First, we wanted to draw attention to the fact that this game is a true successor to the Shin Megami Tensei series. III, however, is not only a continuation, but also a new Shin Megami Tensei, completely different from its predecessors, so we added the subtitle to imply that this is the beginning of a new Shin Megami Tensei.
- Okadu Kouji, on the title of Nocturne

It's interesting how much of the perception of the Shin Megami Tensei stems from Nocturne. When you ask the average JRPG fan what they think SMT is like, they'll usually bring up a lot of tropes from nocturne. Ideas like “the games don’t really have a story”, or “the characters aren’t important”, and potentially most infamously, “megaten so hard matador red capote dante lol”. The last one isn’t really important right now, but the first two are curious (and I think, detrimental) statements because they just aren’t true.
For all intents and purposes, Nocturne is a black sheep within the mainline smt pantheon. That’s not to say it’s a bad game, far from it, but what I mean is that it’s pretty far removed from its peers in a lot of ways. It really was a new Shin Megami Tensei, tearing down what was before in order to be reborn. It was the franchise’s own conception.


So, Kouji and Kaneko were not lying, Nocturne really is a whole different beast from its predecessors. Everything you knew about the series with demon recruitment, alignment, non fantasy setting, throw it all out. Nocturne instead takes the franchise in a bold new direction as a puzzle game. An odd choice, but not a bad one.
Instead of a human main character, you play as a demon. You’re trapped in a maze in which you need to push blocks around and into holes in order to escape. The graphics couldn’t be simpler, but they’re a great adaptation of the super nintendo game’s aesthetic in 3D. While the premise couldn’t be more simple, the puzzles become quite taxing very quickly, with many citing the game’s difficulty as one of the core parts of its identity. I think the difficulty is an artistic decision, with the playable Jack O’ Lantern’s unfailing determination serves almost to the player. He cannot ever die, and he can always rewind his mistakes. Though wordless, it is a powerful story about the unshakable will of life, and how it will always prevail in one way or another. No matter how difficult, Jack O’ Lantern’s, and by extension, the player’s victory is only a matter of time.
There’s also a weird minigame that’s some turn based crap but I don’t think anyone really cares about that. I barely played it lol.