Last week I gave my initial thoughts on the dark, brooding atmosphere of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. I feel like I struggled to adequately explain just how different this game is design wise from anything else I have ever played. While I'm not sure I did the atmosphere justice, I don't think I will have any such issues with the gameplay.
Lets start with the combat. For as different as SMTN is aesthetically, the combat should feel right at home to any JRPG fan. You have a party of four, with each character outfitted with a set of magical or physical special moves. It's good, old fashioned turn based combat, with just enough twists to make it feel refreshing and unique. You get one action per turn for each character in your active party. However, you can increase the number of actions you can take in several ways. Land a critical hit or exploit an enemy weakness and you will get another action that turn. Don't have anything impactful to do with a particular character? You can pass to preserver half an action. But this cuts both ways. If you miss, or you use an attack that an enemy resists or absorbs, you will not only burn the action you just took, but an additional action. And that's per enemy, so if you miss more than one, you lose more than one. Of course, these same rules apply to your enemies, so while it's challenging its also completely fair.
The combat really opens up a lot of different strategies and it forces you to come to battles prepared differently each time. There are eight elements and you can change your main character's resistance by consuming Magatama you find throughout the game. These rare items are key to defeating some enemies, as they are often your only line of defense against elemental attacks. They also boost your stats and determine which skills your main character learns. I do wish there was more customization and combining with these, but it's not like the game needed more to do.
In a way, it's a bit like an M-rated version of Pokemon. You collect monsters, they battle, it's an RPG, etc. etc. I really like the combat and the demon recruiting and fusing, never did either of those things feel like a distraction. The story chugged along nicely, It wasn't the best RPG plot I've ever experienced but it had some great twists I definitely didn't see coming. There are multiple endings here, you get a different one depending on which faction you side with, and the game provides you with a number of decisions that impact those endings. I don't want to spoil the story, but I will just leave it at there are no real "good guys" here, just villains and sorta villains. It got to be a little much, but it did fit in with the game's intentionally oppressive atmosphere.
Speaking of oppressive things, I would be remiss if I didn't discuss the difficulty. SMTN is widely considered one of the hardest JRPGs of all time, and for good reason. Personally, I found it very difficult, but not quite as hard as its made out to be. There were some pretty insane puzzles in dungeons and the dungeons themselves are massive. The Obelisk took me multiple play sessions to beat and the final dungeon is just huge. I think the difficulty comes primarily from three things:
1. If the main character dies, it's game over.
2. Instant death attacks actually work. In most RPGs, you rejoice when the CPU uses a death spell, because it essentially means they wasted a turn. Not here though, if you don't have the right resistances, you will be in trouble.
3. Encounters everywhere. The encounter rate is reasonable, but you will have the potential to fight monsters almost everywhere you go. Thought you were safe in a town? Think again. There are only a few screens in the entire game where you can't have an enemy attack you.
That said, a lot of the difficulty can be mitigated by understanding the way combat works and knowing what you are doing in terms of preparation. You need to think about things before you do them, you can't just throw stuff against a wall. This is definitely one of the harder RPGs I've played, but it's far from the worst. Even the optional dungeons aren't that bad.
The graphics are great, the sound is similarly awesome and the dialogue is pretty solid as well. By this point, developers had really started to get localization down. However, there were still some pretty glaring issues with it here. I think it sort of leads to my other major gripe, which is that the actions of some of the antagonists are never fully explained. They are nice, normal people doing their best to survive in the new world one minute and the next they are straight up villains. It's a little bit disjointed and leads to some confusion in the storyline. For some reason, they also included Dante from Devil May Cry in the western version, which is weird. Some of the dungeons feel like slogs and the game gets a little ridiculous with teleporter puzzles towards the end. I like the bosses, they are big, colorful and intimidating, but some are just cheap and they get crazy with the instant death stuff. My last gripe is I wish there were more ways to get around the world without having to backtrack. This is a big game and there were times where I felt like I was just wandering aimlessly or going in the wrong direction.
In the end, those issues can't ruin a great game. I had a great time wit SMTN, though it's certainly not for genre neophytes. If this is your first RPG, you are going to have a bad time. I also caution that there is some humor in here that would not fly in a game in 2020, make of it what you will. But for those of us that grew up on golden age RPGs, SMTN is hard to beat. It has a great combat system, an interesting story and a huge variety of stuff to do. It also has a world map, something that may seem like a minor detail to some, but is huge for a lot of old school RPG fans. I went back and forth in my head what the final score would be and almost gave this the full monty. However, I felt a few of its flaws were too pronounced and it's misses to great that I couldn't bring myself to do so. I might revisit later, maybe with the SMTN's new game plus option. But for now, it's as close as it's going to get. This is a phenomenal game and a must play for old school RPG fans.
9.75/10
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