Long-winded, but the TL;DR is that's it's pretty much the best version of Nocturne if you're willing to do your own jank version of Skill inheritance via Cheat Engine tables. It is however for the hardcore SMT'ers out there-- even on normal it is some orders harder than base Nocturne. To anyone familiar with the 'meta' behind SMT games though, it has amazing value as being an updated and more expressive version of Nocturne.
Scattered thoughts:
- Lots of kino cinematics I forgot about here. The heel-turns, Grimkhela summon, Most of Yuko's scenes, Trumpeter, Hell Biker, & Harlot's intros, Lucifer's summon, etc.
- One thing about Nocturne very few other SMTs have emulated as well is spell variety. Starting around post Hell-Biker going straight for -nga spells isn't necessarily the best idea, because the extra status chance/secondary effect on some other, less damaging spells can be a life-or-death thing. Especially true with Hardtype which adds in shit like Scald which has great utility even late-game.
- Hardtype's HP increases are kind of whack TBH. For some bosses like Mother Harlot, Dante Round 1, or the Riders it's definitely needed, but for other shit like Sahakaghi or Belezeebub it's more tedious than challenging. In most other cases it just tilts edge-case wins to the boss rather than the player, as the boss will just out-sustain you/beat you in the damage race.
- The Full-Moon miniboss encounters are a smash, they're decently hard, give good EXP as a reward, and aren't necessary to fight with the new smoke ball item. Definitely marked out for the 5th kapla full-moon miniboss, great touch.
- Didn't see too much nerfing which is incredibly for a fan-made mod, only Tornado really took a hit but there's a lot better demons and spells mid-game so it's nbd. The buffs on the other hand are great across the board, magic Demi-Fiend is very strong (esp. with the phys repel boss spam), and support demi-fiend has very usuable utility, even if prayer is more easily splashed on your demons.
- The boss scripts are greatly improved, there's some memes like Aciel still but Hardtype cements Nocturne with some of the best bosses across JRPGs. Baal Avatar, Mother Harlot, Trumpeter, Albion, and Metatron is an all-time collection of bosses.
- The System changes Hardtype does are also a smash. Most of it is no-brainer like removing the damage cap, giving Dante pierce, making skill inheritance weighted, etc. but there's some risky changes that pay off well. Making Luck a determinant in magic accuracy is pretty brazy but works surprisingly well; it gives a stronger argument for physical demons as DPS since they have to rely far less on good luck/Cadenza buffs to hit, and can even get cheeky press-turns with the higher crit rates on physical skills. It also makes investing in luck on the Demi-Fiend actually worth a shit. Demon-swapping taking half-turns is ingenious as well; swapping is no longer a momentum loss but in fact can be used to gain quite a bit of momentum if you plan your press-turns right, like getting off two buffs for the price of one. Since swapping got rid of some debuffs originally it also makes parachuting demons in and out a viable method of emergency status removal too, making it so getting status'd on your healer isn't the hax death-sentence like it was on the original. Add in the fact that all demons in your stock get 75% EXP and you'll find yourself using a greater roster of demons with more varied niches than in original. Thinking about my entire party of demons instead of a select 5-6 is a great logical progression of SMT's system.
- New skills are amazing too, I've talked about Scald, but really most of the new skills are perfectly designed for their intended purposes. The only complaint I have is that aliment secondary effects are kind of useless late-game, cuz unfortunately the hardtype creator still follows the philosophy of aliments being useless on bosses. Aliments are still super-strong on late-game dungeon crawling, especially with the HP curve meaning that late-game random battles can go for 8-12 turns instead of the 3-4 they did in the original. They become a lot more manageable however if you can get some statuses spread, and save a lot on MP and HP sustaining.
Scattered thoughts:
- Lots of kino cinematics I forgot about here. The heel-turns, Grimkhela summon, Most of Yuko's scenes, Trumpeter, Hell Biker, & Harlot's intros, Lucifer's summon, etc.
- One thing about Nocturne very few other SMTs have emulated as well is spell variety. Starting around post Hell-Biker going straight for -nga spells isn't necessarily the best idea, because the extra status chance/secondary effect on some other, less damaging spells can be a life-or-death thing. Especially true with Hardtype which adds in shit like Scald which has great utility even late-game.
- Hardtype's HP increases are kind of whack TBH. For some bosses like Mother Harlot, Dante Round 1, or the Riders it's definitely needed, but for other shit like Sahakaghi or Belezeebub it's more tedious than challenging. In most other cases it just tilts edge-case wins to the boss rather than the player, as the boss will just out-sustain you/beat you in the damage race.
- The Full-Moon miniboss encounters are a smash, they're decently hard, give good EXP as a reward, and aren't necessary to fight with the new smoke ball item. Definitely marked out for the 5th kapla full-moon miniboss, great touch.
- Didn't see too much nerfing which is incredibly for a fan-made mod, only Tornado really took a hit but there's a lot better demons and spells mid-game so it's nbd. The buffs on the other hand are great across the board, magic Demi-Fiend is very strong (esp. with the phys repel boss spam), and support demi-fiend has very usuable utility, even if prayer is more easily splashed on your demons.
- The boss scripts are greatly improved, there's some memes like Aciel still but Hardtype cements Nocturne with some of the best bosses across JRPGs. Baal Avatar, Mother Harlot, Trumpeter, Albion, and Metatron is an all-time collection of bosses.
- The System changes Hardtype does are also a smash. Most of it is no-brainer like removing the damage cap, giving Dante pierce, making skill inheritance weighted, etc. but there's some risky changes that pay off well. Making Luck a determinant in magic accuracy is pretty brazy but works surprisingly well; it gives a stronger argument for physical demons as DPS since they have to rely far less on good luck/Cadenza buffs to hit, and can even get cheeky press-turns with the higher crit rates on physical skills. It also makes investing in luck on the Demi-Fiend actually worth a shit. Demon-swapping taking half-turns is ingenious as well; swapping is no longer a momentum loss but in fact can be used to gain quite a bit of momentum if you plan your press-turns right, like getting off two buffs for the price of one. Since swapping got rid of some debuffs originally it also makes parachuting demons in and out a viable method of emergency status removal too, making it so getting status'd on your healer isn't the hax death-sentence like it was on the original. Add in the fact that all demons in your stock get 75% EXP and you'll find yourself using a greater roster of demons with more varied niches than in original. Thinking about my entire party of demons instead of a select 5-6 is a great logical progression of SMT's system.
- New skills are amazing too, I've talked about Scald, but really most of the new skills are perfectly designed for their intended purposes. The only complaint I have is that aliment secondary effects are kind of useless late-game, cuz unfortunately the hardtype creator still follows the philosophy of aliments being useless on bosses. Aliments are still super-strong on late-game dungeon crawling, especially with the HP curve meaning that late-game random battles can go for 8-12 turns instead of the 3-4 they did in the original. They become a lot more manageable however if you can get some statuses spread, and save a lot on MP and HP sustaining.
2 Comments
yea 4sure tap in due time, like u say nocturne is the GOAT for boss battles and this mod took em to a HOF status ianeen kno was possible. iirc the mod has been in a p complete state for awhile so u aint gotta worry about tracking down a specific version or nun too. but heard on the remaster trophies....if i had the energy to rerock a brand new save of nocturne i'd be on the same path tbh
Weatherby
1 year ago