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Thread: WK's Top something or other... let's just say "games" and call it good list.

  1. #436
    Huh? Flower?! What the hell?! Administrator Psychotic's Avatar
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    P3 was a pretty decent game and I think you're spot on with analysing its themes and its inter character relationship development, both really strong points.

    I do disagree with the reference to GoT (I assume you're referring to Valar Morghulis there) as being grim and edgy though because the actual meaning of the phrase and its counter-phrase aren't entirely dissimilar to Memento Mori and actually has some well thought out lore behind it. Although yeah I guess if you don't know ASoIaF all that well and your sole exposure to it is people casually dropping it all over the internet I can see why you'd think that.

  2. #437
    Pinkasaurus Rex Pumpkin's Avatar
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    Koromaru is best

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    I should try one of these persona games sometime.

  4. #439
    Radical Dreamer Fynn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pumpkin View Post
    KoromaruJunpei is best
    Fixed that for you

  5. #440
    Edge7's Avatar
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    Well, it's nice that someone finally sold me on P3. I'd been trying to play it for about a decade now, and I always lose interest shortly after Fuuka joins. Whenever I ask anyone why I should go back and play P3, they only ever talk about how it feels more like an SMT game than the games after it. While that's cool, I would just play SMT. You're the first person to make all of P3's mechanics feel like a cohesive whole.

    It doesn't help that the original version is my brother's and the FES version I bought for the PS3 is currently at my parent's house, so I only really play it for a couple hours at a time. Maybe I'll bite the bullet and triple dip.

    Also: Is the Answer worth playing? The SMT3 dungeon crawling fan in me wants to check it out, despite the fact that it probably lacks the dungeon design and intricate combat of that game.
    Returners Represent!

  6. #441
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Edge7 View Post
    Well, it's nice that someone finally sold me on P3. I'd been trying to play it for about a decade now, and I always lose interest shortly after Fuuka joins. Whenever I ask anyone why I should go back and play P3, they only ever talk about how it feels more like an SMT game than the games after it. While that's cool, I would just play SMT. You're the first person to make all of P3's mechanics feel like a cohesive whole.

    It doesn't help that the original version is my brother's and the FES version I bought for the PS3 is currently at my parent's house, so I only really play it for a couple hours at a time. Maybe I'll bite the bullet and triple dip.

    Also: Is the Answer worth playing? The SMT3 dungeon crawling fan in me wants to check it out, despite the fact that it probably lacks the dungeon design and intricate combat of that game.
    Glad I could help.

    In terms of gameplay, The Answer is significantly more challenging than the main game due to no Compendium, no social links to power up persona, and fusion requirements for certain Persona are different. The dungeons themselves are not terribly different from Tartarus, but bosses and enemy sets are now mixed with enemies with contrasting strengths and weaknesses like in P4 and 5 where you can't just spam the Ma-version of spells to get easy All-Out Attack options. From a gameplay standpoint, it's much more difficult which is partly why I liked The Answer, it has some pretty grueling boss battles as well.

    Next entry will be up shortly.

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  8. #443
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    5.
    If you had told me even five years ago that SMTIII would be in my top ten, I would probably simply smile and say, "It's a great game, but I'm not sure about that." yet despite that, this game has seriously stuck with me since I first played it back in 2004. My first playthrough saw me go all the way to the final dungeon where I was getting rocked by a sub-par party build and then I ended up losing my memory card for the game and it would be almost a decade later before I ventured back into the Vortex World and finally finished the game proper.
    Nocturne begins with the player as a normal Japanese high school student who is being bugged by his classmates to visit the hospital where their kind homeroom teacher Yuko is staying after a minor health issue. The town is a buzz with rumors and gossip because their was some kind of violent gang activity going on in the park the previous night, that resulted in several deaths and some people reported seeing monsters. You encounter Hiriji, a reporter for an occult magazine who is trying to investigate the incident and let's it slip that the hospital you're going to may be connected. Meeting up at the hospital with your two classmates Chiaki, the class rich chick; and Isamu, the class clown who are both perplexed because not only can they not find their homeroom teacher, the hospital is eerily abandoned. As you explore, you see some strange sights that reveal certain dark rituals may have been performed there and the hospital may have been a front for a cult. You encounter Hikawa as well, a strange man who is working with your Homeroom teacher for some kind of "great change" that is about to occur. Only after he nearly kills you by summoning some demon does Yuko appear and save you. She takes you to the roof where she tells you that the world is about to come to an end, but to not fret, for afterwards, a new world will be reborn by the Conception. At this point, you witness the end of the world. Tokyo is destroyed with a great light and then transformed into a Dyson Sphere or cosmic egg called the Vortex World. The rest of reality has been converted into energy and brings forth the Kagutsuchi, a being of light and creation that will restore the world based on a new Reason for existence.
    The MC lies dying from the devastation but is approached by an old woman and young boy with blond hair dressed in funeral wear. They offer to save the MC but it will cost him his humanity. Agreeing, the boy drops a strange parasitic worm called a Magatama that transforms the MC into the Demi-Fiend, not quite a demon, but not quite human either. The MC awakes in the Vortex World which is filled with demons, the souls of humans unaware they are dead, and human like creatures called Manikins who are made of the leftover emotions of humans and are preyed upon by the demons. A great war is afoot between the Assembly of Nihilo and the Mantra, both demon factions fighting to collect Magatsuhi, the primordial energy needed to summon a god to represent their Reason to bring to Kagutsuchi and have the Vortex World remade into a new world based on their Reason. The Assembly of Nihilo is led by Hikawa who is championing the Reason of Shijima which is a world of stillness where all life is a hive mind that will never hurt or bring suffering upon each other but at the cost of individuality in a perfect state of Nirvana. The Mantra Army are led by Gozu-Tennoh, a fearsome demon trying to rule Tokyo and prevent Hikawa from creating his reason, he believes in a Reason called Yosuga, a Social Darwinist philosophy where the weak must serve the strong and the strong battle each other to rule. As the Demi-Fiend explore the world and interacts with the factions, he discovers that his classmates and Hiriji all survived the Conception as well though as pure humans. Chiaki is devastated to be brought down to a scavenger who must hide to save her life and eventually undertakes a journey to gain power that will eventually lead her to the Mantra and become their new ruler. Hiriji spends his times studying the Terminal Drums Hikawa had used to cause the Conception and eventually discovers the Amala Network, an inter-dimensional network that exists outside of normal reality and thus bears witness to all knowledge as it perceives the whole of the multiverse. Isamu himself eventually seeks refuge within the Amala Network where his selfish attitude and desire for personal freedom from others has him propose the Reason of Musubi that proposes a world where all life is isolated from each other in their own worlds but are literal gods in said worlds.
    Traversing the Amala Network itself will lead the Demi-Fiend to encounter the Young Woman and the Old Man who reside at the bottom of a Labyrinth within the Network. They propose the Demi-Fiend help them in exchange for learning what is truly going on with the Vortex World, Kagutsuchi, and it's relation to the greater conflicts between Heaven, Hell, and Humanity that is a central focus of the franchise. From here the player is allowed to explore the world and work for the various factions or human "allies" to make their Reason come to fruition, you choices will ultimately determine one of the games six endings you will receive.
    Gameplay is the real heart of this game, and more than any other entry in my top ten, I can say with confidence that SMTIII probably has the best gameplay overall to me. Nocturne introduces the Press Turn system, a revolutionary take on turn base combat where landing critical hits or exploiting enemy weaknesses grants your party an extra turn, for a maximum eight turns per round. This makes party builds paramount to success as you have to carefully balance a demons ability to help exploit weaknesses while covering their own, because unlike most RPG battle systems, the mechanic works both ways and enemies can also land gain free turns by the same methods. Also, if you hit an enemy with a move that they either Void, Absorb, or reflect back, you lose all of your turns making you have to be careful with how you approach battles and be more observant. This means you will be constantly shuffling your party and building better demons to give yourself an edge, and it's best to maintain a proactive stance on this instead of reactive because Nocturne started and popularized the whole "MC dies=Game Over" gameplay mechanic that most of the MegaTen series and even some other franchises dabbled in. This all adds together to create a pretty tactical battle system that evolves as the game goes on. In the early stages of the game, battles come down to simply figuring out what the enemy is weak to and exploiting it for extra turns, eventually this won't work as bosses gain fewer weaknesses and you have to start dealing with spells like Dragon's Eye that quadruple a bosses amount of turns. At this point, a better strategy is to go full defensive and build demon parties that Void or Reflect the bosses skills that will hurt them and make them lose their turns. There are also tons of bosses with gimmicks and other attributes that keeps battles feeling fresh from beginning to end. It's hard for me to think of another game where the gameplay is really satisfying for me from beginning to end.
    The other major aspect of the game is recruiting demons to help you in battle. You can use three demons in your party with you and about a dozen more in reserve. To gain demons, you will likely have to negotiate with them through dialogue. Some demons will need to be bribed with items or money to join, others will join you based on like minded answers to questions they ask, and some will flat out ignore you no matter what. The game does introduce dialogue skills to help raise success rates with certain types of demons, and even some demons can learn these skills. Other factors include the brightness of Kagutsuchi, which acts similar to the phases of the moon in earlier installments, when the phase is full, most demons can't be conversed with cause their too drunk with power from the full phase, but some demons like the unintelligible Foul or Spirit classes can actually be recruited in this fashion. Changed from previous entries, Demons now gain levels though at a much slower rate than the MC which gives them a bit more longevity than previous installments, and a as a bit of a shout-out to Pokemon, some demons can actually evolve when they level up as long as the MC has reached the minimum level requirement of the evolved form. There are also certain demon bosses who will actually join you based on your alignment with one of the games three Reasons instead of fighting you. Of course some demons can't be obtained through conversation and instead you'll have to go to the Cathedral of Shadows and fuse together to create stronger demons. Fusions come in two forms, basic and sacrificial. Basic fusion has you fusing two demons to create a stronger demon who will inherit skills from either parent demon. Sacrificial Fusion involves sacrificing a third demon to allow the new fused demon to gain some extra skills from three original demons as well as an experience boost to make them stronger. Certain high level demons can only be created with sacrificial fusion like the Seraph Michael who can be made by fusing a Throne (second highest order of angels) and Uriel (one of the four big Seraph angels) while sacrificing a Vile class demon (associated with dark gods and villainous deities) to make him. Others can only be created by using material items and the phases of Kagutsuchi like the Fiend Class (all those skeleton dudes you see in the artwork) which makes for a ton of variety. In addition there are two classes of demons whose only purpose if for fusion fodder like the Elementals which are used to evolve a demon into a higher or lower rank of its own class, and the Mitama which when fused with another demon allows the demon to keep it's form but with raised stats. To be honest, to fully explain how deep the fusion system goes can be daunting and is on par with weapon crafting in Vagrant Story. One of the coolest aspects of SMTIII though compared to some of the other entries is that whenever you fuse a former boss demon, they actually retain their special boss skills they used to make the fight against them a living hell. Nothing is more satisfying than battling one of the fiends and then bringing out your own Fiend demon who can spam his bulltrout attacks at later bosses.
    Also, as a first for the series, you can actually teach your character skills.Traditionally the MC of previous installments was a basic human restricted to using guns and melee weapons to fight, but due to your half demon nature, your character can actually learn up to eight spells a la Pokemon style. As you battle and explore your way through the Vortex world, you'll come across Magatama, the parasitic creature used to make you into a half demon hybrid. Each one has a set of powers that can be learned as you level up if your character ingests them. There are 25 Magatama in the game and they average about four of five skills a pieces giving the player over a hundred skills to customize the MC with. You're restricted to eight skills like the demons, and in similar fashion to Pokemon, learning a ninth skill requires forgetting one of your old skills. The Magatama each have themes with some teaching fire spells, other support magic, healing variants, and some that are pure physical base. You can effectively make the Demi-Fiend whatever you want and they even gain some exclusive skills like Gaea's Wrath and Freikugel that can be serious game breakers if used with the right build. My suggestion is getting Magma Axis to deal with Beelzebub due to the move's unique properties that bypass a lot of his resistances and can be buffed with Fire Boost and Fire Amp. In addition to teaching new moves, the Magatama you have ingested at the time also changes your characters strengths and weaknesses. Ingesting a fire based magatama may give you resistance to fire spells but a weakness to ice ones. Course you can learn defensive skills to give you resistance or immunity to certain elements, but they will take up a precious skill slot to do so.
    It should go without saying with all the above statements that Nocturne is not an easy game. Even it's basic normal mode will come across as very punishing for people used to more mainstream fare including the Persona series itself. I've met a number of people who have tried to play the game and dropped it due to the difficulty level. Yet, much like Dark Souls, it's a game that isn't necessarily hard as it is a game you can't approach with a casual mindset. As I mentioned earlier, you can't play the game re-actively and simply build your strategy around failure because Save Points are few and far between and thus death will be extremely painful. You need to start looking at the skills and demons available and build on what to expect. If you treat the game like it's always out to get you and prepare accordingly, you will find the game isn't actually too difficult unless you were silly enough to play on Hard Mode, so you can experience the "thrill of death" like the game describes it. Of anything the game simply has an old school learning curve where the early sections can be daunting but once you start figuring out the ins and outs of the battle system, you'll quickly find yourself kicking ass and taking names in later dungeons with your party consisting of some of Mythology and religions most iconic figures. My final Party consisted of Beelzebub (Major demon in Abbrahamic Religions and Lucifer's right hand man in the series), Metatron (Angelic form of Enoch and the Voice of God itself), and Shiva (Hindu God of Death and Rebirth), which was more than enough to make the final marathon of bosses cry foul on the bulltrout I was putting them through.
    In a very rare instance of awesome, the West lucked out and Atlus released the Director's Cut version of the game out here instead of the regular vanilla versions, this means we got access to the sixth ending, and the new optional dungeon: The Labyrinth of Amala, which is filled with some more challenging bosses and puzzles and may actually be my favorite optional dungeon in an game. Completing floors also grants audience with the Old Man and the Young Women who fill you in on several of the more ambiguous elements of the game's plot, including the backstory of Hikawa, more insight into what Hiriji uncovered by studying the Amala Network, the true nature of the Manikins, and the true nature of the Vortex World and the multiverse's nature of endless death and rebirth. So take solace in knowing we got the good edition. Also, due to an odd partnership with Capcom, the game even has Dante of Devil May Cry fame as an added character that can be recruited though his role in the plot is much smaller than the opening videos would lead you to believe. A later version of the game that is Japan only replaced Dante with Raidou Kuzunoha from the Devil Summoner series and I hope one day Atlus may do an HD remake of that version and bring it out to the West.
    So I've given an overview of the plot and gameplay, so let's discuss why this game is here. While Persona 2 is the first game in the MegaTen franchise I owned, this was the first game I seriously played. I never made it far in P2 initially due to other games attracting my attention but the game's striking art style, and intriguing premise attracted me to this title. The rave reviews helped as well and so I eventually found a copy and dove right in. I honestly needed something like this. By 2004, I was growing a bit disappointed with the RPG genre as it began to slowly segue into a comfortable but bland porridge or tropes and cliches. I was getting bored always saving the world with a plucky group of adventurers each with their own tragic backstory. The genre had become too comfortable and set in what works, which was in stark contrast to the more experimental era of the PS1 generation, and I was still left feeling a bit disappointed by Final Fantasy's recent efforts so I was starving for a new RPG after consuming Suikoden III and Xenosaga. Then this game came along. Honestly the sheer shock value of playing an honest to goodness difficult turn based RPG that wasn't some NES title was refreshing on it's own. The Press Turn system was a novel idea and something that I have never really stopped thinking about because it resolves a lot of the issues I have with JRPG combat. The battle system is mostly fair since the rules work both ways instead of typical systems where enemies and players use different rules and mechanics against each other. Secondly, the elemental exploitation system extends to melee as well instead of the usual role of being the almighty neutral element that ends up being more practical than all the fancy magic spells you'll get. You can't brute force your way through this game, you actually have to stop and think because you'll end up running into an enemy that is built against your strategy and I guarantee it will likely be a regular one you will have to deal with a lot. There are also ingenious boss battles with outside the box strategies for winning such as boss that controls shadow and can make copies of himself. If you attack a copy, you lose all your turn and will get wailed on by the boss. Going into the fight while it's a Full Kagutsuchi will reveal that only the real boss has an actual shadow on the floor, which when hit, removes all of his copies and makes the fight substantially easier. Some bosses also put you in scenarios where you have to deal with the lesser evil, like the boss battle against Samael whose special move is basically the game version of Bad Breath, but unlike typical RPGs, there are two classes of status effects (Body and Mind) and unless you sacrificed some slots for immunity to one type and wore a Magatama to protect from the other, you'll have to be prepared to deal with one type during the fight. Gameplay is generally very rewarding and beating some of the games crazier bosses like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse or Black Frost feels incredibly rewarding, especially when you make them in the Cathedral of Shadows and start using them on your team.
    In terms of narrative, Nocturne is like nothing I had seen before due to the MegaTen franchise being Japan exclusive for the most part, and partially for falling out of love with PC gaming at the time. Ut was refreshing to play a game where there really was no clear villain or heroes. Where your goal isn't about saving the world because it already ended about twenty minutes into the game. Instead you were battling figurative and literal demons to come up with an ideal new world even if the game makes the options painfully clear their shortcomings. I often tell people not to go into the mainline SMT series expecting a strong character narrative. This is a bit of a half truth because I do believe the franchise has interesting and strong characters but unlike most RPGs, the story is never about exploring them as people instead of the characters themselves sort of being mouthpieces and physical embodiment of the best and worst aspects of the philosophies they champion. That doesn't mean they don't have their fun and endearing quirks, but the game doesn't spend a lot of time fleshing out who they were. You know Chiaki was the class rep and a girl from a rich and influential family, but whether she had a good or bad childhood doesn't exactly mean much in the Vortex World and a large part of her story within the game is her simply trying to find a place in this new chaotic reality. This follows the course of all of the human characters to be honest. Isamu spends his time looking for Yuko because he has a crush on her but constantly needs to be rescued which eventually erodes his self worth until he has to become completely self absorbed to function. Hikawa is biding his time before he can summon his patron deity to champion his Reason.Hiriji is hiding around and studying the Amala Drums to gain knowledge about the Vortex World and Hikawa's end goal. Yuko eventually leaves Hikawa and seeks her own Reason but is too confused with what she wants and gets easily frustrated. There are certainly some serious human drama going on here, but don't expect the game to have the characters spend cutscenes lamenting some past mistake they must overcome for personal growth. In true MegaTen fashion, the characters grow more desperate and monstrous as the story unfolds and the extreme nature of their current situation pushes all of them past the breaking point. MegaTen is almost always a story of tragedy, and while you will experience a catharsis moment for the cast, this is not a series where hubris is easily forgiven. Even the MC's endings are a bit bittersweet when you apply some logic and context of the franchise to them.
    Oddly enough an interesting play on the story is watching as the human characters become more monstrous and heartless as the story goes on while contrasting it with a subplot concerning the Manikins. The Manikins are a humanoid race of people created from the primordial ooze and left over emotional residue of humanity. They are basically a new form of humanity that is born due to the nature of the Vortex World, they do not posses souls though as the souls of people still linger in parts of the Vortex World and like their progenitor, the Manikins are somewhat powerless to the whims of demons. They are also a great source of Magatsuhi which is needed by the factions to summon their patron deities to represent their Reason, so they are often captured and tortured by demons to gain this energy from them. The Manikins can eventually be freed from their captivity by the player and go forth to create a safe haven for themselves, they too want to create a Reason so they can finally live in peace and this story is best told through the characters of Sakahagi and Futomimi. The first is a ruthless serial killer who hunts his own kind to drain their power and become more of a demon so he can surpass his limitations of his species, Futomimi on the other hand is a reserved and thoughtful fellow of great spiritual power for his race and tries to lead the group to a better way of life and come up with a Reason. It's kind of interesting to watch this non human race try so hard to become human especially as the actual humans are corrupted. The information within the Amala Network also paints these two in a different light because you can meet their former human selves as souls trapped there and learn some uncomfortable truths about both of them. I think one of the things I love about the franchise is that is makes people, not likable people per se, but people that can be seen as relatable even if you don't necessarily like them.
    I often feel in moral choice systems, it's often too easy to figure out the optimal solution. Often people have to force themselves to play a Good or Evil character cause their own personality makes it too easy to choose. In Mass Effect I play Renegade Shep, partly as a power fantasy but also because I feel it makes for an interesting character to mold him by your choices into that type of person, but your character in the MegaTen franchise is often so removed from the story, that your choices tend to never fall into that trapping of role-play. Instead the choices often feel more like you choosing what you would honestly choose. The negative reinforcements help as well because choice in SMT is not about creating a character, it's about supporting an ideal, and not one simply based on power politics (though it does do that too) but more on inherent values of nature. The three Reason of the game are all based on different philosophies and ideas that human philosophy has reasoned as the basis of how people should live:


    • Shijima is similar to the Law faction of previous entries but has now been re-imagined with more Buddhist ideas. Instead of creating a society absolutely obedient to YHHW and of one mind only for him, you instead create a hive mind that is described with similar terms as the Buddhist concept of Nirvana.
    • Yosuga is a Social Darwinian philosophy of Might makes Right that favors the elite of society and forever casts the weak as a slave population. It perfectly in-lines with the Chaos alignment of previous entries but drops the whole "return of the Old Gods" spiel that often painted the faction in a more favorable light. It is a world of perfect freedom, but only if you have the strength, resources, and ingenuity to rise above the steep competition. It's philosophy has some similarities to Ayn Rand's Obejctivism where the only moral good is the one that makes the individual happy and the pursuit of safeguarding one's own life over the alternative of death being the guiding moral foundation for all ethics.
    • Musubi is a philosophy that rejects the intervention of of other ideas and proposes the self as the only true absolute. The world it envisions is one where all life is separated into individual realities governed by one person who is that world's god. It has some echoes of René Descartes Cartesian philosophy. The goal of this reality is to be a solitary existence who can never be intruded on by the thoughts and wills of others. It is similar to the Neutral path of previous entries with far more selfish and darker tones than before.


    These are the philosophies that are explored within the game, but unlike other cookie cutter choice systems, the game presents these ideals warts and all, which may be a strong reason why the omnicidal True Demon Ending was eventually revealed to be the canon ending. Yet I feel it's a brilliant way to go about it because it forces you the player to come to terms with what you could live with. Would you wish for a world free of suffering at the cost of individual freedom and thought? Would you rather choose a world of freedom with inevitable suffering? How about a world that grants you freedom without the suffering caused by others but in exchange you must forever be alone? What is more important to you Autonomy or Being free of Suffering? At the heart of everything, the game asks some interesting philosophical questions and you must witness first hand the brutality and logical extremes of these ideas. Of course in true MegaTen punk fashion, the story is written in a way to express the sheer hypocrisy of it's supporters. Hikawa wants a world of balance and complete order but not only was he a dissenting mind in his own religious order, but he ultimately forced the world to undergo the Conception to achieve his individual goal. Chiaki wants a world where the strong and elite rule over the weak, but not only do the Mantra have to rely on the resources given to them by these weaker beings but the entire society is one that is based on an elite few depending on a weaker class to survive which inverts the idea of who is actually in charge. Musubi is a world of the individual but Isamu is completely hopeless with accomplishing anything without the help of Hiriji and the Demi Fiend. Even Yuko, who comes to regret her decision to spur on what she felt was a stagnating world by helping Hikawa as the Maiden ends up yearning for the return to a world that she simply convinced herself was falling apart when in reality it already embodied what she wanted. Course if you decide you don't like any of the options and agree most of the cast are complete assholes, you can always go for the game's sixth ending where you become a full demon and join Lucifer's army and put an end to the whole process of the Vortex World, ending the cycle of reincarnation once and for all. Agaiun the choice is up to you and there is no wrong answer, you're never vilified for your actions.
    In an interview for Nocturne, Kazuma Kaneko, one of the creators of the SMT part of the franchise and the series main illustrator mentioned that Nocturne was designed to be a contrast from SMTII. SMTII has a very heavy Law representation to it and Nocturne has a Chaos bent to it. The Vortex World itself isn't a far cry from the type of world the Chaos factions want that are sometimes briefly glimpsed in later installments. Likewise, Nocturne has more of the figures commonly represented by the Chaos faction appearing in this title just as SMTII features a heavy amount of the Law Faction. It's an interesting take on the franchise and I love the fact it has a more otherworldly feel to it from the post apocalyptic or heavy sci-fi utopia feels of the earlier installments. Overall, the game was like nothing I ever played before. It had otherworldly visuals, a rocking metal soundtrack in contrast to the genres usual sweeping orchestral preference, a challenging gameplay based on tactical thinking and character building in an era where most games in the genre were trying to make their games more easy and accessible, and a story that was mature intellectually that largely didn't follow the standard tropes of the genre that were gaining traction at the time. This is a game that was quite impressive to me back then and it's never left my thoughts. It introduced me to a whole new franchise I never knew and finally gave me a taste of something different than the usual fantasy and sci-fi tropes predominate in the genre. It has slowly climbed my list until it finally overtook Persona 3 from me, which was a game that left me emotional drained but satisfied, yet Nocturne continues to make me think and appeals to the inner philosopher within me. Overall, it's a fantastic game that introduced me to one of my favorite franchises.


    Coming up next: xeno2fe3.jpg

  9. #444
    Newbie Administrator Loony BoB's Avatar
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    I had to Google SMTIII to figure out what this game was. I like the look of that game in the coming up next bit!
    Bow before the mighty Javoo!

  10. #445
    Radical Dreamer Fynn's Avatar
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    I started playing Nocturne once but stopped because it was kicking my ass I was 16. Since then, I've played my fair share of difficult RPGs, and there's so many things about Nocturne that look really appealing to me. I hope to get the game again soon and actually play through it for the first time again.

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    I really liked the style and atmosphere when I first tried playing this. I feel like I got stuck against Matador though for whatever reason, and haven’t played it since. Been meaning to try it again though.

  12. #447
    Feel the Bern Administrator Del Murder's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
    Coming up next: xeno2fe3.jpg
    I knew it! You secretly love Final Fantasy VII just like all the rest of us. One of us. One of us. It is in your top 10 just like it should objectively be in everyone's top 10. I only have this to say:


    Proud to be the Unofficial Secret Illegal Enforcer of Eyes on Final Fantasy!
    When I grow up, I want to go to Bovine Trump University! - Ralph Wiggum

  13. #448
    Radical Dreamer Fynn's Avatar
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    Pff. Obviously the next game is Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion


  14. #449
    Trial by Wombat Bubba's Avatar
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    I think we can all agree that FFVII is not going to be anywhere near WK's top five

    ...or indeed his top 100

  15. #450
    Slothstronaut Recognized Member Slothy's Avatar
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    I don't know. For all the trout I give FFVII I still actually like the game overall. Partly due to nostalgia but whatever. I don't think I'd say it's in my top 5 (even if we were talking just FF titles). I wouldn't 100% put it past him to do this to us.

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