SMT: Nocturne

[L'Montes]

Kazuma Kaneko is easily one of my favorite ever character designers. His style really gelled well with the more minimalist of rendering of that era of PS2 tech too I think.

I don't dislike anime-stylings (or the more recent Persona artist/designer) more generally, but it can get samey. His style stands out in JRPG-work, and it's not just those particular styles of faces he uses, but all those fantastic monster designs - whether they're bondage angels or penis chariots.

In particular though, I've always liked his design of the Pixie, and comparing that to pretty much how any other anime-based Japanese design would produce a "fairy" (eyes = 75% of face, g-cup, rainbow sparkles, etc.). Bondage angel is pretty cool too though.

 

[Lutte]

Kaneko's interpretation of the goetia demons will always have my heart best.

Morax looks like goetia meets original Doom. Love the cybernetics/demon fusion stuff.

Kinda wish there would come a day for games that are solely goetia themed.

Remember, kids,
PRAISE MOLOCH.

 

[aweigh]

last one reminds me of akira torisaiyan

 

[Silva]

Woah, what a game. Can't stop playing this shit.

 

[lightbane]

Recently there was a translation of the "japan-only" special edition that includes a bunch of new stuff, in case you want more.

 

[Average Manatee]

Recently there was a translation of the "japan-only" special edition that includes a bunch of new stuff, in case you want more.

Ehh? My understanding was:

Original version (Japan only): missing amala dungeon and true demon ending stuff
Special edition (japan and only foreign version): Amala dungeon/true demon ending/Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry™ series.
Special edition re-release (Japan only): Dante swapped for Raidou and Raidou gets Pierce in order to remain relevant on true demon route. No other real changes.

 

[aweigh]

yeah that's what i always thought as well, the re-release just swapped dante for raido

 

[Silva]

Recently there was a translation of the "japan-only" special edition that includes a bunch of new stuff, in case you want more.

The one that swaps Dante for someone else? If so I'm interested, because this Dante guy is silly as fuck and make me cringe every time he shows up. Are there other changes besides that?

Where do I get it?

 

[Silva]

Fuck! Trying to make this translated version run (it has a fucking transparency glitch here) AND ENDED UP ERASING ALL MY SAVES AND STATES

 

[Deflowerer]

Dude, never do these kind of things mid-game without backups.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Fuck! Trying to make this translated version run (it has a fucking transparency glitch here) AND ENDED UP ERASING ALL MY SAVES AND STATES

Bit of a long shot but, do you have recent windows restore point from before you were fucking around?

 

[lightbane]

Morax looks like goetia meets original Doom. Love the cybernetics/demon fusion stuff.

WAsn't there a demon that somehow changed so much it ended up literally sitting on a toilet, instead of a throne?

Special edition re-release (Japan only): Dante swapped for Raidou and Raidou gets Pierce in order to remain relevant on true demon route. No other real changes.

There are alsoa few swaps of abilities and skills around, as well as giving one last minute decision whether to give You-Know-Who the thing that triggers the True Demon route or not, thus some of the writing is new.

Fuck! Trying to make this translated version run (it has a fucking transparency glitch here) AND ENDED UP ERASING ALL MY SAVES AND STATES

I don't think they were meant to be compatible, since they're different versions and have a few changes, as mentioned.

 

[Silva]

Well, losing the saves was a good thing in the end.

I restarted the game and I'm much better now that I know the mechanics. The initial demons are suprisingly useful.

Also, I managed to accelerate the game just a little bit for a quality of life improvement. The way I did was tweaking the max frame rate to 70 frames in NVidia Inspector. It's a subtle change that makes a huge difference, specially for moving around dungeons and in those moments you need to wait that cylinder spin (saving, amala transport, etc).

 

[Average Manatee]

PCSX2 has a configurable turbo option/button, you don't need any outside utilities. IIRC default is tab and it will speed the game up to 120 FPS.

 

[Silva]

PCSX2 has a configurable turbo option/button, you don't need any outside utilities. IIRC default is tab and it will speed the game up to 120 FPS.

Except its broken. The default is F4 and no matter what value you set it always goes to ~250% (more than 120 fps).

Well, at least it's broken for me. If you know how to make it run at ~70 fps nativelly lemme know.

 

[Silva]

Oh and forgot to say: try the emulator at 4x or 5x native resolution (I think it's equivalent to 2560 x 2560 ?), sa it gets really sharp. Optionally, also edit your gsdx.ini in the video config and turn FXAA to 1 (this improves the default AA level to 2x) and also turn to 1 sharpen textures. Optionally too, edit the shaders to give a little bit more contrast and saturation for improving the atmosphere. Games is beautiful now.

Oh, and got a Jirae Kodama this time. My baby.

 

[Average Manatee]

F4 is the hotkey for no FPS limit. You want the turbo hotkey. You might need to map it in the controller config, but it's definitely there and works.

Turbo/normal FPS can both be configured in emulation settings->GS

 

[Deflowerer]

Are you playing on Hard btw?

 

[Silva]

F4 is the hotkey for no FPS limit. You want the turbo hotkey. You might need to map it in the controller config, but it's definitely there and works.

Turbo/normal FPS can both be configured in emulation settings->GS

Stupid me. Thanks, I'll try that!

Are you playing on Hard btw?

Nope. But I'll have to switch for my next playthrough, because restarting after the lost saves made the game much easier now that I got it's workings.

By the way, am I being unreasonable for finding this game one of the best ever even not getting halfway through it? This is quality crazy shit. The more I progress, the more architecture is changing from something identifiably human to something bizarrely out of this world (in a deliciously good way). And it seems your school companions also go through this transformation, from fearful and fragile people at first to crazy nuts with agendas and wild personalities. I can see a younger myself in the PS2 era becoming crazy for this game back in the 2000s. Wow.

 

[ghostdog]

For a first game you definitely don't need to play on hard. Going through the whole underworld can be very challenging and many of the nocturne bosses, from even midgame, can kick your ass until you fuse demons with abilities that can counter their attacks.

 

[Average Manatee]

Hard is the correct original difficulty though. Normal is babby mode.

Actually original Japan-difficulty was even harder in some respects + no Amala to gain levels and cash from, which is kind of insane to think about. There's several difficulty spike moments where random encounters can suddenly start killing you on an ambush turn if you don't have a finely-tuned party setup. Without Amala to fall back on I imagine it would be really frustrating.

 

[Deflowerer]

I basically didn't traverse Amala at all my first playthrough, wasn't a big deal.

 

[Lutte]

By the way, am I being unreasonable for finding this game one of the best ever even not getting halfway through it? This is quality crazy shit. The more I progress, the more architecture is changing from something identifiably human to something bizarrely out of this world (in a deliciously good way). And it seems your school companions also go through this transformation, from fearful and fragile people at first to crazy nuts with agendas and wild personalities. I can see a younger myself in the PS2 era becoming crazy for this game back in the 2000s. Wow.

Don't forget the soundtrack.

Not only is the soundtrack really varied and well done, fitting the various moments of the game perfectly, but even the most commonly used songs have multiple variations of themselves to stay fresh. Here you can listen to the 7 variations of the normal battle theme for example. And it's just one of the battle themes among the many.
It's truly a work of love and attention put to detail.

 

[Deflowerer]

Probably the swan song of the old Atlus team as well. After this, from what I've read, lot of old timers left. The company didn't have its worst year, and maybe it was bottomline wise profitable, but it seems it was hoped to be bigger success financially and rescue the company from stagnation.

I don't have Atlus' financials for years before Fiscal Year ending March 31 1997 nor after Fiscal Year ending March 31 2004, but Atlus peaked revenue-wise in periods 31.03.1996-31.03.1998, posting ca 36B yen revenue annually. After that there was a significant drop to an annual revenue of 19B yen for almost the entire subsequent period to 31.03.2004, some variation here and there, but pretty much flat, and what's worse, they were posting annual losses for the period 31.03.1998 - 31.03.2001. Mind you, they had some other businesses as well besides making their own games, so take from it what you will. It's more likely that they divested from some other business line that would explain the huge drop in revenue. I plan to make a more detailed analysis and scour through their historical financials bit by bit (since there's a more detailed breakdown of revenues and profits by segment), but since my Japanese is currently still low-medium intermediate, then it's going to take me some time to read through them, although fortunately the financial lingo is pretty standard.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Probably the swan song of the old Atlus team as well.

That's unfortunate, it seemed like Nocturne totally renewed interest in the SMT series.