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LTTP: Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne/Lucifer's Call featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series
- Thread starter Thuddert
- Start date
Sorry for the necro bump but I realised this was sitting on my PS3 and I never actually finished it (nor progressed far enough years ago that I even remembered any of the damn thing). I just played two or so hours and am running through glowy tunnels on my way to Ginza. Can anyone give me tips? It's my first SMT game really.
The game never tells you this but any move you get rid of on the Demi-Fiend is permanently gone. There's a move called Focus that, once you get, you should NEVER remove under any circumstance.
I played for the first time last year and I was a bit... Disappointed, I guess? I heard a lot of good things and it definitely has its highs, but I enjoyed SMTIV more.
The plot is cleverly philosophical and I liked, but sometimes is too much. Gameplay needs a rebalance, though the magatama system wasn't a bad idea.
I guess I'm in the minority, but just saying, it's still a pretty good rpg and had a good time with it. I would buy a remastered with some little tweaks here and there.
The plot is cleverly philosophical and I liked, but sometimes is too much. Gameplay needs a rebalance, though the magatama system wasn't a bad idea.
I guess I'm in the minority, but just saying, it's still a pretty good rpg and had a good time with it. I would buy a remastered with some little tweaks here and there.
Work on getting Daisoujou. It's the best demon in the game if you follow a specific recipe in the fusion.
STR build is the best for the Demifiend.
When you fuse a demon, the number of moves that can be passed on is determined by the total number of skills known by all demons used in the fusion. So it's in your best interest to level up your demons and get them to learn as many skills as possible before fusing them.
However, don't get attached to your demons and try to keep them around all game. This is not Pokemon. Demons will in fact become obsolete, and need to be fused.
"Signs of change" means a demon can evolve, and that's always something you want to do. Not all demons can evolve, but those that do are generally among the most powerful demons you can get at the time. Tyrant, Vile, Fury, Fiend, Seraph (Herald in future games), and Deity class demons are also generally among the stronger demons you can get.
Press turn makes party composition much more important than level in terms of progression. If you get stuck, try fusing new demons to take advantage of the battle system.
Use and abuse buffs/debuffs. They matter a lot in SMT games. Even if a boss uses a turn to negate them, that's a turn it's not using to hurt you.
Also, this is excellent advice:
Daisoujou straight up breaks the game.
Later on in the game, when you unlock the Amala Labyrinth, you can exploit the tunnels and make lots of macca once you look up the proper paths in a guide.
Also, I disagree on the strength build. Later on in the game it becomes broken, but early on you need solid magic spells to survive, especially in the late game dungeons.
My endgame demon setup was Metatron, Beelzebub, Daisoujou. Spent hours to make "perfect" builds for them. The fusion in Noc isn't as forgiving as later games. Ended up making a midgame Daisoujou and the endgame one later.
This is all great, thank you. I'm currently around 7 hours in and this has cleared some stuff up for me. I'm really digging the game and definitely want to play more SMT off the back of this.
The game will do it for you. It's always in the top slot in the demons menu.
Really. That's interesting. Then in that case, never sacrifice that demon
i wish there was some official modern way to play this game.
emulating it has issues with the shadows and for some reason it would always crash on me after the first save on the ps3 digital version (on two different ps3s)
emulating it has issues with the shadows and for some reason it would always crash on me after the first save on the ps3 digital version (on two different ps3s)
Eh he's not wrong. If you overfocus on Strength early when your best move is Lunge (you don't even get Divine Shot until like Level 40) then Demi-Fiend becomes the weak link of the group. Plus having some Magic means that he won't get decimated by spells later on.
The only problem is that Demi-Fiend's only good spell is Tornado.
IIRC it takes a while to get those and by the time you do you've got access to good Strength moves. Tornado is there super early on.
Still deciding to see if we ever get a release of this on Switch and/or PS4 or just do my third playthrough...they hinted at doing it a couple of years back but things have been insanely quiet on the SMT front...come on, Atlus, what's going on?
Welcome to the true man's world.
Remake with New Girl.
I know you keep thinking they'll do that but I dunno man...they may just leave things alone and leave Nocturne as is. SMT5 trailers so far have a heavy Nocturne influence. They could very well turn it into Tokyo Mirage Sessions 2, I guess. It has been so long now and all.
Although it would be nice to finally play the game with Raidou (they should include the option to go back to Dante as well though, if they can).
We don't know anything about SMTV yet. I mean I like Apoc a lot but the Persona was definitely there in that game.
Also Raidou Character Action game by Platinum when
This is what I want more than anything else from the franchise honestly.
DMC5 even gave them a decent starting point to work from with V and his familiars.
Yeah Apocalypse was definitely edging more into Persona but I think even with Redux's changes as well, that the main development team for SMT5 may be bigger (since it will now include the Devil Survivor/Growlanser guys as well) and looking at that last trailer they put out, it straight up looked exactly like a modern day Nocturne follow up (whereas SMT4 was more in the vein of the SNES SMT games). Of course I could be wrong and it moves even more towards softening up and making it more like a traditional RPG series. Even then, at least the gameplay should be great, if Apocalypse is any indication.
Honestly Devil Summoner anything would be nice. A PG developed Raidou game would be amazing. A port of the original Devil Summoner (translated). A new sub-series in Devil Summoner itself (featuring a new Raidou perhaps?) A Soul Hackers sequel (I loved the setting/characters/vibe of that game). Whatever...give me a new Devil Summoner, Atlus.
The Art Direction is 10/10. Same goes for DDS 1 and 2. Those are the Atlus games that visually hold up the best for me on the PS2.
archreaper93
I'm running around at the mall, the first area after the first boss and I'm just mindlessly grinding, question.
Is there any penalty for just grinding forever? Also, besides grinding for EXP I'm also fusing people and recruiting demons.
I love this game so far, the only little thing that bugs me is that the fusion, demon evolution, recruiting, move learn and unlearning and stat building are intimidating, I feel like if I do something wrong, I'm going to fuck myself and have the game unbeatable at a certain point, most notably at Matador.
I'm running around at the mall, the first area after the first boss and I'm just mindlessly grinding, question.
Is there any penalty for just grinding forever? Also, besides grinding for EXP I'm also fusing people and recruiting demons.
I'm playing the PS2 classic version on a PS3 slim, 4 hours in and I haven't had issues, I wonder what your issue was.
I love this game so far, the only little thing that bugs me is that the fusion, demon evolution, recruiting, move learn and unlearning and stat building are intimidating, I feel like if I do something wrong, I'm going to fuck myself and have the game unbeatable at a certain point, most notably at Matador.
Unless you play extremely badly it's nigh impossible to screw yourself completely.
There's nothing wrong with grinding but eventually the payouts stop being worth it.
As for Matador: Use buffs.
There's no penalty for grinding, feel free to grind as much as you want. Honestly I find grinding in Nocturne relaxing because the battles are so snappy and the music's so good.
It's basically impossible to fuck yourself over unless you do something like throw away really good moves (like Focus) or put in really stupid stat spreads. But I've seen someone blind clear Nocturne with a Luck build on hard mode before (totally useless meme build) while getting the True Demon Ending without any of the really good endgame demons, so even that's not really an issue.
Here's some other tips:
- Always keep buff/debuff spells (with the suffix Kaja for buffs and Unda for debuffs) at all times.
- There's a move the Demi-Fiend can learn called Focus that you should always keep in his movelist once you get. It doubles the power of his physical moves next turn.
- Demons who, upon level up, get a little crackling effect on them will evolve into new forms. These are typically incredible demons worth keeping for a long time.
I just fused two demons this morning, I sacrificed Makakaja to keep War Cry, thoughts?
That's fine. War Cry, Fog Breath and Taunt are stronger debuff spells that drop your opponents stats even lower.
Objectively? No, there isn't a penalty for grinding. However, recruiting/fusing new demons and changing your magatama around is much more efficient than grinding levels/exp when it comes to beating bosses.
Yeah, don't worry about messing up builds, either for yourself or especially for your demons. Inefficient builds may make the game more challenging, but it'll never make the game unbeatable.
I can only think of one situation that might make the game unwinnable, and it has nothing to do with messed up builds.
So, how buffs/debuffs work in Nocturne is that each buff/debuff can be stacked 4 times, and buffs/debuffs last the whole battle unless you negate them. You can makakaja 4 times, you can tarunda 4 times, etc. So, normally it takes 4 casts of each skill to fully max out your buffs/debuffs. War Cry and Fog Breath are a bit more powerful in that they're the equivalent of 2 debuffs (one war cry is 2 tarundas, and one fog breath is two sukundas). So you only have to cast them twice to fully debuff an enemy.
Because of this, while there are some situations where I would take makakaja, most of the time keeping War Cry is the correct choice.
Glad you're enjoying Nocturne btw. As you can probably tell, I fucking adore this game.
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oh nice. Started my replay a few days ago. Beat the first meme hurdle and the guest star after that. Game still looks very nice thanks to great art direction. I'm no longer scared after so many finished games from the dev. But I think i can appreciate it even more after my first time in the PS2 gen.