Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

Written by Adam Woolcott  on November 19, 2004

Reviews: I fuse you, Pikachu!

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It's that little thing that may make or break Nocturne with many. If you really need character development with your party members, you need to play the other RPG's on the PS2 this fall, like Star Ocean or Shadow Hearts. You simply will not find it, not with your party consisting of random demons and a main character who only Сspeaks' when you answer a question for him. There's no Сreason' to really care about the characters involved in the whole mess other than some of the NPC's, and even then, since you don't even play as them, it drags down things. It may sound petty but if you're going to have a great story, you may just as well have some character development as well. However, since fooling around with fusions and recruiting new demons can be pretty fun, this can be forgiven and chalked up to old-school allure. The random encounter rate is so high it will surely annoy many, so they should avoid this one too. However, at its heart Nocturne is a very unique RPG, one that may interest you if the current batch of role-players aren't getting the job done. The challenge will draw in those bored of the simpler RPG's, and the post-Apocalyptic storyline is good despite some real backwards ways of telling the story. As it stands, Nocturne is a deep, engaging, and unique game, but one that isn't for all.


Visually, Nocturne is also unique Ц using a very subtle cel-shading effect (as in, you'll barely notice it unless you look really close, it's very Anime in nature, not cartoony), the look is unusual yet fitting for a world basically destroyed, and the sheen of the engine creates an almost dream-like atmosphere. It really looks sharp. The strong point though is the enemy/demon design Ц tons of awesome models and renders Ц and I mean tons, there's a seemingly endless amount of different creatures you'll come across in your journey. Nocturne is fairly low on special effects, as many spells that can be cast are subdued and not quite too flashy Ц unsurprising considering the gameplay-centric presentation. On the other end of the spectrum, the audio is highlighted by a great soundtrack. Equal parts Sega cheese-rock, equal parts Castlevania, the soundtrack is both rocking and gothic depending on the situation. For many early adopters, Nocturne included this soundtrack as a free bonus, to experience the wide variety of musical selections offered. It's very unique from most other RPG's (though the closest I could come up with is Star Ocean with its cheese-rock theme and classical undertones). Unfortunately, Nocturne features no voice acting whatsoever, which does age the game slightly given so many RPG's have at least partial voice acting these days.