5/5 ★ – crimson2877's review of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne - HD Remaster.

This is exactly what I wanted from a Shin Megami Tensei game. It's got the maze-like dungeon-to-dungeon no safe areas structure of the first two games, but presented in a way that makes any frustration much easier to take? It doesn't feel as punishing to just move around now, instead you're really exploring these places. Yet at the same time these dungeons are very clearly built in the same way as those older games. They're labyrinths, sometimes with a trick to them (more often here than in the older ones), but still the main push is finding your way through a maze to hit a boss, and here it just feels *fantastic*. The music's on point (same composer as the Persona series, but with a darker, more sinister tone), the artwork is ON POINT THANK GOD FOR KAZUMA KANEKO AND HIS CRAZY SUPER AMAZING UNIQUE ARTWORK, and just in general the whole style of the game is completely cohesive in a way that I don't think many games are. Hot take, but one example I like to trot out is Persona 5. P5 has a very well defined art style, but it's not super consistent thoughtout every aspect of the game. For example, a lot of the demon designs are straight out of this game!!! But here e v e r y t h i n g is built around that art style and it's just gorgeous. I love the desolate cities and abandoned jails and allllll of that good post-apocalyptic stuff on display here. It's more basically laid out than SMT 4, in a similar way to the difference between dungeons in P3/P4 (blocky, repeating) vs P5 (completely unique, less limitations). There's a difference there for sure, but the blocky layouts here feel like a throwback to first person dungeon crawlers more than a technical crutch, and most importantly, they just *work* on an aesthetic level, not to mention how amazing these dungeons just feel to solve. The writing, while sparse, is also exactly up my alley. It's a lot of characters speculating about the nature of the world, of humanity, mixed in with a more conversational tone outside of these drama scenes. There isn't a single misstep on display here, and it just feels so amazing. The cutscene directing is amazing The combat system is near-perfect The pacing is.. well a little flawed, there's some bosses that can end up being quite tough without grinding, but I'm not gonna dock any points for that because, well, overall the game is pretty easy for an SMT game? Not like, persona easy, but it's definitely the easiest mainline SMT game I've played. Granted, I played on normal, but still, only 3 bosses in the game really gave me trouble. So yeah, near perfect game, close enough and meaningful enough to me personally to earn 5 stars and a place on my all timers list, somewhere above SMT 4. Play GMeaeafe cm;j