Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne Vs Rouge Galaxy

So it's been a long week as I've been moving home and looking for work, lol. Here's this week's games!

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne (Nocturne)

This series is better known for the Persona titles, which is still comparatively underground when you compare it to say, Final Fantasy. Nocturne was released by Atlus for the PS2, the story of the game pits the player in Post-Apocalyptic Tokyo in which they are thrust into a war between multiple factions are they are given a choice to side with a faction or ultimately destroy everything. The game itself breathes new life into the tired old concept of turn-based combat as well as putting a deliciously dark spin on the usual JRPG narrative by not only providing choices to the player which ultimately determine how the game will end, but by more adult themes being prevalent in the experience.

Inter-franchise character development FTW!

What I personally loved about the game was the interweaving of the audiovisual experience by way of the music as well as the press-turn battle system in which the battle turns in your favor by taking advantage of the enemy's elemental weaknesses. The other pluses the game includes are the minimalistic visual style, which ensures that even though the game is polygonal, it will age a lot better than a game that had cutting edge visuals for it's time but which are now almost painful to look at e.g. FFVII. Fantastic work Atlus, bring on SMT 4!

Rogue Galaxy

Developed by Level 5, which received high acclaim for Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle, this game came as a surprise to many RPG fans and also garnered mixed reactions. Unfortunately, over a long time period, I have come to see this game as one of the most disappointing games ever made. The story follows Jaster Rogue, a young man on a Desert planet with aspirations to become a Space Pirate and the people he meets on the way. Everything about this game appealed to me upon reading the package alone:

• Over 100 hours of incredibly varied gameplay

• Journey through space, exploring huge, detailed worlds

• Use hundreds of customizable weapons in real time combat

And at this very moment, the sounds of 10'000 Mary-Sue Jack Sparrow fangirls thighs quivering deafened the universe.

Now for all intensive purposes, RG delivers on these promises. Unfortunately, there was no incentive for me to go beyond 30 hours of gameplay as the items you received that varied the gameplay were only planet specific, so for example, you'd find yourself navigating laser-beam platforms in the first area of the game, but nowhere else. The other shortcoming for the game 'which I felt was a fatal flaw', was the fact that story was just far too predictable, even for your standard 'good vs evil' JRPG, the fact that the game was virtually flawless on every other aspect just served to sadden me more, as it was all for naught. Jaster's journey, in my eyes, ended before it could begin.

The Winner:

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne