shin Megami Tensei game is the gameplay, which is why this will most likely be the biggest part of my review. First up, the battle system. Nocturne uses a press turn system, combined with a turn based system (first your party attacks, than the enemy and so on). Your party starts off with four press turns, each action consumes a turn. It sounds simple, but it’s more complicated than that. When you hit an enemy’s weakness, you only consume half a turn, allowing you to take an extra action. When you hit an [enemy's] strong point (he voids, repels or even worse, absorbs it), you [lose] two turns instead of one. This makes it necessary to find out what a foe’s weaknesses are as fast as possible, since the enemy will surely take the chance to obliterate your party[.] This brings me to one of the strongest points of the game: the challenge. It has been a long time since I played a game that could be so hard at times. Regular battles will have you constantly on your guard, since enemies will exploit your weaknesses, use special skills that double their press turns, and unleash powerful attacks that you don’t even have access to upon you. This gets even worse in boss battles, as these will take all the skill that a normal battle requires, but now the enemy [is] ten times stronger, has fewer weaknesses, and automatically gets more press turns than normal.

There are only a few minor flaws with the battle system, and although I personally wasn’t bothered with them, I think that they [should at least] be mentioned. First, physical attacks consume HP, and Magic attacks MP. With a basic system like this, it would have been nice if it was expanded for a bit, by giving you the chance to damage to enemy’s MP more effectively, like the system in Star Ocean 3. Now you can only die when your HP [reaches] zero, while MP plays the traditional role. If a system like [Star Ocean 3's] was implanted, it would make the battles more [strategic] in my opinion. The second minor flaw is that the game is over when the main character dies. This normally isn’t a problem, since he’ll most likely be the strongest one in your party, but it can be bothersome if an enemy uses instant death attacks, and only the hero’s affected while the rest of the party’s still capable of fighting.

Aside from the battles, the other major aspect of the gameplay is the demon recruiting process. During your various battles, you have the option to talk to your enemies. In return for money or items, they may or may not decide to join your party. In the beginning, this is the only way to get more party members, aside from a pixie who joins you automatically. But there’s more. After a while, you’ll get access to a so-called Cathedral of Shadows, where you fuse your demons to create new, stronger ones, or to enhance their stats in combination with a specific demon. After some advancement in the game, the demons you encounter will be too weak for you to recruit, or too strong, in which case they won’t even listen to your offer, so the fusing process is the best way to get a better party. It gets even a bit more complicated than this, since you also have the option to sacrifice a demon during the fusing process, in which case the new demon will have enhanced stats and some of the skills the sacrificed demon possessed.

Most of the time outside of battles will be spent fusing demons, getting new ones to fuse, leveling so that you can get stronger demons. There are tons of demons to create, the combinations are endless. My entire gameplay [clocked in] around 60 hours, and I barely had half of the demonic compendium filled. This is mainly for two reasons. The first [is that] getting skills on your demons takes time, because they only receive one when they gain a level, so in order to create an effective demon with all the necessary skills, you’ll be spending a lot of time levelling them up. Second, you can get demons that you previously captured, but fused already back out of the archive, but for a price. While you’ll have enough money in the beginning, prices can get pretty steep in the second half of the game, and since the amount of money you get from battles is not that much, you’ll not only be battling to level your demons, but also to get the money to create new ones.

Extras
As if this wasn’t enough already The game has, aside from usual sidequests like a few optional bosses and a minigame, a huge optional dungeon, called the Amala Network, consisting of five levels with powerful enemies, and some of the strongest bosses in the game. I easily spent 10 hours in this dungeon alone. This dungeon not only offers more gameplay, but it also gives background on various aspects of the stories, and it is the major requirement for the hidden ending. I really liked exploring this dungeon, since it was a welcome diversion [from] the story sometimes, and because it was good training, when [I was] stuck at a place with stronger enemies.

Conclusion
Overall, I can easily say that Nocturne is one of the most fun games that I [have] played lately. It was a welcome challenge [out of] a bunch of easy games that I recently finished, and it has sparked my interest in the rest of the Shin Megami Tensei series. If you’re looking for a challenging RPG, relying heavily on gameplay instead of story, I’m sure that Nocturne will please you.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I prefer games with no voice acting. Sure, a character speaking can add a level of attahcment but only if the voice fits and soooo many games are ruined by annoying, American voice actors. It's not so much the accents I don't like as the emphasis on words in sentences. One of the main reasons I gave up on Suikoden Tactics was the way they said "Rune cannon" with the emphasis on cannon, rather than rune. Given the nature of most of the characters in SMT, I imagine that every player would think of the people speaking as having different voices and it's unlikely that any choice of actor would fit the bill.

I agree that the story is a bit of an afterthought in this game but when the gameplay is this much fun, who really gives a fuck? I played through to the true demon ending, getting about 80% of the compandium and it took me a good 150 hours, longer than I've spent on a single game for literally years.

Good review though.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I agree with Shin that voice work would very probably have hurt Nocturne. Not only would it run the risk of being Richter Belmonted, but the lack of voices outside of short clips in battle did wonders to boost the silent, creepy atmosphere of the game. I found myself wondering at times if maybe the communication between characters was verbal at all as opposed to some kind of telepathy, considering that they were technically all dead to begin with.

They'd pretty much have to get Simon Templeman (Legacy of Kain) to voice Hikawa and James Earl Jones as Kagutsuchi for there to be any chance at all of the voices being good.

As for the story, I'm actually glad it was as sparse and almost disjointed as it was. DDS did a good job of telling a story in a cinematic and spectacular fashion, and the end result was nothing short of amazing. However, this worked because you were playing from the perspective of an outside observer looking in. Even though Serph was supposed to be your avatar (no pun intended) in the game, it was understood that there was a separation between the player and the game.

Nocturne, on the other hand, opts to put the player more fully into the character's shoes and simulate really being in the game's strange post-apocalyptic world. By not spoon-feeding the plot to the player, the game can more effectively convey the confusion and awe inherent in being thrust into a strange place in the middle of...a war? A contest? A conspiracy? Maybe a cult ritual? The initial uncertainty of Hitoshura's role amidst the warring factions (demons at Ikebukuro, the Assembly of Nihilo, etc.), the nature of Magatsuhi, and the part played by the Fiends all help drive home the "stranger in a strange land" feel of the game. You have to work to figure out what all is going on because if you were really in Hitoshura's situation, that's really what you'd have to do.

Also, I liked that the warring forces in Nocturne, along with the creepy kid, the old man, their female companions, and even your friends from your pre-demon life looked at the main character as someone to be feared, respected, and hopefully recruited. It was a wonderfully refreshing departure from the pained and contrived "plucky kid who wants to prove himself but serious dad/goofy martial arts instructor/wise old man won't let him" that's become so common in RPGs of late (especially Sega's recent bastardizations of their classic series, SF Neo and PSU I am looking at you). I liked that in Nocturne, DDS, and (albeit to a slightly lesser extent due to the game's more lighthearted and comical nature) Devil Summoner, the main character was respected and treated as capable and competent, and indeed even the world's last, best hope.

I got really sick of hearing, "Father, I can fight! I'm ready! Let me go to war to help our people!" "No, you're too young even though you already fought off 20 invasions, and you can't go until you can beat me in the last of 10 pointless battles that were all scripted so even a GameShark using player can't win."

Much better to hear "We have no hope in hell of recreating the world in our image considering the pathetic, sorry-ass rate we're gathering souls right now. What do we do?"
"Hmmmmm...call the demi-fiend."

FELIPE NO

Brilliant game, and a strong review. Kudos, sir.

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I personally think the soundtrack is quite good, but I agree with you on mostly everything else. Nice review.

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Thanks for the feedback!

Shin, I just prefer to have voice acting, even though it's more often a miss than a hit, I think it would make the story seem more spectacular. Now you only have the music to support cutscenes, and although I have no problems with that, I guess that other recent games have just turned me into a spoiled brat who wanted to hear the characters.

Maybe I expressed myself wrong in the review, but I LIKED the fact that the story wasn't the main focus. It just took me some time getting used to the fact that they game was revolving around the you, the player, since most recent games have you looking into a story that you aren't really a part of. But once I got passed that I enjoyed it immensely.

Also, since it is a review, I choose to look at the various aspects seperately at first, and at the whole thing in the end, since people buy games for different reasons, some care for the story, while others look into the gameplay and customization.

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