this is what a nice hardtype should be, a nice reasonable challenge instead of little timmy in the hex editor giving enemies overblown stats and jacked spawn rates
yeah the problem with most hard mode mods is that are made by people who spend to much time in a game to the point they know everything to the small detail or just think they are fromsoftware.
@@mechakirby9576a hard mode mod that forces you to minmax in persona is the whole point of playing with hard mode mods since the vanilla games are piss easy
@@peteybakedziti8908 By ThE mYrIaD tRuThS!!! :B Why wouldn't you grab this persona and ability, I don't think aside from end section bosses there isn't anything this spell cannot handle.
Regarding why the Full Moon Encounters don't simply have their Press-Turn increased from the Get-Go, based on my observation the Full Moon Encounters mostly uses the same data internally as the summon-able ally with the only difference being skills learnt. The summon-able allies only have one Press-Turn, this means if the Full Moon Encounters have their Press-Turns increased it would affect their summon-able ally as well, so Turn increasing moves were used to compensate, though this is only my speculation.
when you were listing out the cons, at first i was like "oh man those sound lame", but thinking about it, is there anything more quintessentially nocturne than one or two (frankly) batshit design decisions that you will leave you leaning back in your chair after having to reload a save out of nowhere?
Played Nocturne on PS3 a little over a year before they announced the HD remaster. I'm glad I did. I spent HOURS and HOURS on it, leveling up my Demi-fiend until every stat was maxed out, and I had enough MP to spam Mediarahan after going on a Focus+Deadly Fury+Freikugel spree. Then I went and platniumed the remaster. All in all, Nocturne is one of my favorites in the franchise.
I just downloaded SMT 3 Nocturne on my Steam Deck last night to start it soon because I remember the video where you recommend Persona fans to at least try an SMT game, and then I woke up to your post - now I'm extra hyped for the game!! Awesome video as always!
This game is only hard because of the freaking random encounters lol. If you know what you're doing the bosses aren't actually that difficult, but man those random encounters, just absolutely brutal. SMT5 is way more balanced and difficult than any other SMT game aside from the random encounters of course
I will never let go that Matador isn't that hard. They literally sell you a Magatama that resists wind like 10 SECONDS BEFORE THE FIGHT . You can also just get some demons that resist wind, as there are a few around the level you fight him
As someone very close to the end of my first Nocturne run, Hardtype's additions sound interesting. I'd probably hate the full moon encounters, same as you, but I like difficulty changes that make you re-evaluate options that existed in the original game but were easily overlooked. I also appreciate the later Fiends getting harder: the Riders and Mother Harlot were anticlimactic for me due to coming around the point your good fusions start to snowball. Also, maybe a hot take, but I think the Labyrinth of Amala's difficulty is overrated. The encounters aren't too bad outside of the very late ones (and earlygame-tier encounters can still show up well into the 3rd and 4th Kalpas), and the only part I had trouble in on my first run with the hell spiral... which is optional. I didn't realize stats being broken, but I'm still kinda fine with the phys vs magic balance in the original, since early Tornado made magic builds insane early on but fall off later, while physical was the opposite. I wish Concentrate existed though. But I never put a single point into Agility and still dodge tanked bosses for days with Sukukaja. Which leads me to... Sukukaja/nda is broken in vanilla Nocturne. Seriously, spamming it makes most bosses a joke even if playing blind. Lowering the limit to 2 stacks seems to help this, but I agree that enemies not playing by the same rules ruins one of the core ideas of the original. I personally think SMTV handled buffs/debuffs well: the limit is two stacks for both sides, and buffs wear off like in Persona so you need to re-apply them. (It made Luster Candy and Debilitate crazily expensive though) Okay, right after Metatron collapsed at the end of the boss montage, it cut to GRAB A SMALL BIG MAC AND A CHEESEBURGER! lol ad timing.
Ngl as one whose played this hack in 2018 on hard patching it while I was on Dante in vanilla as much as I like the changes and QOL features the fight with the archangels is what ruined it for me which showed the issue with making battles with bosses that can heal theirs elves on top of the hp buff they received. That alone devolves some bosses into straight of dmg sponge battles that turn into who can run out of resources first and I'm unsure that bosses can run out of mp in this hack vs in vanilla which alone was pretty rare unless you're really underbuilt and not doing much dmg but barely surviving.
archangels weren't hard for me. just single out raphael and kill him first. uriel doesn't heal unless all of them are simultaneously below certain HP threshold.
@@bubbletea_ Yeah did that before in my first few times. But I'll keep uriels script in mind if I ever decide to pick it back up. I'll just never forget the instant regret when BuffMaster got stuck on it and switched to fighting Futomimi to where he got knocked into a gameover on the first turn the second he used Fang Breaker.
I only just now discovered this video now that I've gotten out of my MegaTen slump and am back playin' a whoooole buncha JRPG goodness! I never actually knew about this swag can o' beans, and I oughta chickity checkeroni it out myself! My hat's off to the creator of this swagness, for givin' us dustmunchers a certified hood classic to chew on, and thanks to Bubbletea for makin' a rad video on it. Mondo cool, king! Mondo cool.
i remember zombero mentioned locking the buffs/debuffs to +2/-2 but it made technically war cry and fog breath overpowered on your favour. and i think thats the reason skills like dervish were made but i'd say +2/-4 works out better.
Really great video. Hardtype is such an incredible accomplishment, so it's wonderful to see someone give it such a spotlight. I love how much you highlighted the rebalanced gem/ticket economy, because that's easily one of the smartest changes. It's a shame Zombero seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. I'd love to see their reaction to critiques like this video and Jim Reaper's comments during his challenge run. Also regarding the last bit of the video; I definitely respect the stance that people shouldn't make their first experience with a game one with a mod like this. Personally I disagree, at least for Nocturne Hardtype. I think Hardtype does a really good job of polishing Nocturne while remaining faithful to the original experience. And if difficulty is a concern, I can confirm that the mod works fine on normal difficulty. That said, anybody wanting to play Nocturne for the first time these days will just use the HD remaster 😅 Oh, one thing you didn't cover in the video but that's worth bringing up are the changes to skill inheritance and morph. Zombero rebalanced the weighting of all the skills to make demons more likely to inherit good skills, which makes rerolling demons subtly less tedious than base game. However, he also accidentally broke skill morphing such that skills can now morph into lower tier skills. It's my one major gripe with Hardtype that I wish Zombero would return to fix.
As a casual Persona enjoyer who played normal difficulty Nocturne up until the 3 sisters boss, I love the dedication of a video upload to an increased difficulty version of a classic game full of challenge and strategy. Reminds me of your P3 FES love in how you had to use the command system to achieve the desired result.
dante 1 was insane. i had to make an oni with 3 buffs and constantly spam tarunda with momunofu in order to beat him. in phase 2 he won't use holy star if you spam rakukaja, which forces him to use provoke, meaning that you can finally debuff him for real
for lucifer i only got pierce on shiva & surt. the surt i made by fusing elementals on beelzebub also allowed me to outlevel my registered beelzebub, allowing me to mitama boost him. whenever he triggered a demon's endure, i would simply shuffle my demons around to refill their endures
I liked althe rebalancing in Hardtype, but nerfing Estoma and removing Trafuri completely from the game was a deal breaker for me. The encounter rate in Noctrurne is incredibly high, and being forced to grind through them becomes increasingly tedious even before you consider the full K surprises
@6:50 : Did you play on normal or hard mode? On my first playthrough, i picked hard mode and deliberately avoided using fiends, and man it was perfect. The story bosses were all EXTREMELY brutal, and i've had played nocturne vanilla all figured out. I must have spent 50 real time hours updating my team whenever i hit a boss wall.
It sounds neat, although damn there really should be an option to buy the shop lootboxes directly, cause farming them has always been a pain. I also feel like all the stuff to make random encounters more painful goes in the wrong direction. Having mini bosses available only at specific kagutsushi level sounds cool but it should be something you look for not something that's slapped on you. But nocturne having random encounters to begin with is kinda bad in my opinion. For me the most memorable encounters are the ennemies you talk to and that attack you, and I really wish the areas were designed in a way where random encounters were really far apart with the pace of the area dictated mostly by scripted encounters, and you'd only really get random encounters often iif you use the skill to attract them. Sadly that'd require a big redesign of the areas but yeah that my major gripe with nocture and I feel like going in the direction to make random encounters even more annoying isn't ideal.
My favorite system of random encounters is a dungeon crawler called undernaughts labyrinth of yomi It has several different fixed point encounter types Green - Progression normal encounters weak enemies that don't have a story but block the way, when defeated they don't respawn Red - fixed encounter points that do respawn, but unlike green encounters give chests for item drops Blue, encounter tiles you get to place yourself, these provide far more rewards but are harder, and respawn, you can remove them if you don't want them anymore Purple - these are minibosses, until you beat them you can only see around 5 tiles forward in a dungeon but afterwards you get much better vision and get really good items, these don't respawn And then the game also has random encounters but set to be so incredibly uncommon, the primary reason they exist is to keep you on your toes since the game is designed to be a pseudo horror game
Smt nocturne: this games releapty kick my ass, punch me in groin, lost my mind on the directions and true ending and surprised bitch slap me. 10/10 would recommend But seriously normal mode is not too insane. If you know how megami tensei play(using buff and debuffs, and exploiting weakness and null) you be fine expect for some moments
1:12 ok? I started this series with nocturne and didn't buy any DLC because i found that stupid and i did have some problems but it's not as brutal as all the "Nocturne experience" videos made it look like atleast not on normal guess i am not a true fan or something because i didn't play it instantly on hard like a maniac sorry to those people that think that i guess but hey the game's fun :) i am happy that i got to play it and that all is thanks to you i found your channel after playing persona 4 and got interested i am 43 hours in and it's the most fun i ever had with any kind of RPG i am truly grateful :)
the track at that time stamp is sahasrara from digital devil saga. most of the music i used is just from nocturne but with a couple tracks from other ps2 megaten games.
idk fighting the 4 riders in an encounter and trumpeter+mother harlot seems mad fun to me also, i guess you could throw a riberama at 7/8 kagutsuchi and then estoma on full moon
Hot take. I don't like this game at all. Dull environments, characters that aren't fleshed out, lots of bull that you can't see until you get hit by it, and so on. The only thing I liked was the combat but even that has it flaws. With that being said, this hack seems interesting. It's not going to get me to play it but it's interesting.
I agree with you on the story and the characters, but I really think that the environments are all beautiful. The cell-shaded art style and the character designs are all peak Kazuma Kaneko. I played this game for the first time in 2021 on the PS2, and the game looks really good to me, not bad looking at all. However I definitely think the game is extremely overrated, but I think that the reason people love it is because they enjoy the atmosphere. I think it has great worldbuilding, and as for the random bullshit I think that only really happens if you aren’t prepared. If you have enough healing spells, and are mindful of resistances you shouldn’t have too much of a problem. If you haven’t finished it I really recommend playing through to the end, you might enjoy some things in hindsight. I personally thought the game sucked when I originally played it, and failed to see what people enjoy about it. But if you already finished it then it’s just not for you but I respect that.
pcsx2 is pretty easy to setup on pc and there are tutorials if you need help. the nightly build is even easier to use with its newer user-friendlier interface.
