My first experience into mainline SMT was a great one, and I will be continuing.

While I feel the game's character writing was not the best, it did not stop me from having an incredible time with the game. Nocturne catches a lot of attention for being 'hard'. A more apt description would be 'punishing'. The press turn system is a real Feast or Famine deal for both ends of a battle, and really changed how I view turn-based combat.

The environments were always stunning, and they encourage you to talk to every soul or demon to piece together the story. I did the True Demon Ending, which without too many spoilers, explains the most about the world.

Would recommend if you're interested in mainline smt, especially as it is quite accessable, remaster or not. You will benefit from having a guide, though. Especially if you want to collect all Magatama like I did.

It was nice to be able to choose skill inheritance instead of hitting the slots at the Cathedral and the graphical upgrades were mostly good but I felt like the lighting was messed up in many areas and the demons looked way less cool than when I upscaled this game on an emulator. Overall I didn't care for the sound design, particularly the demon sounds in combat and the voice acting. I'm sure many appreciate the VA but I thought it was just an awkward overlay. Raidou was cool, makes me want to try his weird games.

Also, there's an achievement for dying and not one for clearing True Demon Ending. It was fine, I'll probably just use my ps2 from now on.

The story is quite simple but has interesting points. The best part of the story, undoubtedly, is the new route that was added after the original game without a doubt, the only relevant characters are your pixie; the rest only appear at specific moments for a short time. The character design wasn't anything special, unlike what we usually see from Atlus, who always creates spectacular character designs. The only thing they got right with this game was the gameplay. The combat is very well done, which makes you want to play and improve in the game. If I were to base my rating on the story, soundtrack, or characters, this game would definitely be far from 4 stars. However, since gameplay is very important to me in a game, it's what makes it a 4-star game.

Nocturne is a product of its time and a timeless masterpiece at the same time. The dungeons give you a headache and the random encounter rate hurts sometimes, but the atmosphere, demon designs and graphics (especially for 2004) are great.

Reasons are better than alignment for me because alignments are very much “This one is evil this one nice”, while Reasons have a more varied alignment that the usual. And Nocturne having multiple endings is much better than for example SMT IV’s three basic endings.

This game was really cool. Atmosphere was dark and some parts were legit unsettling / disturbing. Press turn system is probably my favorite form of turn based combat, essentially a more rewarding and punishing version of personas 1 more.


Difficulty is a little overblown when it comes to combat, but I would not have ever finished this game without following a guide (which is ok) the dungeon design is straight up sadistic sometimes, but I think that's the point.


Overall very good game, and I'm very excited for SMT V to be released from switch jail this summer.

I found it interesting in terms of gameplay and I also liked the general atmosphere, but the game really got on my nerves :D At first I had hoped for more from the story, as this game series is generally described as "dark" and "adult".... Well, the story seems like what a 14 year old would imagine an adult, dark story to be, it's just as cliché-ridden and stereotypical as any anime stuff :D But what really turned me off was the gameplay and graphic design of the dungeons. I've rarely seen such gray, boring and confusing crap. Somehow I hope to learn to like this game at some point, because the atmosphere of the world outside the dungeons is very unique and dark, but I don't know if I want to fight my way through these dull dungeons.

i like this game a lot
very challenging in a good way, cool af dungeons (although the last one got a bit grating for me by the end)
story felt fairly straightforward for the most part but it works well
music goes crazy (if you have the HD music mod bc the audio quality is kinda fucked)
banger game thank you Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne you would never take advantage of my innate gullibility

funnily enough you have to download more patchs to make the remaster decent than to emulate it on PCSX2

I really enjoyed SMT Nocturne, it has some of my favorite dungeons from the SMT/Persona franchise so far, and the atmosphere and art style are so good to the point that it's almost a horror game, the only problems i had with it was near the end with the Amala Shrine and Tower of Kagutsuchi being both uninteresting in art style and annoying as puzzle mechanics, oh and i also couldn't care less for the characters and story