I wish I enjoyed this more than I do... but I just cannot get myself to like this game all that much. The number of random battles is soul-crushing, its artificial difficulty, lack of save points, and bland environments make the game a chore to work through.
I do enjoy the story (as little as there is) and the overbearing, dreadful atmosphere that permeates throughout the game though. It almost feels like a survival horror game in that regard.
Nothing has given me a rage inducing moment yet, but there were a couple moments that were close... I feel I can chalk this up to being an Atlus/Persona/SMT veteran, so I understand the importance of demon fusing and skills (in particular buffs and debuffs). I just like Digital Devil Saga and Devil Survivor more...
At time of writing, I'm in the city retaken by the Manikins at Level 42... so I made some decent progress, but I'm shelving it for now.
I do enjoy the story (as little as there is) and the overbearing, dreadful atmosphere that permeates throughout the game though. It almost feels like a survival horror game in that regard.
Nothing has given me a rage inducing moment yet, but there were a couple moments that were close... I feel I can chalk this up to being an Atlus/Persona/SMT veteran, so I understand the importance of demon fusing and skills (in particular buffs and debuffs). I just like Digital Devil Saga and Devil Survivor more...
At time of writing, I'm in the city retaken by the Manikins at Level 42... so I made some decent progress, but I'm shelving it for now.
After finishing Persona 3 Reload in February I was eager to substitute it for another Atlus RPG. Nocturne seemed like the perfect choice as I had already bought it some months prior and I was excited to play it after hearing so many people rave about it, especially regarding it’s Press Turn system and rewarding difficulty. Unfortunately, the early game wasn’t moving at the pace I would like, and I was most likely feeling burnt out on RPGs, so I decided to put it down for a while.
I picked it back up again in April and managed to work my way through the frankly slow and unimpressive early game. Thankfully it really picks up after about 15 hours when options for demon fusion open up and I could get into the nitty gritty of curating my demon roster. Consequently, encounters also improve, as a more diverse set of skills are available to you, so strategising and optimising your turn count becomes deeper. Additionally, around this point in, the complexity and quality of the dungeons also sees a significant rise as they become far more labyrinthine; with pitfalls, dead ends, teleportation tiles, and puzzles to solve, my favourites being the Obelisk, Amala Temple, and Diet Building. This makes traversal far less monotonous and does well to break up the persistent and oftentimes overwhelming random encounters. Although obviously limited and quite primitive, I actually really enjoyed the dungeon crawling aspect of the game, navigating these homogenous environments is disorientating, obtuse, and unlike anything I’ve played before, so it was a new and refreshing experience for me.
The best aspect of Nocturne is easily it’s Press Turn Battle System. It’s fast and dynamic, encouraging players to exploit half turns so that they can gain every move and advantage at their disposal. This is achieved through careful consideration of the party’s skill set, the enemies’ strengths and weaknesses as well as the order of every action, and sometimes even foresight from the player to mitigate their own party’s weaknesses. Nowhere is the strength of Nocturne’s combat clearer than in its challenging boss battles, with highlights like Beelzebub, Baal Avatar, and Satan, which really require careful planning in regard to how to build your party and the execution of your strategy. No other game quite has you second guessing yourself as frequently as in Nocturne, weighing risk against reward, where whiffing a physical attack or striking an enemy strength can lead to the loss of two turn icons and subsequently even sudden death. This element of apprehension is fundamental to the experience this game offers as save points can be few and far between, so death has consequence, perfectly reflecting the hostility of the desolate wasteland that is the Vortex World. The soundtrack also excellently echoes this, from the eerie and ambient electronica that plays during exploration to the fierce and demonic rock in battles. All in all, Nocturne has great atmosphere thanks to its unique vision of a post-apocalyptic world both audibly and visually.
Although a tad antiquated, Nocturne is a fundamental title that establishes so many of the best elements found in Atlus’s modern RPGs such as Press Turn and streamlined Demon Fusion, however it is harder to appreciate when this hasn’t been my first exposure to these systems and 20 years after its initial release.
I picked it back up again in April and managed to work my way through the frankly slow and unimpressive early game. Thankfully it really picks up after about 15 hours when options for demon fusion open up and I could get into the nitty gritty of curating my demon roster. Consequently, encounters also improve, as a more diverse set of skills are available to you, so strategising and optimising your turn count becomes deeper. Additionally, around this point in, the complexity and quality of the dungeons also sees a significant rise as they become far more labyrinthine; with pitfalls, dead ends, teleportation tiles, and puzzles to solve, my favourites being the Obelisk, Amala Temple, and Diet Building. This makes traversal far less monotonous and does well to break up the persistent and oftentimes overwhelming random encounters. Although obviously limited and quite primitive, I actually really enjoyed the dungeon crawling aspect of the game, navigating these homogenous environments is disorientating, obtuse, and unlike anything I’ve played before, so it was a new and refreshing experience for me.
The best aspect of Nocturne is easily it’s Press Turn Battle System. It’s fast and dynamic, encouraging players to exploit half turns so that they can gain every move and advantage at their disposal. This is achieved through careful consideration of the party’s skill set, the enemies’ strengths and weaknesses as well as the order of every action, and sometimes even foresight from the player to mitigate their own party’s weaknesses. Nowhere is the strength of Nocturne’s combat clearer than in its challenging boss battles, with highlights like Beelzebub, Baal Avatar, and Satan, which really require careful planning in regard to how to build your party and the execution of your strategy. No other game quite has you second guessing yourself as frequently as in Nocturne, weighing risk against reward, where whiffing a physical attack or striking an enemy strength can lead to the loss of two turn icons and subsequently even sudden death. This element of apprehension is fundamental to the experience this game offers as save points can be few and far between, so death has consequence, perfectly reflecting the hostility of the desolate wasteland that is the Vortex World. The soundtrack also excellently echoes this, from the eerie and ambient electronica that plays during exploration to the fierce and demonic rock in battles. All in all, Nocturne has great atmosphere thanks to its unique vision of a post-apocalyptic world both audibly and visually.
Although a tad antiquated, Nocturne is a fundamental title that establishes so many of the best elements found in Atlus’s modern RPGs such as Press Turn and streamlined Demon Fusion, however it is harder to appreciate when this hasn’t been my first exposure to these systems and 20 years after its initial release.