Nocturne Smhhokturne.
Nocturne.
I actually played and finished SMT 3: Nocturne and while there were a lot of mechanics that I didn't really like and that I thought aged poorly (even in the remaster with all its QoL), I still mostly enjoyed my time with it. I know... The fact you can enjoy a game while still having problems with it. Shocking.
In Nocturne the setting of the Vortex World is so interesting to me, a dead world that is basically just a wasteland of demons, ruins, and spirits, all as an inverted sphere (Idk what the hell you call the Vortex World) and not only that the plot of the game is cool too, becoming devilman and doing devilman things for lucifer and to gain power is cool as hell. The demi fiend constantly looks like he doesn't give a fuck and he probably doesn't. All the tracks on the OST are certified ATLUS classics, Shoji is a legend. I played the remaster on PS4, sadly, no Dante. Still, I think that Raidou is pretty neat and fits better with the game because he is also a Megami Tensei character. Kazuma Kaneko's art is something all ATLUS fans love, me included, and playing through a game that has his entire artistic footprint all over it was great. Through all the good this game provides, two big nitpicks for me are the sound compression on some tracks and the weirdly upscaled prerendered cutscenes. I know that there are reasons as to why they ended up like this but I still think that they really take you out of it and I think they detract from the experience as a whole. The difficulty. Now, I will confess, I changed to merciful by the time I reached Kagutsuchi Tower, I was just not having fun with the difficulty at that point. Though, I will try to keep on normal or even go with hard for further playthroughs (Not NG+), even though I started to feel frustrated with the difficulty I still appreciate the game not pulling its punches and making it so that you have to work to beat the game (Persona 5 Royal I'm looking at you even though you are my number 1 favorite video game of all time). The biggest problem with me, and bear with me because this is going to be stupid sounding, is the dungeon design coupled with the fact that this game uses random encounters. The dungeons feel designed to just fuck with the player sometimes and waste time (They probably weren't mind you, I'm just a salty boy) couple that with random encounters and you have a trudge through difficult (for me, probably not for you) encounters and no idea when the dungeon will even end, wasting HP, MP, and Items (again bear with me I know this sounds stupid to all of you). This is the piece of the game I really do not like, but also, I get it, this is a REMASTER, a remaster of ATLUS' first 3D game no less, and while it is frustrating and sometimes even boring I still tolerated it because I believed and still do believe that the game is worth finishing at least once.
All of this is to say that SMT 3: Nocturne was a downright amazing narrative experience that I am glad I had, and while I think it's no 10/10 Masterpiece by today's gameplay standards, Looking at it from 2003 and what it did for the time it was released I can see why it is so beloved by JRPG and Megaten fans. Plus, now I can say that I played a real Shin Megami Tensei game. - Z
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