Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (PS2)
November 26, 2004

RPG?s have never quite been my cup of tea. There have been exceptions, but not very many. Almost every time I start an RPG, I last a handful of hours and come out with a list of reasons why I don?t care enough to finish the game, or even enjoy what I did play of it. Needless to say, when the time came to play and review this very Japanese RPG, I wasn?t very excited. Luckily, thanks to quite a few innovations and play mechanics, almost every single crappy thing about RPG games has been ?fixed? in this game, and I?ve found myself not only not hating an RPG, but thoroughly enjoying it. What is This Game? On reading the title of the game, ?Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne,? you?re probably wondering what the heck it is. What?s with the super long name? This is part of a series? I?ve never heard of it. I don?t play games if I can?t pronounce the name of it. It?s taken some research, but I?ve done you the favor of figuring out the answers and explanations for all these questions and problems, which I?ll go ahead and explain.

Firstly, it?s pronounced ?shin MEH-gah-mee TEN-say,? and it?s a part of a very large, very popular Japanese RPG series (games with the words ?Megami Tensei? in the title), while the three main games in the series belong to the MegaTen game family. It?s confusing, I know. The Shin Megami Tensei games go as far back as the MSX, PC/88, and FM/77 personal computer systems, along with the Famicom (the Japanese version of the NES). Including spin-offs, there are over fifty Megami Tensei games floating around. You?ve probably never heard of it, because very few have ever been released in America. The series is known for its controversial religious motifs and its extreme difficulty. While not very many of these games have ever come stateside, another title in the series slated to be released in early 2005 by the name of ?Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga.?

The Story During this review, I?m going to try to mention the story as little as possible. One of the fun things about the game is starting out very confused and slowly starting to understand what the heck is going on around you, so I don?t want to ruin that for you. I will give some of the basics of the story, which are given at the beginning of the game.

The story revolves around an older teen aged boy (who you name), a cult, the end of the world, and apocalyptic Tokyo. You are turned in to a demon by a strange cult leader that you find in an abandon medical center before the world ends, and when it does, everyone but a very few humans, spirits, and demons are killed. It is up to you and whatever help you can find to discover why this happened, who exactly caused it, and what kind of world will eventually become of it. Dante (from the Devil May Cry series) also makes an appearance, which is surprisingly appropriate and very cool.

If you don?t find this interesting at all, you might as well shove some carrots up your nose, fill your pants with vanilla pudding, and swan dive from the Eiffel Tower into a kiddy pool filled with gelatin and a thousand tiny kangaroos. Because you?re just weird.

While the story sounds very dark and strange, the game does a very good job of balancing out the subject matter with a fair amount of slick and unbridled humor.

So How Does it Play? If you?ve ever played an RPG before, you?ll have a pretty basic idea of how SMT: Nocturne plays. Figure out where to go, do what it takes to get there, get in turn based battles, level up, and gain new abilities and spells. This type of game has been around for ages ? you?ve probably played quite a few of them. So what makes this game any different than the rest? Why spend fifty dollars on something you?ve basically already played? Well, there are some things in SMT: Nocturne (we?ll call it just ?Nocturne? for short) that do feel dated, but there is definitely enough that is done right here to keep things fun, fresh, and engaging. The Battle System: Little Changes That Make a Big Difference Something that?s always bugged me about most RPG?s is the battle system. It usually seems like all you have to do to win most battles is simply to press the ?attack? button over and over again. Whatever the default attack is, that?ll do. Over. And over. And over again. Nocturne fixes this in a few ways.

Obviously, every single battle can?t be a huge deal. Not every type of enemy requires too much thinking, and not every enemy should have a large potential to be your doom ? designing a game like this would make for a very frustrating and annoying game. Also, sometimes you battle just to level up. This is an unavoidable in almost any RPG. What Nocturne does to fix this isn?t to completely leave these battles out, what it does is limit these kinds of battles, and provide you with a way to get in and out of these battles when they do happen as quickly as possible. This is achieved with the ?auto? system.

What it does is exactly what it sounds like. While in battle, by pressing the triangle button your basic physical attack is set to your automatic action every single time it is your turn to attack. So you will get in to boring battles, just like any other RPG, but instead of getting in to one and pressing the ?X? button eighteen million times to kill a bunch of stupid weak slime monsters, you just tap triangle at the beginning of the battle, and sit back and watch the battle fly by, going much faster than it usually would. Also, if you feel that the battle isn?t going as well as you think it could, pressing the triangle button again disables the ?auto? system, and you?re free to handle the battle any way you deem necessary by use of secondary attacks, items, etc.

Another way the battle system is better than in most RPG?s is its difficulty. When you aren?t doing those boring easy battles that can be handled with the ?auto? system, the battles tend to be very hard. This might sound crappy, but in fact, having much more difficult bosses and monsters to fight forces you to use your abilities in creative ways. By waking up your brain in this manner, Nocturne makes itself even more interesting and fun. On the con side, this also means that players that aren?t as thinking driven will get frustrated and probably won?t make it very far. (Maybe that?s one of the reasons why the games have sold so poorly in America)

Recruiting Your Party and the Fusion System In many RPG?s, your party is determined by whatever is going on in the game. You might travel to a town, meet someone new, and they?ll join your party. While experimenting with new party members? abilities is definitely one of the most fun things about RPG?s, having set characters that join with you at set points in the game end often ends up making a game feel stale. To fix this, Nocturne?s game play has you creating your party in two ways.

For your party to grow, you must recruit demons. Every once in a while (pretty much only in the very beginning of the game), you will meet a character in an area who will talk to you and ask to join your party, but for the most part, you?ll have to do the work yourself. This means that sometimes instead of killing every demon you come across in battle, you?ll have to talk to them and try to get them to join your party any way you can. Bribery, helping them out when they need an item, or by answering a reason questions (watch out ? how you answer reason questions affects the outcome of the game) they might ask you are all ways of trying to get them to join your party. Sometimes they?ll join you and whatever items and money you?ve given them will be well spent. Other times they?ll run off as soon as they have what they want, give you tips in return, or even just get angrier and attack you. Often times, if the demon you?re fighting is extremely stupid, they wont even understand what you?re saying. Talking to these kinds of demons is completely pointless.

This being said, not every single verbal encounter will have to be made by you. Sometimes you?ll get in a battle, and they?ll approach you and ask to join your party, or beg for your help.

After you?ve built your party of demons, you can go one step further. By visiting special areas in the game, you are able to take two of your characters and fuse them together, making a completely new character that is often much more powerful than the original two. What exactly your demons fuse in to depends on their race, levels, and the phase of the moon in the game (which is displayed on the upper left hand side of the screen). Abilities from the first two demons can also be carried over, again depending on levels and the phase of the moon. The depth of this system is incredible and tons of fun to play around with. The fusions are limited, however. The demon you?re fusing to create must be the same level or a lower level than the main character. This helps to balance out the game and keeps it from being to easy. However, this limitation is removed when you play the game through for a second time, which is cool.

Visuals and Audio I?m not the type of person to only play (or not play) a game based only on its graphics, but I?ll be the first to say that having a unique graphical style that fits the style and tone of the game helps transform a game in to an experience. This is something that SMT: Nocturne does very well. The graphics themselves are nothing outstanding, but the dark cel-shaded style illustrates apocalyptic Tokyo very well.

As for the audio ? it?s a little harder to explain. The ambient music of whatever area you?re in is well done, but you wont walk away thinking about it. Something you will probably walk away thinking about is the battle music. This music differs in many situations, depending mainly on how much of a threat this battle is to you and your party. This music, as I said, is hard to explain. It often sounds like a mixture of angry dark techno, power guitar riffs, and occasionally a heavily distorted singing male voice. This sounds weird, and it is, but for some strange reason that I can?t explain, it works. And it works really well. The boss battle music is especially good. As a testament to how good this weird music really is the limited edition version of the game shipped with a soundtrack - something that would never happen if the music sucked. Or at least I hope it wouldn?t happen. The main downfall of the audio is the fact that there is no spoken dialogue. However, this probably ends up being a mixed blessing. On the one hand, having no spoken dialogue seems prehistoric as far as games go. On the other hand, having no spoken dialogue really does help to keep the dark tone of the game get messed up by funny sounding characters. It also makes skipping through dialogue that you either have already read or you don?t care about all that much faster and less annoying.

Length and Replay Value While length doesn?t affect game play in to much of a direct way, it is a factor to think about when it comes to selecting a game that is worth your money - especially fifty bucks of it. A good game that?s two hours long is still only two hours long, and unless it has some incredible replay value, isn?t really worth buying at all. The good news is that Nocturne is very long. For most people, even with the player?s guide, which I?ll talk more about in a minute, the game will most likely take 50+ hours. In addition to just being a very long game that?s fun pretty much the whole way through, it also ups the ante by adding in some changes the second time playing through. Some changes the game makes include a hard mode and pulling restrictions off of certain things that are present the first time around. You probably won?t want to play the game again right after completing it once, but the multiple endings and changed game play do offer reasons to come back to the game some time in the future. As I?ve mentioned before, Nocturne is really hard. So hard, in fact, that if you?re stuck, you may end up quitting before you complete the game. I usually don?t use player?s guides, but the quality of this one is so great that I felt it almost a necessity to add to this review, especially since it was a necessity for me to have it to finish the game without very much frustration.

Produced and published by Double Jump Books, who have published three guides in total, the guide for Nocturne resembles a novel at glance more so than it does a player?s guide. The book is about the height of a paper back book, and is very thick (about 400 pages long). It?s full of a detailed history of the games in the series, a fold out locker-sized poster, art, maps, demon information, walkthroughs, even an interview with the people who made the game. Double Jump also realizes the colossal size of the guide, and decided to add with the guide two bookmarks to help you keep your place. It is quite simply the most practical (those big magazine size guides are just silly), efficient, and most detailed guide I have ever used. In addition, it seems to be created as just as much of a collectors item as it is a player?s guide.

Conclusion Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is really good. It may not be for everyone, but that doesn?t mean that it isn?t for you. It turned me into an RPG lover, that?s for sure. So if you even think that you might someday have any kind of interest in maybe wanting to try out an RPG for the first time, or if you already love them and have been looking for a new one to play, my advice to you is to hurry up and find yourself a copy of this game. Why act so quickly? Because this is most definitely the kind of game that is ignored and overshadowed by ?bigger? blockbuster titles when released, discontinued by stores due to poor sales, and becomes prone to a complete stopped production of the game. Then, and only then, will people begin to realize that the game is good, and will end up being very obscure and expensive to buy. Pros and Cons I know this was a long review, so I?ll briefly touch on the main pros and cons of the game.

Pros:
-Fast paced, interesting battle system that cuts out as much of the boring stuff as it can
-Fusion system adds much more depth and strategy to the game, and further acts to personalize your gaming experience to your tastes
-Different endings depending on reason questions that are asked you throughout the game
-Graphics and music that adds to the experience
-Dante?s cameo avoids being cheesy, and ends up being really dang cool
-The story does a good job making you want to play to find out what happens next while not being overly intrusive and annoying
-The difficulty of the game forces you to use your brain, and is more fun because of it
-50+ hours of game play

Cons:
-The difficulty will probably be way too much for some
-Like many RPG?s, it is sometimes easy to get lost, stuck, and frustrated ? especially without the player?s guide
-The lack of spoken dialogue will be a turn off for some
-Some of the names are very Japanese and confusing ? it is sometimes hard to tell if someone is talking to you about a character, area, item, or special ability
-There hasn?t been, and probably won?t be, any talk of the announced DS version coming to America. Ever.

Fuzzy Blowfish gives ?Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne? a B+

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