Call it what you will—A revelation from God, or a curse of the demon king. The fact remains that our world came to an end.
A heretic called upon an unearthly light, and devastation ensued. Chaos crawled out of the depths of the ocean, from the black abyss.
Death upon death… nothing but death in this barren land. Who can we pray to? There are only demons and fiends here…
A voice in the dark beguiles me: “Truth is a mystery, unraveled by the candles’ flames”.
— From the Journal of a Man who Wandered into Another World
The year is 20XX, the world’s life essence is close to being completely depleted by the human race and in order to bring the world back to life, it must die for it to be born again under a new sun. For such a thing to happen, an event prophesied in the Scripture of Miroku called “The Conception” must occur, where the entire world will be reduced to chaos, awaiting the arrival of one who will recreate it according to their own Reason.
One day, a high school student and his two friends decide to visit their dear teacher, who has been sick and recovering in the Shinjuku Medical Center in Tokyo, Japan. Arriving at the precinct, the students come to find it desolate of all people. Eventually, one of them finds the teacher in the basement close to a man who summons a demon and foretold the coming of the apocalypse. She explains this student about the Conception, and saves him and the other students from dying after the end of the world commences and turns the once prosperous city of Tokyo into the spherical Vortex World. Unlike his peers, this student is then approached by a strange child who transforms him into a half-demon, giving him power to either aid those looking for creation, or destroy the dying world.
Shin Megami Tensei III is the third installment of a franchise that laid dormant for about a decade, not being continued after its second installment in 1994, which makes the game’s overall theme of death and rebirth become true for both the narrative and it’s design, which reintroduces and reforms many of the aspects of the franchise into a bold new direction which kicked off a whole generation of Role-Playing games from its developer ATLUS.
For a title to have had such a big impact on others to come, then it definitely speaks much of the strength of its direction, which was handled by a newcomer to the franchise Katsura Hashino with creative decisions made by franchise veterans Kazuma Kaneko and producer Cozy Okada, who each include aspects of their own style to make Nocturne a truly unique game.
Nocturne’s depiction of a post apocalyptic world is unlike any other, conserving the general sense of desolation and bleakness that overruns any one of these settings, but along with that it takes the familiarity of a 20th Century city like Tokyo and brings it down to the bizarre and alien. A permanent sense of chaos permeates the essence of the way the world is designed in Nocturne, but it still maintains the notion that this once used to be a world populated by humans, even though its been taken over by the demons.
A world ruled by the demons is very different from one ruled by humans, and Nocturne presents a great contrast between the two with the way it handles its world building. The Vortex World is a very well established setting that incorporates many thought provoking ideas with a near complete disregard for conventional setting dispositions. The factions and Reasons which shape the world of Nocturne are inherently demonic and anti-establishment, and play off each other’s ideas in interesting ways in accordance to the many other mystical aspects of its universe.
Another aspect which makes the universe of Nocturne interesting is the clash of Oriental and European mysticism next to Modern ideologies which make up its mythos, presenting a world where gods and demons are put through to align with modern ideological currents.
In contrast with previous games in the franchise, Nocturne drops almost completely the alignments of the previous games and the heavy themes of Judeo-Christian religion, replacing these with its own Reasons. In Nocturne, Reasons act as representations of modern day ideological currents. Reasons such as Yosuga, which looks to create a Social Darwinism; Shiijima, resembling Karl Marx’s communist beliefs; Musubi, inspired by René Descartes’ individualist ideas; and the game’s own incarnation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Existentialist ideals.
This change in direction was by far the best decision Nocturne could’ve done in terms of its narrative and themes, as its representation of modern day ideological currents remains relevant and its thought provoking interpretations of the way the new world should be created still inspires discussion amongst those who are willing to look deep into them.
Nocturne is also the kind of game filled to the brim with any and all kinds of visual symbolism, using plenty of visual references and parallels to capture its themes of the eternal cycle of death and rebirth that our current world faces, as many ways of thinking or interpreting things vanish and then reappear in different ways, or the way nature seems to be replaced by technological advances with each passing day.
This excellence in visual design is attributed to Kazuma Kaneko, responsible for the game’s many demon and character designs. Kaneko’s style is brilliant at making characters or entities which have a bold, unique or iconic design without losing their sense of minimalism or simplicity, while also giving a sleek look to his characters with a great sense of aesthetic design to his character’s clothing and physical attributes. When it comes to demons though, he makes designs that are perfectly reminiscent and accurate to their origins and depictions in mythology while still retaining that sense of simplicity and pleasing aesthetic design, showing that a great deal of research was put into making these demons fully represent their origins while also complimenting their irreverent personalities.
Kaneko’s unique style has also been perfectly translated into the game’s 3D graphics and environments, with a smooth cel shaded style that makes the game hold up near perfectly by today’s standards. The game also shows a great deal of care and attention put into the game’s usage of color, applying different palettes to reflect the mood of the environment, or to present contrast with the objects in the foreground and those in the background, thus presenting scenes that are not just pleasing to look at, but also capable of being appreciated as singular works of art.
Complementing all of these aspects is newcomer Shoji Meguro’s impressive experimental score, which helps immerse the player into the world of Nocturne, presenting tracks that go against the generally miserable or alienating music styles of apocalyptic games and instead giving the world of Nocturne a musical style that is catchy and incredibly satisfying to listen to both individually and in context while also retaining a sense of strangeness to it, through tracks that blend genres like Hard Rock, Techno and even Orchestra.
Nocturne’s beautiful world and impressive visual design help carry the game’s entirely minimalist narrative all the way through, making the player notice the game’s visual cues and world logic instead of the events that lead to the end of the game’s story. Despite its minimalism though, the narrative in Nocturne seems lacking in many aspects, presenting a string of events almost devoid of any player agency or interaction with the environment, where the main character must aimlessly stumble his way around the world without any clear objective for the most part, while mostly witnessing scenes of other characters talking to them about what their ideologies are or what they are supposed to represent within the constant war for creation that breaks out within the Vortex World.
This near lack of characterization extends over to the character development of Nocturne, which seems almost completely rushed and nonsensical because of the way the game makes some of its most important characters fit into the roles that the game wants them to fill in. Characters go from being normal human beings into radical fiends who die and kill for their ideologies in the span of only just a few scenes. The issue is further accentuated by the characters’ unclear motivations and backstories, which don’t contribute to making sense of their contradictory actions.
The characters in Nocturne are better off once they have truly become the representatives of the ideology or Reason they support which is when the plot of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne truly starts to get more interesting, but sadly, this happens after the game has reached its halfway point and the game is close to reaching its end, which means that the first half of the game is somewhat unsatisfying from a narrative point of view.
To make up for this, Nocturne’s gameplay stands as a counterpoint to the narrative, being consistently satisfying due to design choices that reward planning and good use of its mechanics. Nocturne is a game where every element of its design exists to make it rewarding to master, which is in part due to the game’s great sound design and user interface. Battles in Nocturne may have a much steeper difficulty curve than other RPGs, but once you understand what you’re doing and can truly stand up to many of the game’s boss encounters or foreboding areas, you will feel like you have truly accomplished something.
Just like all other games of its franchise, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is a Role-Playing Dungeon Crawler, where the player must venture through a series of dungeons with limited resources and scarce save points in order to reach the end boss and defeat him in order to grow stronger and progress to other and more difficult dungeons. The aspect that makes Nocturne stand out is its Demon Negotiation and Demon Fusion systems, which allows the player to recruit almost any of the enemies they encounter in battle through conversation and use them as allies in battle in order to stand a chance. Once demons are already past their prime, you can fuse them with other demons to create a demon that’s stronger than the previous two, making a worthy addition to the player’s party.
Both of these mechanics make Nocturne truly addicting to play, because of the great deal of variety and customization options that come from forming a party full of strong demons that suit the player’s interests and allow them to form strategies in battle. This is also due to the how Nocturne’s fusion mechanics are some of the most in depth and rewarding of its entire franchise, featuring multiple options for being able to create the perfect demon in a way that makes the player truly work towards that goal by circumventing the mechanics, thus receiving a worthwhile reward by the time its over.
The other mechanic that makes Nocturne stand out is one of the game’s new additions to the franchise, The Press Turn system, which set the standard for the way the franchise approaches battles. Unlike the pure turn based battles of the original games, or even later games, Nocturne features a system where each character in your party gets an individual turn that they can perform immediately, which consumes that turn, unless said character passes their turn onto another character, gets a critical hit or hits one of the enemies’ elemental weaknesses which gives the player a half-turn that the next character can use, but cannot earn back unless there’s another full turn coming up after the half turn. However, each time the player hits an enemy with an elemental affinity that they nullify, drain or repel or the attack misses, the player loses either two turns or all turns depending on the kind of affinity, which also applies in reverse.
This system is genius, and helps make every single battle in the game have a strategic edge, making the player not only plan out his party according to what elemental strengths and weaknesses they want it to have, but also makes the player’s focus during battle to get as many turns as possible to deliver as much damage or devastation towards the enemy team as they can, making the player think of their actions carefully and learn of the kind of elemental affinities and weaknesses the enemy team has.
To further add on to this system, the game’s primary method of player development is through Magatamas, which are parasitic entities which the main character ingests in order to receive benefits or new powers. Each Magatama changes the player’s affinities and stat bonuses, as well as giving them benefits or curses after leveling up. This system is also important, because it makes the player think carefully of not only what skills they want from each Magatama, but also the affinities and stat bonuses in order to fully create the character build they want and become a force to be reckoned with in the Vortex World.
Press Turn works amazingly once the player is on the game, which is also due to the game’s excellent User Interface, which is designed to not only be comfortable and ergonomic, but is also really pleasing to look at due to a great usage of color and screen space, keeping the important elements on screen at all times in an almost perfect alignment with all the other elements of the screen.
Although, this system can be frustrating at times, because of the game’s frustrating rule of ending the game whenever the main character specifically dies, considering that the player does not know the affinities of the opposing party until they either use an item or use trial and error as a method, which may most likely end up poorly for them, especially in bosses. Not only that, but the enemy characters can sometimes exploit the system to deliver a somewhat cheap kill to the main character, unless they knew specifically what demon was going to appear in every random encounter and prepared accordingly. This problem is accentuated by the minimal amount of save spots in the game, which limit the amount of times the player can save the game and can lead to many hours of lost progress.
But once the player has mastered this system and finds what ways there are to circumvent around them, the game truly feels much more rewarding, a feeling that extends to each of the game’s memorable boss encounters. Each boss in Nocturne poses a unique challenge, thanks to the Press Turn system, and often requires that the player thinks well of what strategy they are going to use to take them down, with many bosses having special strategies that only the most attentive of players can exploit. The boss demons also have unique personalities and roles within the story, which compliment these encounters and make them fun enemies to challenge in order to test the player’s merits.
Unlike its predecessors, Nocturne allows the player to freely move around each dungeon in a third person perspective, which adds a new level of immersion to the gameplay experience of the game and never feels sluggish to control. This great jump from 2D to 3D also extends to the game’s battle screen, which has been greatly redesigned to show fully modeled versions of the player and enemies, showing the battle in interesting and easy to understand angles at all times while never feeling too rigid or confusing.
Keeping up with the series’ core ideology of making recognizable human environments on a demon infested world, Nocturne’s dungeons are instead landmarks or normal locales which used to be a part of the human world. These places tend to have a sense of an architectural design to them, making it seem as if they were real places first and videogame dungeons second. This kind of level design is complimented by Nocturne’s great environment design, which turns the mundane into the unknown.
Though, each dungeon tends to have a core mechanic or gimmick that hopes to make it somehow stand out from its peers, which eventually leads to dungeons having mechanics that outright impede or block the player’s progress until they perform a menial task, or circumvent the obstacle in a time consuming way that interrupts the flow of gameplay a lot of times.
But even with a number of flaws, Nocturne is still probably the most accomplished game of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, being able to single-handedly give birth to a whole new generation of games, including the Persona franchise, while also being one of the very best Japanese Role Playing Games of the past generation, thanks to its highly competent and artistically prolific direction plus its thought provoking story and themes of the constant cycle of death and rebirth of the world.
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne is nothing short of a masterpiece, its the kind of game that inspires discussion and admiration to those who want to look deep into its creator’s efforts to make it the quintessential game of the franchise. Nocturne is the kind of game that successfully reinvents the core ideals of a franchise more than ten years in the making and culminates the era of those who created it while also bridging the gap between this and the new era of newcomers, that would try to make their own works with the experience that they acquired working on it.
And this is why, without a doubt, Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne deserves to be played by anyone who is interested in Role-Playing Games, or anyone who appreciates a game creator’s merit and skill for making it.
“The comfort of death will come
to men and demons alike
…by the guidance of the Great Will.”
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I really like this one too. I said everything I could about the game at the time and I thoroughly explored the connections between the talent involved and the originality of the product. It also flows really well.