Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster

В МОЕМ РЮКЗАКЕ ЕСТЬ ВСЕ!!!!!!!!

6/10 Good I need to play more of this due to me only beating the first boss, but yeah its good i just need to play more.

This may not just be among the best of mainline MegaTen, it may not just be one of the best games Atlus has ever made, but it may genuinely be one of the best games of all time. Sure it, has flaws: The story and the characters themselves being chief among them, but they're really small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. That being said I do feel that maybe I do need to focus on the small stuff I have issues with rather than praising the game as a whole (Cause I already think it's great in terms of gameplay design, music, dungeons, art style and even the ideas it wants to convey through the story) The story and characters then, they're fine enough, I've never really thought of this game having the most memorable or incredible party members like SMT IV does. They're not necessarily terribly written, but they're mostly there as vessels (both literally and figuratively) of the ideas they are trying to convey, and they do a mostly fine job with that. I think the big issue that comes in for a lot of people is their characterization. Hikawa is portrayed as this guy who is supposedly obsessed with bringing his supposedly ideal world of stillness to life, driven by his desire of this one perfect world (ironic cause according to him, emotions are weakness and are not allowed in his ideal world) but he never feels like a threat, not directly to the player anyways, until the very end at least. Isamu is just whiny, selfish and a massive hypocrite who says he wants a world where everyone has to be alone and fend for themselves but he never would've actually reached the point where he's at at the end of the story if he hadn't gotten help from other people bailing him out of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ situations (be it directly or indirectly) and literally gaining his power from a literal network of information. Chiaki is kind of annoying and... not necessarily ♥♥♥♥♥♥, but she is kind of a pain in the neck. Claiming that she wants a world where the strong rule over everything and deem the weak not strong to survive, thus they eliminate them; but she would've been amongst the first people to get killed in that new world had someone stronger than her not taken pity/seen opportunity within her. Now, not to sound like a snarky, artsy film student with his head stuck so far up his own ass that he can tongue kiss himself, but I feel the Reason reps' hypocrisy is intentional. Mainline SMT has always been all about how humans are complex creatures that shouldn't just blindly follow ideals as the be-all, end-all of their lives; ideological principles can be good as a guide through life, but dedicating the entirety of your life to it can be detrimental, same if you believe in nothing. And I feel that's the point the story is trying to convey, that even if humans are supposedly guided by one, unique principle (not necessarily good or bad), they will inevitably do things that go against it (whether they realize it or not) and making that one principle the center piece of their lives will eventually destroy them and strip them away of who they once were. And the plot itself, while proposing interesting ideological ideas, does feel a little disjointed and all over the place. But I think I like it that way? You jump around from dungeon to dungeon, at first looking for Hikawa and then chasing down the different Reason reps across the world, and while it can feel a bit jarring and like it's jerking you around, I think that it all comes together pretty well by the end once you see the grander picture of what it was all about. Overall, it's not a perfect game, no game really is. But I think the small stuff that I have personal issues with or didn't like are not overall deal breakers. They're annoying sure, but this is still one of my favorite games of all time and the reason I fell in love with this wonderful series in the first place.