Baziru the Otaku

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne AKA (Frustration)

The video game I am going to discuss today, is one I got recently for the PlayStation 2. I been wanting to play this game since it came out 8 years ago, and well I finally got it, it is called Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.

Other than the nostalgia of knowing about it when I was young, I bout this game on a whim, because well I needed my fix after beating Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, for the PlayStation Portable (not to mention I spent well over 100 hours on it). Also, the SMT series is made by Atlus, and Atlus makes extremely addictive games.

 From what I played, and studied so far of the SMT series, I noticed it is has a recurring theme of the main character(s) being curse/blessed with powers to control demons as if they were a darker version Pokemon, major difference being the controller actually fights.

I haven't beaten this game, nor am I anywhere close to the quarter mark of it, because of its grueling difficulty, but I think I know enough to discuss it, so here we go!

(Left) Transformation (Right) Pre Apocalypse

Nocturne starts off with the main character (being you) going to visit his teacher in a hospital, and along the way meets a journalist, who gives you a pamphlet advertising the superstitions of a demonic cult summoning the apocalypse through satanic mantras. You then give this pamphlet to a classmate you meet at the hospital and go on to find the teacher. Once you meet up with your teacher, you learn that she is a member of said demonic cult, aiming to rid the world of humans using demonic means, and doing so will eventually bring about a rebirth, because well the video game world needed it. As you leave the hospital, the apocalypse happens, being portrayed as a bright white light covering the land in-and-for an instant, you wake to a kid in a wheelchair and a lady, whose face is covered in a black veil, and then bless curse you by turning you into a demon with pretty sick tats. Your demonic powers are drawn from ingesting 30 different demonic magitamas (beads) each having different abilities, but you can only have one ingested at a time. In addition to you being an army of one, you learn that you are also blessed with powers of persuading a demon to join ranks, and your journey begins.

A marketing perk of this game is that it includes Dante the demon hunter from the Devil May Cry series, to be specific Devil May Cry 2 the most boring, drawn-out, filler in the series, but I digress. He somehow gets mysteriously involved in this universe... I say "mysteriously involved" because I haven't been fortunate enough to get anywhere in the game to find out.

Now to discuss the game-play!

You travel through the wasteland of Japan, void of all humans except for you, the classmate, the journalist, and the demonic cult including the teacher, oh and I guess Dante. All the human npc you talk to now in the game are conveyed as blue spirits. Besides the blue spirits, you also communicate to the new population being the demons.

The game's battle system is a turn-based rpg, in which you control a team of 4 (you and 3 demons you have control over), and fight against the demon(s). The turns are broken down by whichever team goes first, then by the teammates of said team (which are determined by a limited number of action points) and the order is determined by the character's speed, and then the opposing team goes, going back and forth like a game of chess but you get more than 1 move. Some frustrations of this system are: the action points are determined by number of characters on a team (approx. 7 for a team of 4), the action points get reduced as the turns go by and it also gets reduced if teammates die, and if you use an attack that the opponent is weak against you get an extra action but if you miss an attack you lose an extra action point.

The sadistic tooth-pulling difficulty this game has, lies in its steep level gaps between you and the enemies you fight once you get to new locations (especially the bosses), cheap moves the enemies pull, your team usually goes first in battle, but the enemies seem to have more action points, and the fact that you can only recruit demons of the same level as you or lower makes sense, but adds to the frustration of the game.

The battles seem to be a bit flawed and rage-inducing in my opinion, but is unique, addictive, and fun, once you get used to it. I would quit this game altogether, but will probably want to get back to it, like the masochist I am, after my rage hiatus with it, just so I can see what intriguing demonic dilemma unravels next in its story.

"The comfort of death will come for humans and demons alike... by the guidance of The Great Will" - Game Over sequence


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