Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (a.k.a. Lucifer's Call)

[IDSeeker]

Hello everybody!

I was wondering if someone else besides me ever played this masterpiece of the Shin Megami Tensei saga for PS2. I'll give you some hints on the plot: three teenagers decide to go visit their ill teacher at the hospital, but when they arrive they found the structure eerily empty. After some research our character (that we can name, as well as every other major character in game) finds out that the hospital was cleared by a man who wants to bring the end of the world. Of course, he succeed before our very own eyes, transforming the world into a giant desert-like battlefield in which the demons fight an endless battle to decide the shape of the new world. Our heroes forcibly split up and take different paths. Soon they discover that the only humans that have survived are the ones who where inside the hospital during the Conception (end of the world).
Oh, and there's Dante in the game too!
I'll stop here to avoid unnecessary spoilers, but trust me: the similarities with Homestuck don't stop here.

The story is fantastic, full of pathos and it can be seen as a deep analysis on what does really mean to be a human being. You'll ask yourself: who is the real demon here? Are my actions going too far for the sake of a better world? Is the truth all that matter, even at the price of my soul? The manikins are human-like and feel emotions, but they are made with mud and raw Magatsuhi: is it right to use them as a source of energy? Specifically: torture them until they die? And so on...

There are 6 different endings, and I'm not talking about explosions with different colors: I'm talking about VERY different endings based on your choices during the game.

The landscapes deserve a side note: even though the majority of the Vortex World is desert-like, pieces of the human and the demonic worlds can be seen everywhere. In my opinion the best ones are the Magatsuhi storage buildings. Magatsuhi is basically made with human emotions (especially the bad ones created during the Conception). I don't even have to tell you how beautiful (and sad) can be to see a landscape made literally by human emotions overflowing everywhere, silently...

Being a little more technical: it's a JRPG with a pretty long lifespan (60+ hours), with the possibility to either fight or befriend the demons in the world (and if you befriend them, you can fuse them to have better demons later). The battles are with turns, as it's the tradition of this kind of games. There are 2 kind of maps: the world map and the dungeon map; in the former you are an arrow on the map, in the latter there's a third person view; in both there are random encounters (exept in the rare safe zones). There are only 2 difficulties: normal and hard, both playable immediatly. I think this is the only game where if you choose hard you can die in the tutorial if you don't play well since the very beginning. I think it cost a few buck, given it's pretty old... but don't worry: the graphics are still very good!

Tell me if this piqued your interest or if you have already played this fantastic game.

[ndoto]

I need to go back and finish Nocturne at some point. I got up to the part where you first meet the Manikins and then ended up falling out of playing and getting distracted by something else, which is a recurring theme with me; I'm easily torn away from even games that I adore.

I'm a big fan of MegaTen as well as its spin-off games, and while I managed to complete the PS2 Digital Devil Saga and Persona games (never got around to playing the Raidou Kuzunoha games), Nocturne is one that I've revisited a few times but have not made more progress in, sadly. I'd like to jump back into it at some point, but I'll have to get my PS2 set up for it. The backward compatibility for Nocturne is pretty poor on the PS3 - I think it's something about the graphics engine it uses, because it happens to Digital Devil Saga 1&2 as well, but not the Persona games - so the game froze up on me frequently.

If I recall, they actually put Digital Devil Saga 1&2 on the PSN as PS2 Classics in Europe, which makes me wonder if the downloadable versions don't suffer the same from the same freezing issues. If that's the case - and given that Atlus recently put Persona 3 FES on the PSN as a PS2 Classic - it wouldn't be unfathomable for Nocturne to also be re-released as a PS2 Classic title, which I think would be fantastic. There are a lot of folks who probably missed out on Nocturne originally because they didn't know of MegaTen until Persona 3 was released and gained so much popularity in the west.

[IDSeeker]

You should definitely go on with Nocturne: things get VERY intresting just after that point of the story

I would buy a PS3 version of Nocturne just for the nostalgia value, even though they'd probably put Raidou instead of Dante as a cameo partner (because Maniax Chronicle Edition is the last version of Nocturne)

I share a MegaTen experience similar to yours: finished DDS1&2 and Persona2(EP)&3&4, but never played a Devil Summoner (I'd like to, but my PS2 is as broken as me lol)

Hope you'll have fun, if you decide to play it again ;-)

[ImperatorMortis]

I love this game. I'm in the final tower, completed the Labyrinth of Amala(Going for the "True Demon" ending, plus Pierce is awesome.), and got all the Magatama(Yes even the overpowered one). Right now I'm training, and trying to fuse me a Beelzebub, Red Rider, and Shiva. I'm going for the True Demon ending. Also I smiled when I first saw Aradia.

Playing on a PS2 Emulator.

[IDSeeker]

Good luck with the final boss

Also I smiled when I first saw Aradia.

I know, right? There's even a Megido in the game, although it's just a spell XD