i've tried to play this game like 3 separate times and each time i just feel like i get a lil more sour on what FEELS like should easily be a great game.
i think it's super good when it wants to be but almost every strength kinda starts to fall apart when i really try to think about a lot of it more. press turn system is pretty great but honestly not near interesting enough for how high the encounter rate is, how the general enemies are designed, and how much dungeons are designed to have you get to dead ends or doors that lead nothing just to have you walk around more so you get more encounters. when i started noticing this trend then so many of the dungeons felt so blatantly designed by a 15 year old that just got their hands on rpg maker to the point i think this is the only jrpg where random encounters genuinely felt like a flaw to me. bosses are always super great though, only complaint there is that i think demons grow at a rate that's a BIT too slow so the SMT Fusion Grind™ is a tiny bit of a chore here but it's not a big deal, it's still good and fusion is always great.
i think nocturne's world building is GREAT. i genuinely do love seeing how the general random demon tries to make due in a place like this, the factions they make, watching those factions break down in an instant, the dire aimless state the whole world feels in due to the conception, it's all honestly super good. but unless you're going for true demon ending the actual story and writing for the main cast is lacking behind that great world so much i honestly kinda wish they just didn't bother with alignments in this game. nocturne tries to write the characters in a detached way that i think does work a lot for this game on concept, but does it in a way that makes them just feel like the most boring binary "this is how you select the different law/neutral/chaos routes." you see so little of how the characters interact with the world they're in that most of the conclusions they come to feel like they don't matter at all and for a game that clearly wants to get across how much a world like this breaks people this is honestly such a bizarre decision to me. i think the one exception is isamu cuz you're there first hand to see the things he wants and how the world treats him so he's the only one who feels like he has even the slightest bit of weight behind him. that said i think true demon ending is a PERFECT conclusion to everything nocturne is about and plays off of nocturne's strengths the best it possibly can. it just kinda makes it more disappointing that the only time i feel like nocturne's story keeps up with the rest of the worldbuilding is when you have to actively disregard the entire rest of the cast. disregard them in a thematically KINO way but yknow still.
i've played jrpgs with one or more of these problems in some way but nocturne in particular feels like its sum is so SO much less than its individual parts and by now i just wanna leave it as a kinda fun kinda frustrating experience so i can go play other SMT games i'd probably like more.
i think it's super good when it wants to be but almost every strength kinda starts to fall apart when i really try to think about a lot of it more. press turn system is pretty great but honestly not near interesting enough for how high the encounter rate is, how the general enemies are designed, and how much dungeons are designed to have you get to dead ends or doors that lead nothing just to have you walk around more so you get more encounters. when i started noticing this trend then so many of the dungeons felt so blatantly designed by a 15 year old that just got their hands on rpg maker to the point i think this is the only jrpg where random encounters genuinely felt like a flaw to me. bosses are always super great though, only complaint there is that i think demons grow at a rate that's a BIT too slow so the SMT Fusion Grind™ is a tiny bit of a chore here but it's not a big deal, it's still good and fusion is always great.
i think nocturne's world building is GREAT. i genuinely do love seeing how the general random demon tries to make due in a place like this, the factions they make, watching those factions break down in an instant, the dire aimless state the whole world feels in due to the conception, it's all honestly super good. but unless you're going for true demon ending the actual story and writing for the main cast is lacking behind that great world so much i honestly kinda wish they just didn't bother with alignments in this game. nocturne tries to write the characters in a detached way that i think does work a lot for this game on concept, but does it in a way that makes them just feel like the most boring binary "this is how you select the different law/neutral/chaos routes." you see so little of how the characters interact with the world they're in that most of the conclusions they come to feel like they don't matter at all and for a game that clearly wants to get across how much a world like this breaks people this is honestly such a bizarre decision to me. i think the one exception is isamu cuz you're there first hand to see the things he wants and how the world treats him so he's the only one who feels like he has even the slightest bit of weight behind him. that said i think true demon ending is a PERFECT conclusion to everything nocturne is about and plays off of nocturne's strengths the best it possibly can. it just kinda makes it more disappointing that the only time i feel like nocturne's story keeps up with the rest of the worldbuilding is when you have to actively disregard the entire rest of the cast. disregard them in a thematically KINO way but yknow still.
i've played jrpgs with one or more of these problems in some way but nocturne in particular feels like its sum is so SO much less than its individual parts and by now i just wanna leave it as a kinda fun kinda frustrating experience so i can go play other SMT games i'd probably like more.
RaeVGAChamp
1 year ago