Note: This review will be focusing on the game of Nocturne itself, not the quality of the remaster... outside of one thing.
Nocturne is a game with many, many ups and downs. At its lows, it can be very frustrating and annoying to just walk around, but never agonizing. At its peaks, it can be one of the greatest JRPGs of all time.
The first 10 hours of this game can be slow. You don't have access to powerful skills quite yet, so you're stuck with a ragtag team of shitty demons, but it'll get you through. The main thing that pushes you through the earlier parts of the game are the incredibly thick atmosphere, great world building, and a great combat system.
Just walking around the world is fun. Every location in this game is unique, and it feels like each building is its own labyrinth to explore. It's lonely, depressing, and I loved every second of it.
The gameplay, while not as refined as a game like SMT4A, is very fun, and has many of its own gimmicks. The big thing is the Press Turn system, which is a mainline staple at this point. Rather than each character getting a turn, turns are a physical thing that you can see in the top right. Play correctly and you can get up to eight turns, but fuck up and all your turns can get sucked away in one attack. When the bosses start getting harder, you have to start squeezing as many important moves as possible, which ramps up the intensity greatly.
Another thing I love about the combat is how the enemies are all on equal terms with you, and you all follow the same rules. You can miss and lose 2-4 turns, but so can the enemy. You can get lucky and hit every enemy in a row with crits, but so can the enemy. You can drain the HP and MP of enemies, but so can the enemy. Hell, if you refight all the bosses in a boss rush mode, you can get an extra turn for yourself, but so can the enemies. Everything is fair, the only advantage SOME enemies get is that they can use moves that increase the amount of turns they get, which obviously would completely break the game if you had it. You can also fuse and use most bosses in your party, outside of reason bosses and the final boss(es).
The fusion system is also great. I've spent hours in the Cathedral of Shadows, fusing demon after demon and getting the most powerful team possible. In the original Nocturne, fusion was much more excruciating and time consuming, as for some reason they decided to make skill inheritance random, so you would have to repeatedly exit and reenter the fusion menu until you got the skills you wanted. This got especially bad late game where your demons have a BUNCH of skills and you have to rely on the game to pick 5-6 exact skills from a group of 24. The HD Remaster adds in the ability to select skills, which is a godsend. This little feature alone makes the remaster worth it alone.
One thing I'm unsure about still is the Reasons. The story is simple but I'm 100% fine with that, it can take a backseat for the gameplay and worldbuilding. The characters are fine, but honestly nothing special. The Reasons however are ehhhh. Each character has their own Reason of what they want the world to be reshaped as, however unlike the alighnment system from previous games, which pulls you into a side gradually until you're fighting for something you're unsure if you agree with, the Reasons range from batshit insane shit that no one on Earth would agree with, to Reasons so fundamentally flawed that there's no reason to go with it. One in particular just feels like it was created to have an antagonist, rather than a friend you slowly stop trusting overtime.
Overall, a really great and classic game that I can respect quite a lot. While flawed in a lot of areas, the good parts make up for it. If you like JRPGs that'll give you a good challenge and focuses on gameplay and atmosphere over story and characters, then this game is for you. If you can get past the slow parts, you'll experience an absolute classic that helped reshape its own genre, despite being the underdog.
Nocturne is a game with many, many ups and downs. At its lows, it can be very frustrating and annoying to just walk around, but never agonizing. At its peaks, it can be one of the greatest JRPGs of all time.
The first 10 hours of this game can be slow. You don't have access to powerful skills quite yet, so you're stuck with a ragtag team of shitty demons, but it'll get you through. The main thing that pushes you through the earlier parts of the game are the incredibly thick atmosphere, great world building, and a great combat system.
Just walking around the world is fun. Every location in this game is unique, and it feels like each building is its own labyrinth to explore. It's lonely, depressing, and I loved every second of it.
The gameplay, while not as refined as a game like SMT4A, is very fun, and has many of its own gimmicks. The big thing is the Press Turn system, which is a mainline staple at this point. Rather than each character getting a turn, turns are a physical thing that you can see in the top right. Play correctly and you can get up to eight turns, but fuck up and all your turns can get sucked away in one attack. When the bosses start getting harder, you have to start squeezing as many important moves as possible, which ramps up the intensity greatly.
Another thing I love about the combat is how the enemies are all on equal terms with you, and you all follow the same rules. You can miss and lose 2-4 turns, but so can the enemy. You can get lucky and hit every enemy in a row with crits, but so can the enemy. You can drain the HP and MP of enemies, but so can the enemy. Hell, if you refight all the bosses in a boss rush mode, you can get an extra turn for yourself, but so can the enemies. Everything is fair, the only advantage SOME enemies get is that they can use moves that increase the amount of turns they get, which obviously would completely break the game if you had it. You can also fuse and use most bosses in your party, outside of reason bosses and the final boss(es).
The fusion system is also great. I've spent hours in the Cathedral of Shadows, fusing demon after demon and getting the most powerful team possible. In the original Nocturne, fusion was much more excruciating and time consuming, as for some reason they decided to make skill inheritance random, so you would have to repeatedly exit and reenter the fusion menu until you got the skills you wanted. This got especially bad late game where your demons have a BUNCH of skills and you have to rely on the game to pick 5-6 exact skills from a group of 24. The HD Remaster adds in the ability to select skills, which is a godsend. This little feature alone makes the remaster worth it alone.
One thing I'm unsure about still is the Reasons. The story is simple but I'm 100% fine with that, it can take a backseat for the gameplay and worldbuilding. The characters are fine, but honestly nothing special. The Reasons however are ehhhh. Each character has their own Reason of what they want the world to be reshaped as, however unlike the alighnment system from previous games, which pulls you into a side gradually until you're fighting for something you're unsure if you agree with, the Reasons range from batshit insane shit that no one on Earth would agree with, to Reasons so fundamentally flawed that there's no reason to go with it. One in particular just feels like it was created to have an antagonist, rather than a friend you slowly stop trusting overtime.
Overall, a really great and classic game that I can respect quite a lot. While flawed in a lot of areas, the good parts make up for it. If you like JRPGs that'll give you a good challenge and focuses on gameplay and atmosphere over story and characters, then this game is for you. If you can get past the slow parts, you'll experience an absolute classic that helped reshape its own genre, despite being the underdog.