Remember that Devil Summoner SMT game? Yeah well, like take that and combine it with Koei Tecmo and top it off with spicy lesbian seasoning and you've got this. Boring plot about your bouncy breasted friend being chosen as a sacrifice, there's two dumb guys, who I well I don't know because I skipped 90% of the dialog. Combat is loose, with no impact, might as well be scissoring these demons. Oh yeah, demons, uh they're not very interesting; there's one exception though, and that's the spider: he's cute AF and does a little dance, best thing about this game. Not worth checking out, kind of aims for a Persona vibe with it's music and tone but just faceplants cement. Just Go play Persona 5 Strikers, it's similar in gameplay and oozes style.

Tl;DR- It's a budget hack 'n slash lesbian big anime tiddies romance with symphonic power metal at night kind of game. If that sounds appealing to you, you'll probably like it. If it doesn't, don't bother.

The concept is strong enough. You play as a buxom anime half-demon female knight (Arnice) fated to one day guide her absolutely pneumatic lover/ward saint friend (Lilysse) to a mysterious altar in order to stop the Night Lord from making the night eternal. There's a shadowy organization running everything behind the scenes, but the final outcome rests in Arnice's hands. Stuck in a hub world hotel with a magic elevator, a butler, a thief, and a research scientist, Arnice has to repeatedly go out to various locales in the area at night and hack and slash her way through the demons there, collecting their demonic blue blood, money, and items – unlocking new weapons, abilities, and levels in the process.

The big element that separates this game from similar JARPG budget hack 'n slashes is the fiend allies you can bring into battle. You can summon up to four at a time, and they'll fight and heal and support Arnice as you play. You can also manually order them to use their special move if they have enough special points. They have their own personalities and you can often talk to them in the hotel in-between-battle stages. And as the game continues, you can summon new, more powerful, fiends – if you don't mind having to level them up from level one.

Since the demons Arnice slays only come out at night, all the levels you visit are always at night. (Eat your heart out FF7R.) It's a nice theme to carry through the game, but visually it can be a little muddled, with some areas not standing out. And if you try to do any of the sidequests, you're going to have to deal with interpreting the awful naming schemes to figure out where you're supposed to go, as many of these names barely suit the area you're looking for. You also have to factor in the completely unnecessary 15 minute time limit per outing while doing these sidequests.

And there are plenty of sidequests, if you're into that. The various characters in the hotel always seem to have some crap they need you to run around and look for, and you also have the option to complete randomly generated side quests for more blue blood or money as you're out and about town. You also unlock day sidequests which are performed offscreen after a night out, which will give Arnice various points in attributes she can spend on skills and abilities.

Combat is the heart of any hack 'n slash, and the combat in this game is pretty good for the most part. It's simple, but very responsive. You can switch between four unlockable weapons, each of which has its own light, heavy, and super attacks. Add to that the summonable fiend allies which you can pick yourself and choose when to use their special moves and it's a more than serviceable combat system.

The big issue then, is the enemies. The basic enemies you'll spend most nights grinding through are so easy and basic that they rarely present a challenge, a matter compounded by the fact you can have four summonable allies out at all times. This mind-numbing lack of challenge contrasts with the boss fights, which require positioning and paying attention to tells, and are fun and challenging. A few of the bosses will probably require a few attempts, and the final boss is on another level of difficulty altogether.

Meanwhile, the story has its own weakness: aside from the basic premise, very little of import actually happens. On the way to this sinister altar experience hanging over the whole game is a bunch of fluff that occasionally deepens the characters or the world, but for the most part is just there to pad the game out. A lot of the same story beats happen over and over, with slightly different coats of paint. And keep in mind, this is already a short game with very few characters.

The characters are fine, though, if you don't mind your anime tropes and Japanese-only voices. Stealing the show is the VA for the research scientist, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, who delivers an incredible over-the-top performance.

As far as the yuri content goes, despite the ridiculous outfits, it's mostly limited to intense handholding on a bed with several bibles' worth of space between the characters. There's a lot of will-they-won't-they going on, and who-is-protecting-who throughout. Lilysse's maid outfit and Arnice's leveling outfit are the raciest things you're going to see in this relatively chaste, but dramatic, love story.

Likely the strongest element of the storytelling is the mystery woven throughout. Just who is this butler and why does he run a hotel? Why is there a mysterious black cat talking to my fiend friends? Who is this “guide” who keeps pushing around Arnice behind the scenes? What is the nature of sealing the Nightlord? Who is the Nightlord? What's the shadowy organization Curia really up to? Which of the two men who suddenly appeared is the Curia agent, and which is the fake? Can the lovers survive their date with the altar? Sadly, these mysteries are more compelling than the basic gameplay or the filler story elements. But this is a small budget yuri JARPG from Gust, so it's not exactly shocking.

Another strong element is the soundtrack. The melodic symphonic power metal accentuated with its occasional no-lyrics belted chanting that plays during the stages is very catchy, and well suited for the night time demon extermination theme. There are also some jazzy tunes for the hotel, and when you hear the yuri piano play it's your cue that plot is happening. The soundtrack punches above its budget weight for sure.

Overall, it's probably a 2.5 out of 5. When it comes to low budget JARPG hack 'n slashes, you could do better. Drakengard 3 is the kind of wild ride that makes its painfully average gameplay well worth engaging with. Ys 8 has incredible gameplay, difficulty options, exploration, music, and storytelling, even if it looks like an early PS3 title. What does Nights of Azure have? A little mystery, a little yuri, a nice soundtrack, and a few good ideas. I guess if you include the handful of challenging bosses and the excellent final bossfight, it rounds up to a 3. If you're looking for a 3D JARPG and you've played most of the bigger ones or you want to try something different, give it a shot. Just be aware the PC version is supposed to be a mess, so get it on PS4 if you can.

Funny one this. It started out with a nice aesthetic and fun combat with loads of options but it just feels like they just had to stop making it when about 80% done, as the difficulty is way too low and there are entire systems which aren't even used in the game. Killer soundtrack though, and the first few hours were really good, with the game initially seeming like it had managed to keep the scale and scope within its means (not many characters, lots of maps, enemies reused as summons, loads of equippable items with unique properties) and the Musou style action is still fun and responsive.

It's always interesting to see the lengths of making sure gay rep isn't in media, and Nights of Azure is no exception to such discourse. While I certainly would prefer they mention that the two main lead characters are a couple and are in fact in love with each other, the game does at least bend over backwards to show just how gay they are. In a lot of ways, the story comes across as something hindered by Japanese and media culture towards gay people despite being very pro gay. The game is literally centered around the two leads being romantically invested in one another, and the lengths they would go to protect each other, and in such a way that it's compelling to watch.
While I don't think the graphics or music is something to write home about, it does a good job of setting up the mood for a lot of the game. although both feel a bit redundant as you go on. The main leads are pretty fun throughout, but the rest of the cast is kinda one note and doesn't really provide anything of substance aside from being an excuse to have different shops and minigames. Thankfully the servant and enemy designs do pop out more, and is largely what helps keep this game fresh throughout.
Nights of Azure is a very basic hack n slasher with a neat little gimmick that captures enemies and puts them at your side as additional support. While the servant system doesn't really do anything beyond allowing you to use certain power ups and provide small support for your fights, it is at least a mildly interesting system that helps differ the combat system from the usual hack and slasher; it just hasn't worked out all the kinks yet. The game is mostly about exploring a big city at night, as you have a time limit to explore the areas to find out more clues to where you want to go, often going from area to area in the hub world so you can get to a specific area, and progress further. While it's certainly a bit jarring at first to have a time limit to explore areas, the game lets you get rid of the limit rather fast that way you have the time to adjust yourself to the game and explore safer.
While I don't think Nights of Azure is a great game, it does have the makings of what could be a very good hack'n'slasher franchise, and the fact that it's based on lesbians really has me tickled pink about it.

This 3.5 star rating is more like a 3.75 star rating.

This game was just mindless fun and just what I needed. It may not, however, be just what YOU need.

This game is effectively Drakengard 3 but watered down in every aspect.

The combat is brain-dead, the characters are just a blank sheet of paper, I skipped pretty much all the story and dialogue but somehow I still had a decent amount of fun with this game, enough so to platinum this game on ps4.

Sometimes games don't have to be good to hit the spot. Sometimes all you need is a brain-dead game to run around in and fight hoards of enemies whilst you listen to a podcast.

I would NOT recommend this game, unless you already have playstation plus and can play it for free like I did. I imagine if I had spent actual money on this game my rating might be lower, but for already having ps+ and this being a free game, I really enjoyed my time with it - just go in to it knowing that it's pretty basic all around.

Despite it being a low budget affair, it definitely feels like the developers wrung every bit of quality out of it that they could.

I loved seeing Arnice and Lilysse exchane small gestures of affection throughout the game. Hugs from behind, a hand on the cheek, sharing a dance, holding hands, etc. Little actions that seem obvious for two people in love to do, but also something you don't see all that often in video games, right? Especially between two women protagonists!

Unfortunately, there are enough rough edges that I think hold the game back: The plot/characters are somewhat trope-y, the gameplay isn't all that compelling, and I was left unsatisfied by the ending(s).

But I'm glad I gave this game a shot, if for nothing else than to experience a sweet love story taking place at the end of the world.

Oh, and the soundtrack kicks ass.

Thoughts on the actual content of the game: https://twitter.com/moogy0/status/1532980939541909504

Based on playing the PC port in Japanese. You might be interested to know that Yoru no nai Kuni/Nights of Azure was written by the same person as Asellus's route of SaGa Frontier (Shouda Miwa, who also wrote the Jumi arc in Legend of Mana), and thus the two share some terminology in Japanese. For example, both Asellus and Arnice are 半妖, and the demons in this game and the mystics in SaGa Frontier are both known as 妖魔 in Japanese. From what I can tell, all of these connections were lost in the English localization, though the various similarities between the two games should still be apparent.

The PC port of this game is extremely busted and requires a lot of, shall we say, cajoling to play comfortably. Or play at all, really. It's probably better to just play it on console (or emulate the PS3 version in RPCS3), but I'll provide some information about the port for anyone like me who really wants to play it on PC... or just as a warning, I guess.

Here are the main things you should know about the port:
●You'll need to edit a registry entry to make it run at resolutions higher than 1080p.
●The game will run at the highest framerate your monitor supports, but if it runs at greater than 60 fps, you'll be unable to collect items during map exploration. You will need to manually cap the framerate to 60 if using a monitor with a refresh rate higher than 60hz.
●Borderless fullscreen is not an option provided by the game. Launch the game in windowed mode and use Borderless Gaming or another similar program.
●Controller support is implemented in a questionable manner, requiring the player to manually bind every input in a separate program before launching the game, with no indication what the buttons on your controller correspond to.
●While it does also support KBM controls, you cannot remap the keybindings in any way, nor are they listed anywhere.
●This isn't something exclusive to the PC port, but there is no autosave. For whatever reason Gust didn't add autosave to their games until quite recently.
●There is no option to close the game. You'll need to kill it manually on your end, which may be problematic for some setups.

For further information, such as how to set arbitrary resolutions via editing the registry, please see the game's page on the PC Gaming Wiki: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Nights_of_Azure

This thread on the Steam board has a list of controller bindings that should work if using a 360 controller (or emulating one via programs such as DS4Windows): https://steamcommunity.com/app/527280/discussions/0/135509314046543492/

If you are enough of a yuri fan to finagle the PC port into working, then I salute you.

Me gustó bastante la relación de las protas, soy muy débil a estas historias donde hay alguien maldecido pero tiene a alguien que lo acepta de manera sincera, y también la historia principal(de alguna manera me recordó a Pandoras Tower) y el mundo eran interesantes, aunque no me terminó de convencer que te contaran el backstory de las protas por medio de texto en lugar de flashbacks in-game. Eso sí, si bien es un romance entre chicas con todas las letras, faltó un beso o al menos que Arnice le dijera "te amo" de vuelta y no solo "eres muy importante para mí", malditos japos y su obsesión con dejar las cosas ambiguas!
Si esto tuviese un manga/anime, creo que la historia se vería muy beneficiada de ser contada en alguno de esos 2 medios.

El gameplay estaba bien, una suerte de musou y RPG(ARPG le dicen?), aunque algunos sistemas(como las distintas tiendas, quests e incluso los servan) y algunas mecánicas(como las armas intercambiables) no se aprovechaban del todo o no se usaban. Y no es demasiado difícil, solo tuve problemas con uno de los jefes(el 2do dragón) y el jefe final que es un dolor en el culo gracias a su regeneración muy injusta.

Ah y ojalá te guste la música de ascensor del hotel porque vas a pasar mucho tiempo ahí, podría decir que el juego es 60% el hotel y 40% los demás lugares, que de por sí el mapa no es muy grande.

Me gustó, tal vez en algún momento probaré la secuela(que según comentarios no es tan buena) y de paso los demás juegos de Gust.

Need myself a gay lover to fight with over one of us getting sacrificed to a demon so that world peace can be achieved.

The game itself is serviceable, interesting for Gust's first attempt at an action-based system I believe. Lots of ideas that go nowhere, but the sequel could meaningfully expand on it I feel. But that's for another time.

The major issue is the unpolished translation. While the core yuri romance escapes unscathed by it, the larger gothic fantasy narrative is legitimately hampered by it. I still very much enjoyed the concepts it plays around with despite that, which I think speaks to the strength of its ideas, so perhaps this too is something the sequel can ameliorate.