A game you will either love or hate, requires more effort than most.
Graphics / Design: Graphics are adequate. Characters are cell shaded nicely, environments are well shadowed and animations are fluid.
Design is not so great. Most of the dungeons are just long winding hallways and rooms with little detail. Ladders and stairs thrown in for spice. The world map dissapointed me. One, because your party is basically a blue arrow moving around, looking like a mouse cursor kind of breaks the mood. Two, becomes a sphere you walk around on the inside of, not a problem by itself, but most of it is destroyed so what you wind up with, instead of a modern urban look like Persona, is something closer to sporadic villages like most RPGs.
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Sound / Music: Is typical RPG fare with techno and industrial themes. Nothing to write home about.
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Game play: I would describe this as pokemon grown up and strung out. I say that because the encounter system is basically an exchange of money and items to acquire new demons. Occasionally a demon will beg you not to kill them or initiate conversation, but on the whole it is much less developed than that found in Persona, which I thought was much more fun to do and watch. Here neither the party nor the demons have anything interesting to say.
Battle is pretty much standard turn based, you have a number of icons corresponding to the number of party members, attacking an enemy weakness or landing a critical gets you an extra turn, missing/ being dodged loses one. Summon and recall demons at will. Only the main character can use itmes though, makes things tough.
The main character ingests magatama to alter his abilities, so a fire magatama will increase some stats and teach a fire skill at level up, while making your vulnerable to ice. This is good and bad because learning skills at level up means you can use the appropriate magatam in a dungeon and switch right before level up to get the skill you want, or you may be stuck for a while waiting on what you want.
Demon fusion is important. There isn't that much EXP from battles and you will be constantly switching out demons so fusing two weaker demons for a stronger one is the only real way to get strong party members. Of course, you can't create demons that are stronger than your main character. It's an okay system, you basically just collect who seems strong or interesting and see what you can get. Still kind of fun though.
Battle tactics are, as stated, a lot more in depth than most games. Yes, you can level up to the point where it becomes less of an issue, but you can still be taken out rather quickly. Save often.
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Story / Atmosphere: Yeah... about that, not really there. This too is dissapointing compared to Persona. The lead up is nice with you and some class mates wandering an abandoned hospital. Once the fighting starts you have to escape the hospital, but after that two hours, it's downhill. You basically run back and forth looking for you classmates and teacher, all of which seem to have ulterior motives, but it's not that interesting.
Also, presumably with all of humanity dead, towns are populated by demons and ghost like souls. This could work for the tone of the game, but half the demons are really cute, the ones that aren't don't have much to say. If there were any indication of fear, worry, entropy or any of those thigns that you would think would come along with the apocalypse, the game would feel a lot better put together.
But that would require character development and there is very little of that for any one.
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All and all, The best thing about this game is the challenge. If you like RPGs but are tired of walking through them get this. Any fight can be your last, boss fights often take multiple tries. Plus there is a very long bonus dungeon. It's also great if you want to have full control over your party development and battle style.
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very VERY shoddy reprint
simply put, this is atlus' way of making quick bucks... reprint copies of games with cult followings.
good, right? not quite as atlus has done a shoddy job. First of all, some copies take forever to load. Second, don't be surprised to find plenty of dust and debris in your "sealed" game
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Great Game, Shameful Price
Everyone's already said the great things about the game, & it is that good, but this 'collectible' pricing needs to stop. Go to Chinatown, NY & stop this vicious cycle. If the DJ guide is included & the game is brand new, then maybe $90 would be acceptable.
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A work of genius.
Whilst not completely flawless, 'Nocturne' is about as close as it's possible to get. Along with games such as ICO and Okami, it oozes quality in every way. The quasi-spiritual/religious and apocalyptic themes, and frequently challenging gameplay make for a welcome change in a genre filled with generic, unimaginative and too-easy button-mashers. Special mention must go to the graphics, which are amongst the most stylish and beautifully accomplished ever seen in a videogame.
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