i think the worse at it i am, the more i will get out of it, somehow
it’s good for things to be hard 
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to be fair, the goth cat girl in fortnite is the first thing in fortnite not to be aesthetically repulsive
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I’ve decided to put down Nocturne. I beat Matador easily enough with the Pro Strats I looked up but then my immediate reward was to keep navigating this bland sewer level and getting into random battles. I realized at one point that I’d somehow accidentally gone in a circle, and after course-correcting and going someplace new I hit a dead end with a chest. I didn’t even open the chest, I just turned off the game. Didn’t even bother saving.
There’s some cool stuff in this game. Great NPCs (well, except for the two “friends” from the beginning, honestly don’t miss them much). The demons are all super enjoyable. I dig the music. But moment-to-moment I just wasn’t having a good time and I didn’t have it in me to keep going. It was making me feel tired.
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for as cool as the demons and dialog and lore is in SMT games, dungeons comprised of repetitive, bland hallways seem to be essential to it. Some people like that, I suppose, but I don’t think I do. Maybe someone can spin the dungeon design in a way that makes that an interesting quality of the series, but I’d be pretty critical of that.
The combat is what draws me to SMT for the most part. I like the bosses in Nocturne, they feel puzzle-y.
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I hate to say it but this feels like missing the dungeon for the corridors.
That sewer level is pretty bad though, essentially a linear template for much better dungeons afterwards.
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excellent phrase
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nocturne is very much like a 3d transposition of the tile based dungeon crawls of the previous games it even has an unlockable first person view. idk i guess not everyone vibes with it but it def has more similarity to strange journey and smt1 which are more like wizardry or w/e than final fantasy. diff flavor of jrpg that i obvs wish they didnt move away from. idk… digital devil saga 1+2 are probs a lot easier and more final fantasyish and share a dev staff totally to a degree where the three feel like a trilogy so you might try those two. or not idk.
but yeah nocturne feels like a borderline survival horror game or smth (as i suppose a lot of dungeon crawlers can)… managing ur mana / heals economy step by step at points and dying to random encounter back attacks before you can act on occasion. you can of course break the mana economy pretty early on (makatora + chakra step + mp drain) and trafuri (100% escape chance spell) is like one of the most important skills you can get.
not for everyone! but ig if you dont find the vibe and exploration of dungeons (taken to kind of an absurd point in strange journey which is probs the last classic style game in the series) to be its own reward there are more entries with more concrete rewards like the dating sim aspects of p3 or the plotiness of smt iv. if you just like demon fusion and sick music and like pop culture esotericism and stuff ig.
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yes this is very true I think. progressing past the shitty sewer dungeon i think is the point where i gained perspective enough to appreciate this peril is built into the monotonous “where the fuck is the exit omgggg” feeling you find yourself with. most FF dungeons in my experience are far too short to ever feel like this. FF3 stands out, actually. Its crazy four-dungeon sprint at the end of it was delightfully harrowing because of this.
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killed the dragon god ln… it’s funny that the game implements this like vision cone stealth mechanic for this battle that kind of just never comes back into use do any of the other games have that kind of battle? they stopped doing these kind of more “cinematic” setpiece-ish bosses i think. someone made the point that a lot of the bosses in the series seem to take after like… flamelurker and penetrator and i tend to agree with that…
speaking of, since we’ve killed our first archdemon…
let’s go kill tower knight and penetrator by casting dozens of soul arrows on them! since i’m on sl1 i don’t need to spend souls on levels and can in fact just buy spices and grasses. it’s an easy game… imagine how the other ones would be if you could carry 99 flasks of cerulean and crimson tears etc. of course they also have carry weight.
even at sl1 a +5 dragon sword will basically exterminate anything hanging out in 1-3 in one or two shots. it’s not hard to get of course since the dragon god drops pure dragonstone on defeat.
this is a good example of the games not necessarily being hard but requiring a methodical approach that most games dont ask for. obvs walking up to these three guys and just trying to take them on would be a bit of a challenge… but you can and should manipulate the aggro system to draw them to you one by one. just like god hand!!
soooo true biorr
oh you don’t say… i wonder what’s over this direction
we match 
this guy is of course hilarious… always pinned down by some of the weakest enemies and yet he wears the armor on the cover. poor guy
hope that works out for ya buddy!
poor maiden… she doesn’t handle rejection very well ig.
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Demons Souls
Done Dirt Cheap
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I love Nocturne and SMT games generally, but they’ve always had bad dungeon design, more in line with the early Bard’s Tale titles than any of the Wizardry titles IMO
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I think coming into this series through Persona 3 makes going back to Nocturne a real culture shock almost. A dungeon delve is not what I’m subconsciously primed for.
Although I wonder if I ever get around to playing Grimrock if I’m going to bounce right off. Maybe these types of games just aren’t my jam. Or I haven’t found the right one yet.
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Grimrock is pretty good, though about 100% of what made it a good time is directly copied from FTL’s Dungeon Master, including the dungeons themselves.
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I wonder if anything has ended playthroughs across many different games more than sewer levels have?
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always be exiting sewers
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the sewer level in dark forces was so bad it convinced too many people that dark forces had confusing maze level design instead of some of the best level design in fps history
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water levels in general are a bug “the fun stops here” signpost in level design. I started playing various versions of New Zealand Story and every one of them has a point where they introduce underwater mazes where you have to find air pockets to recharge your breath meter at and they make me want to never play the game again. See also, Sonic games and Tomb Raider games. Water level is just no fun in the same way that fire level is either the “we are out of ideas” or “remember when the game in this series everybody has fond memories of did this” moment in any given game
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I did like the Ristar water levels though. And Burning Rangers has dolphins
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I’m moderately pro-ice-level even though I’m also anti-water.
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are sewers water, the greatest debate in the history of selectbutton shut down after five thousand posts.
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