Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne - Official Thread

[Survival Kid]

So Atlus finally made it official today. To go along with Atlus' official announcement I figured it was time for the official thread.

Official site: http://www.shinmegamitensei.com

Press Release: http://www.atlus.com/press/040204_SMT.html

1up.com's feature: http://www.1up.com/article2/0,2053,1559899,00.asp

GMR article scans: http://fire.prohosting.com/riotzero/smt3.html

[burgundy]

You may know Dante already as a the unstoppable demon hunter from Devil May Cry, which makes him a pretty good fit for Nocturne's world: it's full of demons to hunt. Including you. He comes to the Vortex World at the request of an old man in a wheelchair (ahem), who hires him to hunt you down. He'll be a powerful enemy whom you may find difficult to shake off your trail, unless you can figure out the key toward making peace with him … in which case he might be the most invaluable ally of all.

Badass. About time DMC got a sequel.

[Frogacuda]

Holy shit, how did I miss this? Score! Time to finally get that PS2.

[Rocca]

Holy shit, how did I miss this? Score! Time to finally get that PS2.

[Despair]

Awesome. That makes me happy happy

[AaronChance]

Awesome. That makes me happy happy

Just to let you know, Dante sucks in the game. Looks cool, but that's about it. He's annoying to fight and by the time he can join, which is really late in the game, there are demons that are much much better than he is available. It was nice to utterly crush him though by lowering his attack and defense to the point where he was doing single digit damage on me while I was doing 600 per hit on him though.

[Despair]

Doesnt matter, its still great to have him there.

[NoFace]

Sweet, I've for the longest time thought the Persona games were pretty much the same thing, but the GMR scans got me up to speed.

Not to mention they convinced me that the game sounds awesome, and it right up my alley when it comes to RPGs.

This is a must-buy for me.

Edit: My own spelling mistakes bother me.

[Kidnemo]

Release day purchase fo'sho.

I <3 Atlus.

[AaronChance]

Sweet, I've for the lonest time thought the Persona games were pretty much the same thing, but the GMR scans got me up to speed.

Not to mention they convinced me that the game sounds awesome, and it right up my alley when it comes to RPGs.

This is a must-buy for me.

It's a great game, but even this 'improved' version is far from perfect. The random encounters are really unbalanced. Sometimes it's one weak enemy, sometimes it's six powerful ones, sometimes it goes a while before the next one, sometimes the next attack is two steps later.

The press turn system is almost perfect. Not only does it make fights relatively quick, but using the system you can beat demons much more powerful than you... the catch is you have to have demons who are immune to the attacks of your enemies if you don't want to end up on the losing side. With only 8 slots for demons (though you get more later) and four basic attack types to be immune to, not to mention equipping the proper magnata to make yourself immune, you'll sometimes find yourself getting destroyed by what should be an easy battle.

This isn't too bad for random encounters since all normal demons have weaknesses that can be easily exploited (especially by Charm, which is almost cheap to use especially when a lot of demons have it), but bosses usually have no weaknesses and are immune to at least one element. So if you face an ice boss and have no demons on hand immune to ice (as I did for one battle) you better have a heck of a lot of healing items since you'll be taking on the boss solo. If you don't, the boss is going to wipe out all of your turns by taking advantage of the weaknesses of your demons. Sure, you could go out and either recruit or fuse demons needed for the job, but that would mean trudging through the dungeon all over again.

It would have also been nice to actually choose which skills get passed on from a fusion instead of having to reselect the fusion over and over until it finally gives you what you want. Lucifer help you if you want more than one skill and your demon has the max amount of skills. And save right after getting a successful fusion if you want to do another, because if your luck is bad like mine the second will be a failure and you'll have to start all over.

I'm venting a little bit because I'm stuck on the game because I'm at a boss who is immune to physical attacks and I've just spent the entire game up to this point beefing up my physical attacks. Ugh, I could beat him, but it would take a few tries and it feels too much like work for me. I don't mind challenging fights, but I do mind when the game goes out of its way to take away any advantage I might have. I can't even take the normal 'level your way to victory' approach because of the linear way the dungeons are set up and the way the press turn system reduces the importance of leveling.

Great game up to this point though. I just wished this director's cut was a little more polished.