Nocturne definitely is not the BEST game ever made, but it very well might be the coolest.
The style with which it oozes can cause one to forgive so, so many things. Many of Nocturne's bosses suck. It's not that they're "too hard", it's that they suck. Some are just too restrictive (Matador, Mot) while others are too reliant on the RNG (Noah), and I KNOW that the instant I say this, some freak is going to start cackling and screeching about how I'm a baby and I should "go back to Persona," so lets get this out of the way right now.
Nocturne is not particularly hard. At all. It isn't even on the higher end of difficulty for SMT unless you're playing on hard and on an older version that limits your control over skill inheritance. I actually found it easier than SMT IV, though part of that is because I played the remaster and A LOT of it is because SMT IV's Smirk mechanic made me hate even booting it up. Auto-game-overing when the protagonist dies is a trivial concern. Even if you've made yourself weak to darkness or light, you can just pop another magatama whenever you want pretty much any null skill you could ever dream of. You can stack points into the demi-fiend's vitality stat all day long and render him practically immortal. Buffs and debuffs are the name of the game, and while this is often held up as some great triumph of Nocturne, this is massively overblown. I have heard over and over again from SMT evangelists that in "most RPGs" stat-changing skills are useless. These people are talking about Final Fantasy, a franchise in which combat is often an afterthought. Dragon Quest has been flying the buff/debuff standard for at least as long as Megaten has, and once Pokemon had some time to sort out their spaghetti code and actually think, Swords Dance and Dragon Dance became the scariest moves in the whole metagame. The idea that SMT, and even more-so Nocturne in specific, single-handedly upended anything about support moves in the world of RPGs is total fallacy... it's just that most people have never actually tried to be good at Pokemon because the games never ask it of them, and few westerners like to acknowledge the existence of Dragon Quest at all.
With that said, it's plain to see that Nocturne hasn't quite yet figured out HOW it wants to design its combat around its buff economy. As things actually stand, almost every random encounter becomes an auto-battle and every boss becomes the same buff and debuff routine. Even if the boss you're up against DOES have BOTH Dekaja AND Dekunda to defend itself from this, (and a staggering number of them do not) there's still a shockingly high probability that they won't bother to use them at all, or won't use them until it is far too late. It generally isn't good for a singular strategy to completely RUN OVER your whole RPG approximately 100% of the time, and especially not one so easily attainable. Nocturne, in fact, feels outright hostile to any other form of play. That in itself is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine, but I don't particularly mind being forced to meet a game on its very specific terms, as long as those terms are actually fun.
In Nocturne these terms are... mostly inoffensive, but not exactly exciting. At least not to me. While this is the first appearance of the fantastic Press Turn system, I've found that most bosses either rolled over and died with no fuss whatsoever, or proved exceptionally annoying for reasons that I would never actually describe as "challenging". Nocturne's combat just does not feel like it has achieved its final form.
Anyway, there's more to Nocturne than its battles, though to be honest I dearly wish that those battles would stop invading the rest of it. The encounter rate in Nocturne is QUITE high, and that's a recipe for disaster in the sadistic labyrinths with which Nocturne presents you. The dungeons are, in a word, mean. This too, is a a frequent staple of more main-line adjacent SMT games, though I respect it. There is an ancient Dungeons and Dragons player within me who can in fact chill with a death maze full of stupid bullshit... as long as it's funny, and as long as I'm not being constantly harassed and disoriented by monotonous battles. Sometimes Nocturne achieves "funny". Much of the time it does not.
It's just... man, when you look at some of the STUFF that's in this game, and how it's all presented, and you listen to that MUSIC, it's like no criticism matters. I can sit here all day and poke holes to explain why I'm not so irresistibly compelled by Nocturne, but it's just SUCH a luxurious Experience For Freaks. It's got true artistic clout, even if much of its philosophy amounts only to insufferable right-wing extremism. It's a piece of real culture, and it deserves its due respect. Am I glad that I finally got around to playing Nocturne? Absolutely. Do I want to play through half of the game about five more times to get all of the endings? No... I can't say that I do.
The style with which it oozes can cause one to forgive so, so many things. Many of Nocturne's bosses suck. It's not that they're "too hard", it's that they suck. Some are just too restrictive (Matador, Mot) while others are too reliant on the RNG (Noah), and I KNOW that the instant I say this, some freak is going to start cackling and screeching about how I'm a baby and I should "go back to Persona," so lets get this out of the way right now.
Nocturne is not particularly hard. At all. It isn't even on the higher end of difficulty for SMT unless you're playing on hard and on an older version that limits your control over skill inheritance. I actually found it easier than SMT IV, though part of that is because I played the remaster and A LOT of it is because SMT IV's Smirk mechanic made me hate even booting it up. Auto-game-overing when the protagonist dies is a trivial concern. Even if you've made yourself weak to darkness or light, you can just pop another magatama whenever you want pretty much any null skill you could ever dream of. You can stack points into the demi-fiend's vitality stat all day long and render him practically immortal. Buffs and debuffs are the name of the game, and while this is often held up as some great triumph of Nocturne, this is massively overblown. I have heard over and over again from SMT evangelists that in "most RPGs" stat-changing skills are useless. These people are talking about Final Fantasy, a franchise in which combat is often an afterthought. Dragon Quest has been flying the buff/debuff standard for at least as long as Megaten has, and once Pokemon had some time to sort out their spaghetti code and actually think, Swords Dance and Dragon Dance became the scariest moves in the whole metagame. The idea that SMT, and even more-so Nocturne in specific, single-handedly upended anything about support moves in the world of RPGs is total fallacy... it's just that most people have never actually tried to be good at Pokemon because the games never ask it of them, and few westerners like to acknowledge the existence of Dragon Quest at all.
With that said, it's plain to see that Nocturne hasn't quite yet figured out HOW it wants to design its combat around its buff economy. As things actually stand, almost every random encounter becomes an auto-battle and every boss becomes the same buff and debuff routine. Even if the boss you're up against DOES have BOTH Dekaja AND Dekunda to defend itself from this, (and a staggering number of them do not) there's still a shockingly high probability that they won't bother to use them at all, or won't use them until it is far too late. It generally isn't good for a singular strategy to completely RUN OVER your whole RPG approximately 100% of the time, and especially not one so easily attainable. Nocturne, in fact, feels outright hostile to any other form of play. That in itself is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine, but I don't particularly mind being forced to meet a game on its very specific terms, as long as those terms are actually fun.
In Nocturne these terms are... mostly inoffensive, but not exactly exciting. At least not to me. While this is the first appearance of the fantastic Press Turn system, I've found that most bosses either rolled over and died with no fuss whatsoever, or proved exceptionally annoying for reasons that I would never actually describe as "challenging". Nocturne's combat just does not feel like it has achieved its final form.
Anyway, there's more to Nocturne than its battles, though to be honest I dearly wish that those battles would stop invading the rest of it. The encounter rate in Nocturne is QUITE high, and that's a recipe for disaster in the sadistic labyrinths with which Nocturne presents you. The dungeons are, in a word, mean. This too, is a a frequent staple of more main-line adjacent SMT games, though I respect it. There is an ancient Dungeons and Dragons player within me who can in fact chill with a death maze full of stupid bullshit... as long as it's funny, and as long as I'm not being constantly harassed and disoriented by monotonous battles. Sometimes Nocturne achieves "funny". Much of the time it does not.
It's just... man, when you look at some of the STUFF that's in this game, and how it's all presented, and you listen to that MUSIC, it's like no criticism matters. I can sit here all day and poke holes to explain why I'm not so irresistibly compelled by Nocturne, but it's just SUCH a luxurious Experience For Freaks. It's got true artistic clout, even if much of its philosophy amounts only to insufferable right-wing extremism. It's a piece of real culture, and it deserves its due respect. Am I glad that I finally got around to playing Nocturne? Absolutely. Do I want to play through half of the game about five more times to get all of the endings? No... I can't say that I do.