Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne

There Are Forces Vying For Creation. Without Judging Their Reasons, Your World Will Not Come To Be. Side With Them, Or Side Against Them.

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne is a game for the PLAYSTATION 2.

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Shin Megami Tensei III, otherwise known as SMT Nocturne or SMT Lucifer’s Call in Europe, is the third numbered installment in the Shin Megami Tensei series. Despite this, it isn’t technically the third game in the mainline series. In any case, it was the first official SMT game I ever played. It was an entirely memorable experience, from the story to the combat to the themes. It’s a little difficult to put my feelings into words, considering they don’t always translate correctly, but there’s a lot of nuance behind why it’s such a thematically deep video game.

To start, the visuals and especially the models are very nice for a Ps2 game. Kazuma Kaneko’s art adds a lot of style to the character and demon design, especially the four main aligned characters of the game. To begin, the Demifiend’s design is immediately very striking, with the blue accenting on his markings glowing in dark dungeons like the underground railway systems. His design is a little bland before being fused with the first magatama you receive in the game, Marogareh, but that’s perfectly fine. You don’t see it for very long. Chiaki Tachibana and Isamu Nitta are also very visually distinct, with Chiaki’s seemingly all-jeans outfit and Isamu’s, as Robbie Daymond (his voice actor in the remaster) describes, being “a mix between 2000s Britney Spears and Criss Angel.” He isn’t necessarily wrong.

The demons are also very pleasing to the eye, with Kaneko taking some artistic liberties due to the histories of some creatures not being very well defined. I especially like Mothman’s design. I find it very cute, despite the creature’s foul mouth upon interaction.

Shoji Meguro’s compositions for this game are also incredibly memorable. With the use of Apple’s text-to-speech software Plaintalk for Mac OS and the “Albert” preset, the mechanical tone of the vocals adds a lot to the atmosphere. I don’t personally think every song on this soundtrack is amazing, but they’re certainly fitting for the environment and are incredibly iconic even outside of the Megaten community. The battle themes are in-your-face, the world themes are atmospheric, and the music in each dungeon fits to enhance the experience, at least in my opinion. I especially like how the Amala Network battle theme is a reworked version of Old Enemy - Akira Volume from SMT If.

Next up, the story and characters. The story of this game is very minimal, but a lot can be implied through dialogue options and flavor text within the world. I won’t write a play-by-play description of the story considering I have to write a bunch of other pieces for this project, but there are many videos that can explain it better than I can. The main conflict in The Vortex World is that there are only a few humans left who will shape the fate of the world. The conflict between them and their ideals creates a lot of very thought-provoking discussions. I personally really enjoyed the story in this game.

The story being very non-present isn’t entirely a bad decision. SMT, in essence, is really about themes, worlds, and concepts. On the other hand, some people may view the lack of a clearly defined or satisfying story as a weak point in the game. That personally doesn’t matter much to me because there isn’t an unnecessary amount of reading, which is one of my problems with Persona specifically. I really like jumping straight into the gameplay.

Continuing on, the characters. The protagonist, the Demifiend (I call him Naoki Kashima because that’s his name in the Drama CDs), follows the Megami Tensei tradition of being silent. Despite this, he seems to be a decent enough student in school, hates bullying (discussed in the Drama CDs), and has a bit of an attitude. Your dialogue choices both in the overworld and in demon negotiation imply that he isn’t always the most serious guy around. I know that everybody interprets characters differently, especially silent characters with implicit personalities, but I always personally read him as kind of a pathetic 17 year old loser. However, I know some people interpret him as a badass within the context of the story. It’s stated that he, Chiaki, and Isamu are in the later years of high school at the time of the Conception.

In any case, I haven’t mentioned or explored Hikawa much because he’s not really a huge presence in the story the same way Chiaki and Isamu are, at least in my opinion. Hikawa is a cult leader that brings the Conception on, and you see The Assembly of Nihilo quite a few times throughout the story, but if I remember correctly you only see him directly at the beginning of the game, at the end of the Assembly dungeon, and in the Diet Building.

There are two characters I haven’t discussed yet, and those are Ms. Takao and a journalist named Jyoji Hijiri. Takao, while being the main neutral rep, isn’t discussed much in fandom spaces and often lies forgotten behind Chiaki and Isamu, who are much more present characters. Takao desperately wishes for the world to be changed, but has no idea how it should be. She is considered the Maiden of the Conception, contributing to Hikawa’s plan and assisting in the cult’s activities. She longs for power, but has no conviction in her ideals. Each character has a demonic sponsor, being chosen by gathering a large amount of Magatsuhi to attract one. Takao does not receive a sponsor, but gets the attention of a false god from another Vortex World named Aradia. Aradia’s ideals are for humanity to receive freedom.

Takao’s ending is an interesting one. Where the other Reasons permanently shape the world in a way, Takao’s reverts the world back to normal. This is drawn from her lack of conviction. Neutral endings in SMT games are usually seen as temporary solutions to much larger societal problems, and this one is no exception. This solution is the most tonally pleasant, but thematically depressing in its own way. Things continue to stagnate, leaving Naoki and Ms. Takao as the only ones who remember the Vortex World existed at all.

As for the other one, Hijiri is another interesting character. He descends into madness over the course of the game, going from the Demifiend’s only trustworthy human ally to somebody desperate for both control and any sense of power. He discovers the ability to traverse between each location’s Terminal (which function as save points) through this labyrinth called the Amala Network. He shows up at Terminals across the map and gives the Demifiend guidance on where to go next, eventually despising how he feels he’s only useful to provide information. He plots to gather his own Magatsuhi and develop his own Reason, but he is killed by Isamu via literal crucifixion before he can do this.

One of my main critiques of Nocturne’s story, unfortunately, becomes prevalent the more you analyze the characters. Due to the vague nature of the story, you don’t see the characters descend into their eventual extremist ideals the way you would in SMT IV, for example. You can draw logical conclusions, sure, but the transition isn’t as gradual as it seemed it was intended to be.

Isamu’s descent from cocky high schooler with secret self-esteem issues -> getting the shit beaten out of him repeatedly and making him feel powerless -> secluded loner sounds like an incredibly good decision for his character on paper, but the way it’s shown in the game goes through the bullet points pretty much in the way I described them. It feels a little clunky. Chiaki’s decision to fend for herself turning into a survival-of-the-fittest mentality is also an interesting idea, but once again it is shown through five or six cutscenes total in this 50 hour game.

Hikawa, in my opinion, is the only character who doesn’t suffer from this problem. This is likely because he seems to know exactly what he wants from the beginning. His world of silence, stillness, and sameness is something he advocates for right from the beginning, when you meet him before the Conception.

Regardless, I actually do love the idea of the hypocrisy of these characters and their ideas. It has spectacular potential to be a dissection of extremist ideologies and how they form through outside influence and personal experience. Chiaki’s world of strength is overshadowed by the fact that her own choice to recruit you requires you to prove you’re stronger than her, Isamu’s world of isolation creates more stagnation in the human race, and Hikawa’s world of silence and sameness gives him inherent power over everybody else due to the fact that he and the Demifiend would both be Creators.

I could genuinely talk about my feelings on this game for hours. It’s incredible and has shaped a lot of my lived experience, causing me to think about game design for countless hours and put more thought into the art I create, both writing and drawing. The last thing I want to cover before I finish up with this particular review are the atmosphere and combat of this game.

The atmosphere in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is genuinely one of the most oppressive and well-executed things I’ve ever experienced in a video game. The game’s difficulty is one of the most famous things about it, but despite my personal feelings on it, it’s definitely intentional. Random encounters are not always just another chance to grind and up your level, they require more thought and luck than I personally would expect from a game. Once you get to the end of the game, random encounters can sweep the floor with you even at your most prepared. It’s all done to let you know that this world is hostile and will not hold back for anything. Boss encounters are structured more as puzzles than brute force encounters, and it is actually impossible to brute force your way through most boss battles in this game. You need to be purposeful and calculated with your movesets, demon party members, and resistances/weaknesses.

For those who don’t know what the press turn system is (my teacher), you are given an icon in the top right corner of the screen that dictates an action for each member of your party. If you get a critical hit or exploit a weakness, you get a flashing half-turn icon that allows you to take an additional action. If you miss or an enemy voids your skill, you lose two press turns. If the enemy reflects or drains your skill, you lose all of your press turns. Losing two press turns can change the outcome of any battle, even a random encounter. However, whatever rules you are bound to, the enemy is as well.

For boss fights, you need to structure your team to exploit this system the best you can. Buffs are also way more important in SMT than other JRPGs, considering even one casting of a speed, attack, magic, or defense buff can save your skin.

Back to the atmosphere, the battle system is only one facet of it. The music and especially the Ps2 lighting engine contribute heavily to the oppressive feel of the Vortex World. The music creates eerie or haunting moments, the visuals make everything feel too dark or too bright, and outside of populated areas like Asakusa, the underground, or malls and cities, it feels lonely. You hardly see anybody around on the overworld, with occasional NPCs popping up here and there.

I think the most atmospheric of the dungeons in Nocturne has to be the Diet Building. In addition to being my favorite dungeon in the game, it feels hostile and empty. The insides are constantly changing shape to confuse you, with the only present characters outside of Hikawa being the three demon bosses who are attempting to trick you. Mot, Mada, and Surt all have their own gimmicks in the overworld, creating false doors and false walls or reshaping corridors to keep you feeling like you’re unwelcome.

Overall, this game is pretty well done. I like it a lot! Unfortunately, I’m going to talk about something less good now. Sorry.

SMT Nocturne got an HD remaster on May 25, 2021, and it’s not always very good. The visuals were put through Unity, causing the Ps2’s fog effects in the neutral ending to entirely disappear. The fog just isn’t there. It makes the entire cutscene look pretty bad. The text font was changed, much to the distaste of longtime fans. It isn’t even a very pleasing font. It also re-uses the Ps2’s cutscenes, barely upscaled in quality and stuck in their 4:3 aspect ratio. It leaves some awkward gaps in the side of the videos.

It isn’t a horrific game by any means, just an obviously inferior way of experiencing this story. The demon voices also got changed a little bit, and I’m not a huge fan. However, that’s a nitpick, and I can recognize that doesn’t inherently make the remaster bad. On the other hand, the version with Raidou Kuzunoha is more accessible, which is a plus in every way. In the US Maniax version of SMT Nocturne, there’s a famous cameo crossover where Dante from DMC appears in the optional content. In a packaged release (it contained both Nocturne and DSRK2) in Japan to promote Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon, they replaced Dante with Raidou in a version called Maniax Chronicle for those who wanted to play it.

The remaster allows you to use Raidou as a default, but paid DLC lets you use Dante. I’ve complained about ATLUS’s DLC practices before, but this is fine. I understand, since Dante isn’t their character.

Unfortunately, this version also has framerate and general lag issues. The Nintendo Switch version is especially infamous for this. Having played it myself, I can absolutely agree that it’s incredibly noticeable and really annoying during gameplay.

Regardless, SMT Nocturne is a fantastic game. It was the first mainline game to be localized in the US, and it arguably shaped JRPG history as a whole. It’s incredibly atmospherically dense and very fun to play. If you like the genre and turn-based combat, I really recommend checking this game out if you haven’t already. There’s a lot to do, especially with the Hardtype mod being as popular as it is. The Hardtype mod, if you don’t know, is a version created by Zombero that rebalances gameplay in many ways. It increases the difficulty, changes around buffs (for example, tarukaja going from buffing only physical to buffing all forms of attack), and adds some quality of life improvements.

There are a great many ways to experience this game, which I think is really cool! It’s decently long, clocking in at about 50-60 hours for the main story, but all of that time is worth it. It’s an important part of both JRPG and Megaten history, and (in my opinion) stands the test of time.