Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster (Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series)

     “This game is one of the most difficult RPGs ever!” “This game wants you dead!” “Play a real Shin Megami Tensei game!” and so on were all things I had heard about Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. The SMT franchise has a huge gatekeeping fanbase that gets louder the smaller a given game's fanbase is. As some of you may know, I played through all the Persona games during quarantine so I was interested to play the series that Persona spun off from and without some of the anime nonsense that hindered those games for me as well as having some of that challenge people had mentioned. But it’s not just peer pressure that informed my decision to play. Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne came out for the Playstation 2 in 2003 by Atlus. The PS2 era of games is probably my favorite. It’s when big-budget games were at their weirdest and most experimental. That era brought us Killer 7, Metal Gear Solid 3, Silent Hill 2, Shadow of the Colossus, etc. So I bought the remaster for Switch and I have some thoughts about it. Before I start, however, I will point out that it’s very easy to compare SMT games to Persona games, but I will not mention the spin-off at any point for the rest of the review. Other RPGs will be compared and contrasted to it, but not other Atlus games. 

    Speaking of comparing Nocturne to other RPGs, the core gameplay loop is not dissimilar to Pokemon. The game consists of exploring areas and recruiting demons to join your party and then using them in turn-based battles where elemental weaknesses matter. The primary difference being that in Pokemon you weaken an enemy and then catch them but in Nocturne you have to open up a dialogue with them. This dialogue will often have you giving the demons money, items, moral opinions, and health to get them to join your team, and they still may not join even after all that. It sounds annoying but you get into laughing about it pretty quickly. The dialogue is also written so most demons are comically rude, giving it more room to be entertaining rather than grating.  The demons you recruit can learn new moves, evolve, and you can combine two or more demons to end up with a powerful new one with just the right moves and typing. The fusion mechanic is pretty unique to the franchise and gives the recruiting some strategy. 

Most people will say keeping a keen eye on demon fusion is integral to doing well against boss fights and I guess it kind of is. My biggest problem with the combat mechanics is that the game is supposed to be infamously hard. I played on normal mode and I only died once early on in the first 20 hours of play. Maybe that’s a problem of me knowing the mechanics already, but the fact I never changed my team comp for over five hours and through several bosses isn’t great. Most of the bosses don’t have elemental weaknesses so the strategy is just hit them as hard as you can with physical attacks and throw in debuffs and buffs in there. I read that “this is the kind of game where normal encounters can fuck you up!” But after a certain point, I just put the battles on autoplay because it wasn’t worth using MP to beat them and you can buy health items pretty easily, so any damage taken didn't matter. Some may say that the true game is played on hard mode with the true ending but that’s just another level of gatekeeping of where the "real game" is supposed to be. The game has good mechanics, it's just not hard to get good enough where you can mop the floor with most enemies. 

The dungeons in Nocturne, where you’ll spend most of the time, can be annoying to traverse. A lot of them are designed in a labyrinthine fashion with many corridors leading to dead ends or empty rooms. Sometimes the rooms will have an NPC to berate you with though, which can sometimes be worse than an empty room. I get that the point of the sprawling dungeons is to make it so you can get into more random encounters, though that can get grating really quickly. I like the boss fights a lot, they’re the highlights of the game. Seeing the music swell and the world turn to shit around you as you face off against a cool enemy is exhilarating. The slog in between those fights of random encounters and dungeons where you’re checking the map to see which identical hallway has a door you haven’t opened yet is an extreme slog. That slog may get especially worse if you’re not enthusiastic about the plot. 

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne starts off with an extremely stock anime protagonist high schooler who goes to a hospital with two of his friends to visit a teacher. Shortly after, the world gets destroyed in an event called The Conception. Earth is now a weird limbo world filled with demons and all but a few humans have survived. Quickly Satan himself puts a bug inside the protagonist's mouth that turns him into a half-demon/half-human being called the Demi-Fiend. After wandering around for a while you find that the other humans that survived are collecting Magatsuhi, the essence of a human’s emotions, to recreate the Earth however they see fit. Towards the end of the game, you can side with one of the human's plans for a new Earth and fulfill it for them. 

The story is one of the most celebrated things about the game and it is not great. Initially, the game is very enticing because Nocturne starts off with gameplay pretty quickly. It doesn’t beat you over the head with a long intro, but that’s a blessing and a curse. It’s nice I can get into the game quickly but the time slowly moving through the world in other RPGs establishes character, context, and motivations. When the conception happens, you don’t feel the weight of it because you didn’t see how the world was before the apocalyptic event. None of that character fleshing out like you see in disaster and horror flicks is here. Likewise, Nocturne’s characters don’t have a lot to say. It’s nice when you don’t have the pacing stop to a halt because of an hour of dialogue, but because they need to convince you of their grand ideas for a new Earth, their limited screen time means they don’t have any believable arc or argument. The two friends of the Demi-Fiend I mentioned earlier have very odd arcs. After the intro, you don’t see your female friend in the denim dress for a few hours. When you do she mentions how panicked she is all alone in the apocalypse, doesn’t join your party, and by the next time you see her, she’s explaining her idea for a new Earth where only the physically strong will survive and the weak will be wiped out. The scaredy-cat to eugenics touting shift is a huge jump. How it got there is beyond me because the game doesn’t show you the progression. So there isn’t a lot of depth to the plot or a lot of plot in general despite the run time and reputation. Most of your time playing will be the turn-based grind.

Part of the disconnect between the plot and the player may be the protagonist. I don’t mind silent protagonists when they get some characterization or are near a charismatic supporting cast. Wind Waker Link is my favorite Link because in the first hour or so the game lets you know he’s brave to a fault, would do anything for his family, and pretty dumb. All without ever having Link talk. In Portal 2, Wheatley and Glados make the plot engaging because they are such fun characters to watch. The Demi-Fiend has no traits nor any goals. I don’t put myself in his shoes because it quickly becomes such a supernatural scenario I can't relate to, and the protagonist never seems to have a clear goal. Most of the plot is just going to places people tell you to go. All without emoting to his friends being hurt, antagonist taunting, or anything in particular. He’s a blank canvas but I never found myself relating to him, and that’s because there was never a character that felt human in this world. I had no avenue into the plot. Nobody to relate to or root for.  

Now not to say the game doesn’t have good moments. There’s a bit with a serial killer member of a group of creatures being used as slaves. Said killer wears members of his tribe’s faces as a costume, and yeah that’s interesting and there’s a clear goal. Find the fucked up maniac and beat him up so he stops killing innocent people. Most of the game does not have a clear goal besides recreating the world, but there’s an intense amount of meandering up to that point. Still, it’s not even clear for most of the plot if the world can be saved, and couple that with a bunch of ideas for a new world that all border on insane like eugenics, humans are no longer social creatures, or let's destroy the world entirely. Each position not really getting explained fully besides an elevator pitch. The only one that makes sense is that there’s a stronger sense of community in the world but the guy pitching this is the main antagonist with an insanely high kill count and the people he hasn’t killed all think he’s a manipulative asshole. But I suppose that’s what people like about it: the soul-crushing vibe. 

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne’s vibe is doing a lot. There’s an atmosphere of unease and despair in this world filled with demons and seemingly no way out. Eerie music, spooky visuals, and dialogue from demons that want you dead all convincingly create a sense of entrapment in this apocalyptic world. It’s one of the game’s strengths in depicting a realized apocalypse. Now that said, the surface elements of the game; graphics, music, art direction, all have their shortcomings on the technical side. Shoji Meguro is a phenomenal games composer, and his metal tracks for bosses get me pumped every time. When a boss shows up and the singer is screaming “ONE MORE GOD REJECTED,” I’m having a great time. The problem is the audio is compressed no matter what version you’re playing. Plus the game can suffer from frame rate dips in some boss arenas but nothing too bad. Graphics, atmosphere, music, etc. are all aspects that Nocturne pulls off. They make the world of Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne feel distinct and may keep you going through the story and gameplay to see what location and enemy the game will throw at you next. 

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Final Thoughts: Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne is not a bad game. It comes with a recommendation from me if a crushing vibe that is different from most RPGs can carry you through a 40+ hour runtime. The music, world, art, and design, in general, makes the game feel very oppressive in a world that may not want to be saved. But it’s not really challenging and you can push through the game rather easily if you’re quick on the uptake. Plus the plot isn’t easy to engage with, nor does it seem like its characters want to be engaged with. You may find that if other RPGs used entertaining characters, deep plot, and fairly inoffensive gameplay to keep you playing you may not gel well with Nocturne. Though, if you want Pokemon in the apocalypse, it can probably get you by. So, take this recommendation with a huge asterisk. 

3/5

eh

Psychonauts 2

  

             

   Psychonauts 2 plays and feels like a Playstation 2 game. I get that most people use that as a term of derision but I mean it as a compliment. The Playstation 2 has some of my favorite games and was a time when video games were reinventing what they could be. See Killer7, Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid 3, and of course the original Psychonauts. Psychonauts 2 is incredibly creative, charming, and at times even emotional. This isn’t being said just because I’m a fan of the original as well. The original Psychonauts came out in 2005 for PS2, Xbox, and PC and was made by the then newly formed Double Fine. Double Fine has made plenty of games in the sixteen year gap with none I was interested in and plenty that didn’t review too well. The only exception to the aforementioned statement is the Psychonauts VR game which I hated. Funnily, the VR game was the only one in the series that was funded well enough and didn’t go through delays and cancellations. Needless to say, from the gap in time and track history, I had low expectations for Psychonauts 2. The best-case scenario, in my mind, was that the game would have some of the token snarks you’d expect, no level would be better than the best from the first and we’d all call it a night. And while it is technically that, it is also much more.

    The story is that you are circus runaway and gifted psychic, Razputin Aquato. Three days after the events of the first game, you are brought to Psychonauts HQ to investigate who kidnapped the head of the organization, who was saved during the VR game. It is quickly realized that the abductor was working for someone trying to bring back a deadly psychic. Said deadly psychic was an adversary of the founding Psychonauts, the Psychic Six, causing Raz to embark on a mission to reunite the team to battle this nemesis. To do this you’ll have to enter the minds of nearly all the founding members and complete platforming challenges and collect-a-thons in order to get them over a shared trauma concerning their final battle together. It’s in this area where Psychonauts genuinely surprised me. 

The original game’s cast of brains to enter and screw around with were not connected with each other in any meaningful way, nor did the depictions of mental health come off as particularly realistic. Not to say it was offensive or anything close to that, but the famous Milkman Conspiracy level from the first game is a gag about how insane and paranoid Boyd Cooper was. By having the founding Psychonauts’ issues come from a shared experience and life together, each brain not only gives us insight into the owner but also on plenty of the other members. Additionally, issues like abandonment, alcoholism, identity, and loss are played as being serious and written well enough where it works. Don’t get me wrong, the game is still filled with wacky humor, but rarely is the mental illness itself the joke. 

I smiled a ton at the silly gags and Compton’s Cookoff will be a favorite level of mine because of how goofy the anthropomorphic food begging to be used in a cooking competition is. Yet, Bob’s bottles or Strike City had moments that made me genuinely feel sad and contemplative about the themes the game was going for. A number of characters deal with the loss of their friends or significant others alone and that’s important. When the founders reunite it’s a great scene because they’re choosing to be together again and to push through their hardships as a team. Their biggest mental issues become worse when they’re separate and dealing with their grief alone. And the writing caries these themes and relationships. The characters are cartoonish and oftentimes goofy but the game knows when to make their actions and dialogue grounded in reality. Psychonauts 2 is also concerned about acknowledging everyone’s humanity. Even the game’s big bad can be redeemed, so long as they want to atone for their misdeeds. The game most certainly isn’t actually about just fighting the antagonist but saving them. In that way, among others, Psychonauts 2 is about compassion towards others. 

This is what I want out of video games as a medium and art in general. Psychonauts 2 has a maturity that developed from the sixteen years between installments. It was initially a masterpiece simply by being a goofy PS2 game. But art should evolve with the times as well as an artist’s maturity. I certainly appreciate it more as someone who played Psychonauts 1 for the first time in middle school and its sequel during the second half of college. While yes, it is true that Psychonauts isn’t as funny as its predecessor nor are any levels as good as the top 3 in the original, that doesn’t really matter. Psychonauts 2 is still fun but more importantly, it uses the medium to tell a character-driven story that moves the player. And some people have written the game off because it chooses to be more mature. There are even two married gay characters if you want to write a steam review about how the SJWs ruined your game. But, don’t we want our art to evolve in more adult directions while avoiding ever being considered edgy or gritty? To make us feel human and then to make bigger points about the human experience? I certainly think so.

The gameplay also rocks but it’s clear that’s where the game has the most issues. At its core, the game is your typical 3D platformer. You jump and use abilities to traverse to different areas based upon the mind of whoever you stuck a tiny door to. The abilities all around are fun to use from the PSI-Blast which is just a standard range attack, to mental projection which creates a mini Raz. The abilities are also widely useful in combat against the game’s expanding enemies list. From the first game are censors which stamp out things that aren’t supposed to be in someone’s head but there are also regrets, bad moods, panic attacks, doubts, enablers, judgments, and bad ideas. Throughout the game, you can unlock pins to enhance your attacks, abilities, or just do something superfluous like give Raz a little dancing idle animation. The problem is the game is a bit clunky in combat and sometimes it can feel like there are too many enemies with different weaknesses at once. So you’ll want to use the pins, but you only get three slots and if you’re like me, two of them will be for cosmetic changes or haha funnies. Likewise, you have four ability slots to map eight abilities in total to, but you’ll probably always have levitation and PSI-blast locked to two. These are easily fixable problems but they are problems nonetheless. 

Like any 3D platformer, there are also tons of collectibles. There are figments, half-a-mind, nuggets of wisdom, emotional baggage, and memory vaults. Almost all are pretty easy to keep track of and collecting them is both easy and levels you up. So there is an incentive to collect. The exception is figments. While they do level you up and each figment is a new 2D drawing that means something to the person and the world in their mind, they are plentiful. Some levels have well over a hundred and there’s no good way to keep track of which ones you collected in which area, so 100%-ing it is a son of a bitch. Again, that could be fixed in an update, and if you’re not a completionist then you probably won’t worry. I do love how figments and memory vaults give you interesting lore about the world and its characters though. 

The levels themselves are a treat. I constantly felt like I was being surprised with concepts and themes for levels. Each one was a blast to explore and I’m hard-pressed to think of any level I disliked. Now thinking about it, Psychonauts 2 doesn’t have as high highs with out there level design as the first one but it doesn’t have the lowest lows either. The one everyone will remember is the PSI-King level which is cell-shaded and meant to look like a crazy acid trip. The hospital cross casino level is also really inventive. This is all without mentioning the overworld which has some great design with insane detail. There are caves that could have just been caves but are instead filled with eye candy to give the area a distinct feeling even though you’ll probably blaze through it. The game is filled with visual detail and story telling. Like the tiny signs held by the clumps of hair in Ford's Follicles. 

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Final Thoughts: Psychonauts 2 wasn’t really what I was expecting, but it surprised me in all the right ways and I ended up falling in love with it. It is what video games should be. Equal parts creative, emotional, funny, and just a fun game to play. Psychonauts 2 is also a really pretty game. Many worlds have great-level design and are a joy to look at. There are problems, yes, but they’re so minor and fixable that I can’t think of them as anything but minor blemishes to an otherwise exemplary video game. I wish bigger budget games could take risks like this and put their energy into being both fun and deeply meaningful again, and it’s the best 3D platformer since Mario Odyssey. It has surpassed the original in my mind and is one of my favorite games of all time. Maybe I’ll even play it again or 100% it soon enough. 

5/5

Oh this shit rules