Reader Reviews

Shin Megami Tensei III - Nocturne (PS2)

by itamae

In the beginning, everything ends. A man-made apocalypse called the Conception reduces the world to a barren place which is haunted by demons and the spirits of the dead, leaving only the Shinjuku Hospital in Tokyo untouched. Luckily for our protagonist he and two of his friends are in the building when it happens, but soon after the incident they are separated and the main character is transformed into a half-fiend by a mysterious child. The world is about to be restored either way, and it is up to the player to take part in its recreation.

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? Well, the sad thing is that I've just told you about a quarter of the story, and all of this happens in the first 15 minutes. I wasn't joking when I told you that the world is a barren place. There's a total of eight human NPCs, the whole script comfortably fits on a soggy beer mat, and the locations are as breathtaking as, er, empty rooms, which they are. Seriously, most of the rooms are just empty cubicles, with a placeholder standing there to tell you that "this is an empty room" or something equally exciting. The dungeons are just as dire, with a level design last seen in the the classic Bard's Tale series. We are talking 90-degree angles, one-way doors and teleportation fields here!

And then my pet hate, the battle system. You see, it's all about resistances and weaknesses. Hit a fire demon with an ice attack and he'll take extra damage as well as lose one of his action. Attack him with fire though and he'll be unscathed and you lose an action - or your whole round. This also works the other way round of course, so through an unfortunate combination of wrong resistances, critical hits and plain bad luck you can die in one of the frequent random encounters without pressing a single button. Or they could just cast a death spell on you, and unless you void that attack, well, you die. The bosses are just as bad, but at least you can prepare for them. And it doesn't help that the rest of your party which is made up of summoned demons only acts as padding; once your main character dies, it's Game Over. Some may say it's balanced, I call it unfair.