Reviews
[Review] ‘Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD Remaster’ Brings Back a Fascinating Demon-Slaying RPG
When critically acclaimed games look set to be marooned on older systems and eventually lost to entire generations of players, you’d be willing to accept any kind of port that keeps time alive and prominent for future prosperity. Turn-based RPG Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne is one such game that is welcome to have back and readily available, but its relatively straightforward remaster shines a bright light on its age. It’s pretty much the game it once was, warts and all, but maybe it could have been a bit more than that.
Originally released back in 2003 for PlayStation 2, Shin Megami Tensei 3 sees you as a Tokyo high school student who finds themselves thrust deep into the events of an apocalyptic cult’s reconstruction of Earth known as the Conception. Becoming a Demi-fiend, the player ends up serving demons in their task to reshape the world for Lucifer. Exactly how that world is shaped is up to you though.
The game’s opening quickly builds the looming apocalyptic event, learning about rumored cult activity whilst at a medical center, and seeing clues to the truth of it unfold as time goes on. Eventually, the event happens and the mysterious and weird becomes all-out bizarre as Tokyo is encapsulated in a bubble that turns it into a ‘Vortex World’ full of demons to both defeat and recruit.
On the surface that doesn’t sound a million miles away from a number of RPGs from the past 25 years, but where Shin Megami Tensei 3 differs is in how it presents this situation as an intellectual and spiritual question. Shin Megami Tensei 3 is a philosophical game, more interested in ideas and ideals than in characters and their problems. Whereas many RPGs feature a host of interesting party members and villains, this game is somewhat light on that side of things. The focus is actually on what value life as we know it holds, and offers differing perspectives on that. The player is ultimately the one making the choice for humanity and its fate. There are various factions jostling for control, and the one the player sides with shapes the world in their image.
Whilst other elements of Shin Megami Tensei 3 have aged, the story remains fascinatingly fresh and relevant. It’s compelling enough that even when the game tested my patience, I wanted to persevere in order to see where this story was going. Exploration offers its own reward in terms of fleshing out your final decision by interacting with unique demons that have their own insight into the whole situation. Your time with these interesting figures is usually brief, but can be quite impactful. It’s a different kind of RPG for many reasons, but this approach to the world, its characters, and its protagonist are the most important factors in that.
As a game it’s a bit more familiar, especially now that Shin Megami Tensei‘s spinoff series, Persona, has since popularized much of what it brings to the table. Generally, battles take place via random encounters that become turn-based fights with enemy demons against the player and three of their own demons from a pool of eight or more (depending on progress) and follow the idea of turns a lot more strictly than most. Any single action counts as a combatant’s turn, but there is an opportunity for a second go at it if a weakness is exploited and/or a critical hit landed. Some actions can affect multiple combatants, but carry a risk of multiple missed turns if they fail to land or are blocked.
Shin Megami Tensei 3 is extremely hard on your mistakes. Slipping up in combat is almost excessively deadly, bringing to mind the cold cruelty of XCOM at times. There’s a perverse thrill to be had with such intensity, but perhaps a little too often does it become an aggravating chore to be battered because the numbers decided you fucked up. It puts up something of a barrier for those curious to dive into this for the first time, but I stand by the fact it has a compelling enough narrative to deserve patience. It does have an easy mode called ‘Merciless’ that strips the combat of any challenge, but it ends up damaging the overall experience. Perfectly fine if you just want the story, but utterly without challenge for anyone else. A middle-ground compromise might have better served Shin Megami Tensei 3, but I suppose at least the option is there. The game might be a bastard, but it’s genuinely best enjoyed that way to get the most from it.
One way to improve your chances is to recruit new demons. If you’ve played the recent Persona games, this will once again be a familiar thing. As with those games, you can negotiate with downed monsters to see if they’ll offer up some loot or even themselves. The negotiations can go wrong, and some demons take a bit of financial persuasion to be convinced to join your cause. Even in this relatively early form, it’s somewhat engrossing trying to hunt and lure tricky demons over to your side. There’s unpredictability and sensible logic to this system too, as some will ask for something from you and scarper with the ill-gotten loot. You’re never quite sure what the next sweet talk will bring you, and that is perhaps the only thing keeping the combat encounters interesting over time.
If you find demons that are not in the mood for a chat, there is an option to fuse them with others to create a different demon type. Both methods are required to find the right demons for the jobs of fighting and negotiating, as each carries particular skills in either field. Combining the demon’s skills with special buffs called ‘Matagamas’ that lend the layer elemental powers and the like are crucial to toppling the tougher foes. Combat essentially becomes this strangely satisfying loop of fighting to negotiate to get good enough to obtain a new power from a boss.
Visually speaking, there’s not a great deal to write home about in Shin Megami Tensei 3. If you are looking for some great overhaul, you’d be disappointed. It very much looks like the PlayStation 2 game it once was with a lick of paint. The sleek cel-shaded art style means that it’s not really that much of an issue at least.
While this remaster is slightly underwhelming, and certain aspects of the game have become a little dog-eared, Shin Megami Tensei 3 is still worth checking out. It’s a rather unique experience that stands out even in an age where its spinoff series has diluted many of its more interesting facets.
Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD Remaster review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.
Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD Remaster is out May 25 on PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Reviews
“AHS: Delicate” Review – “Little Gold Man” Mixes Oscar Fever & Baby Fever into the Perfect Product
‘AHS: Delicate’ enters early labor with a fun, frenzied episode that finds the perfect tone and goes for broke as its water breaks.
“I’ll figure it out. Women always do.”
American Horror Story is no stranger to remixing real-life history with ludicrous, heightened Murphy-isms, whether it’s AHS: 1984’s incorporation of Richard Ramirez, AHS: Cult’s use of Valerie Solanas, or AHS: Coven’s prominent role for the Axeman of New Orleans. Accordingly, it’s very much par for the course for AHS: Delicate to riff on other pop culture touchstones and infinitely warp them to its wicked whims. That being said, it takes real guts to do a postmodern feminist version of Rosemary’s Baby and then actually put Mia Farrow – while she’s filming Rosemary’s Baby, no less – into the narrative. This is the type of gonzo bullshit that I want out of American Horror Story! Sharon Tate even shows up for a minute because why the hell not? Make no mistake, this is completely absurd, but the right kind of campy absurdity that’s consistently been in American Horror Story’s wheelhouse since its inception. It’s a wild introduction that sets up an Oscar-centric AHS: Delicate episode for success. “Little Gold Man” is a chaotic episode that’s worth its weight in gold and starts to bring this contentious season home.
It’d be one thing if “Little Gold Man” just featured a brief detour to 1967 so that this season of pregnancy horror could cross off Rosemary’s Baby from its checklist. AHS: Delicate gets more ambitious with its revisionist history and goes so far as to say that Mia Farrow and Anna Victoria Alcott are similarly plagued. “Little Gold Man” intentionally gives Frank Sinatra dialogue that’s basically verbatim from Dex Harding Sr., which indicates that this demonic curse has been ruffling Hollywood’s feathers for the better part of a century. Anna Victoria Alcott’s Oscar-nominated feature film, The Auteur, is evidently no different than Rosemary’s Baby. It’s merely Satanic forces’ latest attempt to cultivate the “perfect product.” “Little Gold Man” even implies that the only reason that Mia Farrow didn’t go on to make waves at the 1969 Academy Awards and ends up with her twisted lot in life is because she couldn’t properly commit to Siobhan’s scheme, unlike Anna.
This is easily one of American Horror Story’s more ridiculous cold opens, but there’s a lot of love for the horror genre and Hollywood that pumps through its veins. If Hollywood needs to be a part of AHS: Delicate’s story then this is actually the perfect connective tissue. On that note, Claire DeJean plays Sharon Tate in “Little Gold Man” and does fine work with the brief scene. However, it would have been a nice, subtle nod of continuity if AHS: Delicate brought back Rachel Roberts who previously portrayed Tate in AHS: Cult. “Little Gold Man” still makes its point and to echo a famous line from Jennifer Lynch’s father’s television masterpiece: “It is happening again.”
“Little Gold Man” is rich in sequences where Anna just rides the waves of success and enjoys her blossoming fame. She feels empowered and begins to finally take control of her life, rather than let it push her around and get under her skin like a gestating fetus. Anna’s success coincides with a colossal exposition dump from Tavi Gevinson’s Cora, a character who’s been absent for so long that we were all seemingly meant to forget that she was ever someone who was supposed to be significant. Cora has apparently been the one pulling many of Anna’s strings all along as she goes Single White Female, rather than Anna having a case of Repulsion. It’s an explanation that oddly works and feeds into the episode’s more general message of dreams becoming nightmares. Cora continuing to stay aligned with Dr. Hill because she has student loans is also somehow, tragically the perfect explanation for her abhorrent behavior. It’s not the most outlandish series of events in an episode that also briefly gives Anna alligator legs and makes Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian kiss.
“Little Gold Man” often feels like it hits the fast-forward button as it delivers more answers, much in the same vein as last week’s “Ava Hestia.” These episodes are two sides of the same coin and it’s surely no coincidence that they’re both directed by Jennifer Lynch. This season has benefitted from being entirely written by Halley Feiffer – a first for the series – but it’s unfortunate that Lynch couldn’t direct every episode of AHS: Delicate instead of just four out of nine entries. That’s not to say that a version of this season that was unilaterally directed by Lynch would have been without its issues. However, it’s likely that there’d be a better sense of synergy across the season with fewer redundancies. She’s responsible for the best episodes of AHS: Delicate and it’s a disappointment that she won’t be the one who closes the season out in next week’s finale.
To this point, “Little Gold Man” utilizes immaculate pacing that helps this episode breeze by. Anna’s Oscar nomination and the awards ceremony are in the same episode, whereas it feels like “Part 1” of the season would have spaced these events out over four or five episodes. This frenzied tempo works in “Little Gold Man’s” favor as AHS: Delicate speed-runs to its finish instead of getting lost in laborious plotting and unnecessary storytelling. This is how the entire season should have been. Although it’s also worth pointing out that this is by far the shortest episode of American Horror Story to date at only 34 minutes. It’s a shame that the season’s strongest entries have also been the ones with the least amount of content. There could have been a whole other act to “Little Gold Man,” or at the least, a substantially longer cold open that got more out of its Mia Farrow mayhem.
“Little Gold Man” is an American Horror Story episode that does everything right, but is still forced to contend with three-quarters of a subpar season. “Part 2” of AHS: Delicate actually helps the season’s first five episodes shine brighter in retrospect and this will definitely be a season that benefits from one long binge that doesn’t have a six-month break in the middle. Unfortunately, anyone who’s already watched it once will likely not feel compelled to experience these labor pains a second time over. With one episode to go and Anna’s potential demon offspring ready to greet the world, AHS: Delicate is poised to deliver one hell of a finale.
Although, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How do you expect to be a good conclusion if this is what you’re chasing?”
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