Nocturne was a game that I originally hated. It has design artifacts that come across as dated and out of place in its era. But that’s exactly why I like it now and remember it fondly.

Nocturne embraces the dungeon design of its predecessors. I think it’s important for something like Nocturne to exist in the time period it was released in, since you had games like Final Fantasy 10 leaning more towards the simpler side with its linear hallways and simpler dungeon design. Yeah, it’s probably stockholm syndrome from older RPGs, but it’s fun getting lost in big mazes and getting items at dead ends, and it's cool to see Nocturne maintain this design in a 3D space.

The combat is really fun. There’s a big emphasis on buffing and debuffing in this game, and there’s a ton of different demons to fuse and teams to use which keep the whole game feeling fresh. There’s also this “Press Turn System” in the game in which you will get another turn for attacking an enemy’s weakness or getting a crit. You also lose another turn for missing your attack. This also applies to enemies, and it makes evasion buffs and debuffs the most broken thing in the game by far. I do think there should have been some balancing done to that. You can also skip a turn and give it to another party member, which is very handy if one of your demons is useless in the fight you’re in. There’s a ton of scenarios where this is fun and promotes a lot of different strategies.

I originally complained about how some of the fiend locations are random as hell and they give you no hints as to where to find them and it still holds true. It’s necessary to fight them all for the secret true ending or whatever, which is why it was annoying, but I find it more annoying that a true ending exists in the first place. I kind of wish it just had you pick which ending you want, without any of that “canon” stuff getting in the way. Looking at it from that aspect, the odd fiend locations don’t really bother me anymore.

The story does suck though. Conceptually, it’s pretty cool, but it suffers from pretty unrealistic character motivations which are important for a plot like this. I don’t want to go into detail because I don’t want to spoil in my reviews, but if you’ve played it you might understand what I mean. I know there’s that “nobody plays SMT for the story” argument or whatever, and yeah, I enjoy the other aspects a lot more.

Oh yeah, this game is a remaster too. Does it do well on that front? Well, no, not really. I’m more so glad that this is officially playable on modern hardware now, and so I didn’t have to mess with a PS2 emulator. The lighting messes up a lot of the environments and the soundtrack is still left compressed like it was on the PS2 version! Luckily, there is a mod to uncompress it which my friend insisted I used and I eventually caved and used it even though I don’t like using mods on games. It was definitely nice to hear the music in higher quality, and I honestly recommend everyone use it too, it sounds pretty bad without it.

I was always looking at Nocturne as some elitist, hardest RPG ever made type of deal, and I think my unenjoyment stemmed from the game not offering the challenge I was expecting. The truth is, no, Nocturne is not one of the hardest RPGs ever, or whatever, but it’s a real fun game that has a lot going for it.