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| Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne by Lizard_King 11/02/2004, 9:25pm PST | ||||
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| It's really damned near everything that was promised. The graphics are original in an stylized Ico kind of way, the music's great, the combat is turn based (ABOUT FUCKING TIME) and is still far more engaging than most action RPG's in recent memory (that means fuck you Fable, and on an unrelated note, Star Ocean).
The plot is laden with mildly depressing and definitely grownup themes, that is, if you consider demons and whatnot acceptable adult fare. It's open ended on a moral level that is much murkier and more enjoyable than the usual KOTOR-type obvious binaries. Atlus is really on a roll with the whole team RPG thing, but this is the first one of their latest batch that feels less like an updated vintage game than a truly modern RPG, with circa 2004 production values. So, this RPG's "thing" is demon collecting and mixing, something which proves far more entertaining and rewarding than, say, Star Ocean's obscure and unsatisfying (not to mention needlessly complex) item creation. You fuse demons, sacrifice weak ones for XP, and all the while are on the cruise for new team members as you beg or batter them into joining you. Which, by the way, is one of the more enjoyable aspects: you can start negotiating with your opponents at any time in combat, so long as your protagonist or an appropriate NPC is up, and they will respond in relatively varied ways, including having their comrades interrupt and tell you to piss off. It's difficult to describe the appealing variety of the character designs so far, which avoid monotony despite running across numerous cliches (including, of course, Dante of DMC, whoopteefucking do, stop including him in all my games, even if you adapt the mechanics of combat well to him). Overall, I'd say one of its best features is that apart from minutiae I have not needed the manual or strategy guide yet...what little of the game isn't intuitive or straightforward is well explained. Also, Tokyo gets wrecked in the first ten minutes of story, something far more satisfying than any number of alien planets getting lit up by aliens. Or, to put it another way, it makes Star Ocean seem appropriately ridiculous in comparison. |
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