Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne - So hard that I have to cheat
Falconeer:
The full disclosure is that even though I love this game to death I could never finish it back in the PS2 era. Could anyone around here ever do it? It was known to be hard and I thought "oh come on it can't be that hard". I think it is and here is why:
- You can screw up your character, pretty much having to restart hours and hours in.
- Boss battles are unforgiving since the very beginning. You don't get the boss' weakness down? You are done.
- Good luck reforming your party after a wipe trying to catch the right demons you need and leveling them up for the task.
- Cause not only that involves a lot of grind, but sometimes it is not enough. In every fight a shit RNG can kill you no matter how well prepared you are. That is not entirely true, as there are lots of counters for pretty much everything, but here's why the game is HARD...
- Information is everything. Knowing what every creature is weak to or what they hit for is THE most important thing. And if you are not cheating (no internet, no guides) the only way to learn that is by a lot of note-taking and a lot of... well, dying and reloading.
So basically, it is impossible not to die over and over, but unlikme Demon's Souls where you can get good, here you have to die in order to learn, AND you also need to grind a lot. There's no way around it. The worst part is that it is easy to feel that you have done enough grinding, except you haven't. Or maybe you have but the bss decided to line up two rare super-powerful attacks instead of the usual one.
The Persona/Megami Tensei games have a certain degree of fairness built into it, but SMT 3: Nocturne has very little of it in my opinion. Sure, knowledge is power and remembering everything (including WHERE should you go farm for that particular demon you need to craft another demon) can be very rewarding, but I honestly believe this could be the hardest RPG I have ever played and that I can think of. I can't even imagine who would/could finish a game like this without ever peeking at a guide. Maybe prison inmates who only have one game to play for the rest of their lives? Or people stranded on a deserted island waiting for unlikely rescuers?
With all that said, I am now cheating as much as I can. Which means I am playing on the emulator which allows me to save whenever I want including before a single boss attacks so I can reload if they hit me too hard or I can reload if I score another fucking miss. And I am reading all the guides in the world, about where to put points, what demons to recruit and fuse, and where and how much to grind. And it is still fucking hard. And I love it. Not because it is hard (seriously, it's too hard), but because the world, the atmosphere, the mood, the visuals, the silly sparse conversations, the despair that permeates everything, the beautiful loneliness, the zany characters designed by a god by the name of Kazuma Kaneko and the surreal environments made it and still make it one of my most memorable gaming experiences and now that it runs on the emulator so well and allows me to cheat I will probably (maybe?) finish it and I decided to try and document the whole journey through screenshots.
Here they are.
You know what's funny? There's actually TWO difficulty setting. "Normal" and "HARD". Hilarious.
All the Shin Megami Tensei games take place in a distopian Tokyo, which has been destroyed or ravaged by demons. The world, as usual, came to an end.
Here begins the journey into a vaguely Lynchian kind of dream. A lot in this game evokes the Twin Peaks lodges and the Red Room. After all, it's all about a realm od demons taking different forms.
Chiaki is your school friend. She waits for you in the hospital waiting hall while you go get yourself in trouble and basically witness the end of the world. Just before the world-ending event occurs, she is reading an occult fanzine that predicts the world-ending event.
The hospital basement is the base of operations of the world-ending cult. This guy is not happy with my snooping around.
To everyone's surprise, your school professor is part of the conspiration too. She still hates the world enough to end it, but likes you enough to save you. Kind of.
In the meantime, you dream of weird people who seem to have a lot of control over what's going to happen to you. The world ends, humanity disappears except for a few friends of yours (we'll get there later) and you get transformend into a demon.
That's you, after the demon treatment. Which involves ingesting horrible bugs (magatama) that give you different powers or stats.
As a newborn demon, you suck so bad.
As I said, humanity pretty much disappeared into nothingness. Except for a few co-protagonists that just fell through the world end and are now confusedly stumbling around in destroyed and demon ruled Tokyo. This guy is the guy who wrote the occult fanzine, so at least he seems to know a thing or two about what is going on.
The weird ones who saved you my making you into a demon make sure to keep it mysterious and remind you that you will play a big role in the near future.
SMT and Persona games are all about befriending demons and making them join your party. Here's our first recruit.
Fighting Pretas which you can only communicate with during a full "moon", or with the right member already in your party. Just to make it all more straightforward.
Forneus is the first boss. He is not too hard, which made me think maybe this game wasn't as hard as I remembered.
Our party grows with new "friends".
Falconeer:
We finally leave the hospital and get a first glimpse at what has become of Tokyo.
Also, looks like we are being followed by... a Capcom celebrity.
This is your resident healer. Thing would be literally impossible without her. She still wants money for it.
These are the new citizens of Tokyo. This demon actually had a date with Forneus (who we just killed) but she doesn't know why he's running late...
Zio means "uncle" in Italian, but it means Electricity Spell in the SMT/Persona world.
In a demon bar, we meet Chiaki again. She survived. No idea how or why.
Overall she took things pretty well. She is turning into a nihilist of sorts and wonder if she should be happy to see you now that you are a demon. Eventually, she decides to keep wondering alone cause nothing really matters anymore anyway.
At Club Inferno we also meet a Nekomata who mentions the Assembly of Nihilo for the first time. Looks like the city of Tokyo is under the rule of two parties. The Assembly of Nihilo, and the Mantra Clan. You are not the only one who is confused here. At this point it is still absolutely unclear what you are supposed to do, other than familiarize with what is going on in this new world.
Falconeer:
The recruitiment process continues. Some negotiations go better than others.
We find another bar. This is Nyx the owner. Demons sure like their bars.
Hell, Loki himself hangs around here.
Now this is an interesting development. I honestly don't know for sure but I'd say it's that guy in the hospital basement. Which would also mean the Assembly of Nihilo are the ones who ended the world, which would probably make them the bad guys.
I don't only recruit female-looking demons, but I love Kaneko's portraits of them
Yeah.
After fumbling around in Shibuya long enough, it's time to try and get to Ginza. Here we meet the Manikins, some sort of doll-people who are being squeezed and exploited by the Mantra clans. Are the Mantra bad guys too?
The way to Ginza is blocked by this guy. The first real boss battle and DAMN IT IS SO FUCKING HARD. When I first played this game in 2005 (I think?) I threw more than one thing at the screen over this boss fight and took me three different sessions/days to eventually make it. Out of luck, of course, when he did not get the right rotation in.
Trippy:
http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=23804.0
Falconeer:
Making your way through Ginza and the Mantra palace gets you arrested. In order to prove your innocence (?) you gotta win a trial by combat. First guy is a pushover. Second fight, with Yaksini, not a probelm. Third one though...
... is with Thor himself. Or 'a' Thor. Regardless it is another tough fight that I could win only after enough grinding, enough minmaxng the party and enough luck.
Winning gets you Thor's permission to go upstairs and talk to his boss. We'll get there later. Because before you can do it you will be intercepted by that other famous demon hunter.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the Mantra Clan has one of your friends captive in their prison. No trial by combat for him so you'll have to find another way. He also reveals to you that the professor that likes you is with the Assembly of Nihilo. This confirms that the guy leading Nihilo is the guy from the hospital basement.
He wants for us to save Ms. Nakao, but I am under the impression she doesn't need any saving.
This is what happens when you try to negotiate while drunk. Ehr... confused.
And this is the result of me beating Thor. Rumors about you starts to spread.
Eventually, it's time to meet the leader of the Mantra, Gozu-Tennoh. He made me an offer I decided to refuse. But apparently, this is gonna shape the ending (maybe more?) of the game. I decided not to look ahead. After that, it's time to go pay the Assembly of Nihilo a visit. Something Gozu-Tennoh seems cool with, as he considers them "dangerous" and wants me to see for myself.
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