Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne

2022-04-15 (guessing but pretty sure I wrote this soon after playing)
This is a tough one to review. One because it's an old game originally released in 2003 and released in the US in 2004. And two because I have played 4 SMT games (P5, P4, SMT 4, P3 in that order) in the last 4 years. They all use the same combat system and at this point I'm pretty bored of it. Nevermind this is that combat at its least refined. But it also predates them and introduced the very press turn system that made the combat in P5 so damn punchy. It's an old game and it shows. It's missing QOL features. It has a lot of backtracking. It has grinding. It's story is sparse. So how do I review this? Well, while I appreciate its historical significance and I'm glad I played it I have to rate it on how fun I found it.

I've already called out some of the flaws but there are more. It has the same design of SMT 4 where half the time you have no idea where to go. There's backtracking where you have to randomly go back to talk to one NPC in a different corner of the map in order to progress. There's some teleports but not enough. As a result of all this, like in SMT 4 I ended up using a guide after like 1/3rd of the way through the story.

And thank god I did use a guide because this game has SO many dungeons that are often incredibly tedious and time-wasting. Not just time consuming but time wasting. You have dungeons that without warning teleport you to other places in the dungeon such that you have to figure out the path to the end through trial and error. Nevermind all the traps and damage floors and all that jazz.

In addition you have the classic SMT difficulty. I'm consistently on the fence about this style of difficulty. It's similar to the Etrian Odyssey style and it's either a very Atlus thing or a very Japanese thing. But basically it's the whole you encounter bosses or enemies with a certain brutal script of moves. Once you know the script you can counter it. But the first time you encounter them you have no way to know what the script is. Souls games have the same style but in that game the cost to dying is you run back to the boss, and in Elden Ring they basically did away with this cost. In these games you might have to repeat a solid section of a dungeon, 10-15 mns of time, nevermind the minutes you spent fighting the boss because they have a LOT of health. So, just like in the other SMT I just dropped the difficulty to the lowest. I don't have the time or patience for this style and honestly, again, after playing 4 SMT games in the past 4 years I just do not care about the combat.

So what's left over to applaud? Actually a fair amount. The vibe of the game is fantastic. It's classic SMT. Apocalyptic, oppressive, weird, and weirdly philosophical. You have cool music (though not standout compared to SMT4 and certainly not in comparison to Persona, though that's of a very different variety), and you have cool demons.

In addition, the story while pretty sparse is cool. You're a kid who happens to be in the wrong (or right) place at the wrong time and end up surviving the world being destroyed and reborn. The world is populated almost entirely with demons with a couple humans who caused the apocalypse and your couple of friends who were with you at the "Conception". In the end it's a story of different people with different philosophies, or "Reasons", on how the world should be reborn and you end up fighting with them as they summon their respective gods to bring about their chosen paradise (or hell). It's interesting watching each of the characters eventually be corrupted by the potential of creating a new world in their image and turn into monstrosities. And it's equally amusing seeing the forms they take and then destroying them in combat.

In the end I did the "True Demon" ending which has you basically serving Lucifer himself in order to be reborn as the most powerful demon ever so you can 1) thwart the rebirth of the world causing stagnation in the universe and 2) fight the big guy upstairs with a demon army. It's a very cool ending but not fleshed out at all. You basically see your dude walk off with an army and that's it. The fact that it takes you legitimately another 10 - 30 hours of the most obnoxious dungeons in the game to unlock makes it hilarious that you don't get any real satisfaction. Not even a damned achievement lol.

So in the end would I recommend this game? Absolutely not. Even with the minor QOL improvements in the form of a lower difficulty and some maps that allow you to grind easier, it's an old game with dated design across every square inch of it. Is it really cool to see the design cues that would later be refined into games that I consider masterpieces like P5? Absolutely.

In the end I'm going to rate it a 5. It's cool but ultimately more work than is necessary for the bit of fun to be had with the story and vibes.