SMTIII: Nocturne is a game I’ve been meaning to play for the longest time, but kept putting off for how hard I’ve heard it is and how poor the remastered port was. Well, good thing I personally believe both of those facts are incorrect now that I’ve completed my first play-through.
It really irks me how all I heard about the game was the difficulty. I didn’t hear anyone talk about the world, how desperate it is, and what costs are needed in order to shape the world into what the player believes is the correct choice.
The difficulty debate stems from, what I can gather, one main boss: The Matador. Now, to be fair, I’ve played my fair share of SMT titles before this: Persona 3-5, SMT:IV, SMT:V, and a few of the many PS2 spin-offs. I’m only stating this because the battle system in these games are VERY similar (which is a growing complaint of mine). What I am trying to say is that it’s possible I am very familiar with the battle system and that’s why I had no issue with the Matador. To sum it up, the Matador has high resistances to your attacks and you need to utilize support spells to get your party though the encounter. This boss fight is basically a check to see if the player has this knowledge. Evidently, a loud minority seemed to not.
Now that my difficulty complaint has been addressed, let me talk about the game. Gameplay wise, it’s a familiar experience. There are random battles, you can convince demons to join your party by multiple types of payment, and you level up your stats. The biggest difference in the battle system is the addition of the Magatamas. These little things you can inject and they alter the main characters stats and what moves they will learn while leveling up. There’s a few other elements to the Magatama, but that’s the gist. You can switch these out anytime you’re outside of battle. I did like this system, as it gives the player more options to tune their character based on the encounters at hand.
The story of Nocturne is the real winner. The world is facing an apocalypse and you’re a huge component of it. You’ve changed into a demi-fiend: half human, half demon. This gives you powers and survivability over regular humans. This also gives you enough power to alter the plans of bigger parties looking to change the newly shaped world for their benefit. I won’t go into too much details here, but there are multiple endings and some are insane.
Nocturne is definitely darker that other entries in the SMT franchise (especially the Persona spinoffs) but it’s still worth being played today. Oh! The remaster is also a totally fine way of playing it as well. It’s cheap enough now that the main complaints (30FPS lock and no new content added) don’t really matter too much. I picked up a brand new copy for $20 at the beginning of 2022.
Overall, with ~50 hours put into this bad boy, I recommend it to those familiar with PS2 RPGs (since this originally released on that console) and are willing to sometimes slog through some shitty dungeons for the gripping story and world that is crumbling before your eyes.
It really irks me how all I heard about the game was the difficulty. I didn’t hear anyone talk about the world, how desperate it is, and what costs are needed in order to shape the world into what the player believes is the correct choice.
The difficulty debate stems from, what I can gather, one main boss: The Matador. Now, to be fair, I’ve played my fair share of SMT titles before this: Persona 3-5, SMT:IV, SMT:V, and a few of the many PS2 spin-offs. I’m only stating this because the battle system in these games are VERY similar (which is a growing complaint of mine). What I am trying to say is that it’s possible I am very familiar with the battle system and that’s why I had no issue with the Matador. To sum it up, the Matador has high resistances to your attacks and you need to utilize support spells to get your party though the encounter. This boss fight is basically a check to see if the player has this knowledge. Evidently, a loud minority seemed to not.
Now that my difficulty complaint has been addressed, let me talk about the game. Gameplay wise, it’s a familiar experience. There are random battles, you can convince demons to join your party by multiple types of payment, and you level up your stats. The biggest difference in the battle system is the addition of the Magatamas. These little things you can inject and they alter the main characters stats and what moves they will learn while leveling up. There’s a few other elements to the Magatama, but that’s the gist. You can switch these out anytime you’re outside of battle. I did like this system, as it gives the player more options to tune their character based on the encounters at hand.
The story of Nocturne is the real winner. The world is facing an apocalypse and you’re a huge component of it. You’ve changed into a demi-fiend: half human, half demon. This gives you powers and survivability over regular humans. This also gives you enough power to alter the plans of bigger parties looking to change the newly shaped world for their benefit. I won’t go into too much details here, but there are multiple endings and some are insane.
Nocturne is definitely darker that other entries in the SMT franchise (especially the Persona spinoffs) but it’s still worth being played today. Oh! The remaster is also a totally fine way of playing it as well. It’s cheap enough now that the main complaints (30FPS lock and no new content added) don’t really matter too much. I picked up a brand new copy for $20 at the beginning of 2022.
Overall, with ~50 hours put into this bad boy, I recommend it to those familiar with PS2 RPGs (since this originally released on that console) and are willing to sometimes slog through some shitty dungeons for the gripping story and world that is crumbling before your eyes.