SMT: Nocturne is one my favorite game of all time. I've been waiting for an HD release for many years now, and I hardly dared hope to see it also come to Steam. It's almost hard to believe but here we are now!

What I really enjoy about this game is the feel of the turn based combat animations accompanied by the sounds, as well as the music. The press turn system is also so much fun where landing crits or weakness attacks grant you an extra turn, and nullifying attacks takes turns away. Combined with nearly 200 different demons and it never gets old. Furthermore you can fuse 2-3 demons together to make an entirely new one that can inherit a certain number of skills from the ones used in fusion. This allows you to create a wonderful variety of demons with almost whatever skills you desire. The MC can also learn his own skills from magatamas. Sadly once you forget a skill the MC can never learn it again. Demons you can always re-fuse.

Note: Do not select "new game"! Instead select new game chronicle (Raidou) or new game maniax (Dante, but only if you bought the dlc), both of which add awesome extra content.

80 hours or more of gameplay, especially if you seek to fill the demon roster and complete the Amala Labyrinth.
Extremely fun combat with a huge variety of demons and skills all in 3D!
The music (and sound effects) are completely outstanding and memorable. Almost 2 decades later and I still enjoy listening to the battle themes.
New to this release is the ability to choose what skills your demons inherit. Gone is the tedium of redoing the rng fusion results screen for hours to get the perfect skill set! However if that is still your thing, randomized inheritence, they made that easier for you by allowing you to randomize it with the press of a single button instead of having to exit then reenter the menus.
The enhanced graphics are outstanding and way better than what you could do in an emulator with upscaled graphics.
For the first time ever English speakers get to experience the side story of Raidou! Previously we only had Dante, who is awesome yes. Now we can choose which we want upon starting a new game.
The ability to suspend save while in the middle of a dungeon is really awesome. Look for the "continue" option on the main menu, don't use the "load" option! Some of the later dungeons it can be an hour or more before you reach your next save point, and that's even if you know where you're going, so being able to suspend save is huge quality of life update.
The various buffs and debuffs are lots of fun to use! They're also essential to beating the game.
The English voice over was a lot better than I was expecting and actually increases immersion.
The keyboard and mouse controls are fully customizeable and are a lot better than I thought they would be. If you don't have a controller then it is perfectly viable and fluid-feeling to use kb m. It's still recommended to use a controller, though.

-Although there are different endings depending on your response to certain questions given by npcs, called your Reason, they are short and boring. The only interesting and fun ending is the True Demon Ending where you complete the Amala Labyrinth. The labyrinth is huge with a bunch of fun bosses, and completing it unlocks the true final boss, content missing otherwise. Outside of achievement hunting for getting the different Reason endings, I suggest on every playhtrough you go for TDE because it's just much more fun.
-Dungeons quickly become near impossible mazes. Planning your route using cheat maps is very fun; spending untold hours blundering into teleport traps trying to figure out where to go as you are constantly placed into random battles sucks and is tedious. Unless you're a major masochist don't play this game without using maps and enemy guides.
-Sadly the game is capped at 30fps just like the original. Probably a coding limitation, but still. Fortunately it still looks and plays fine at 30fps; this isn't a shooter after all.

-The game is brutally unfair. If the MC dies it's game over; your demons can't revive you even the ones capable of using items. You could get hit with an instant death spell, or just simply get unlucky with enemy crits and you've just lost an hour's worth of progress. It's so hard that you can, and I have, die in the tutorial on hard mode. Because of this they made a new difficulty, primarily for journalists, called merciful difficulty. Real gamers won't use it, though. Despite the famously brutal difficulty the game is a lot of fun and you feel amazing when you get past a difficult fight.
-Magic got the short end of the stick. As your level goes up the effectiveness of magic damage goes down. Conversely strength based damage gets more powerful as you level. Magic is still useful for landing weakness attacks and getting you half a press turn. The stat itself is very self sufficient though, being the primary governor of magic damage, magic accuracy, and mp.
-Luck sucks in this game. Contrary to practically all other games luck does NOT help with crit chance or item drop rate. Don't invest in luck until you're getting close to wanting to open the luck doors in the Amala Labyrinth.
-Demon negotiation is completely random. I've tested using save states on an emulator. Regardless of which personality question you choose the demon will react the same way I've found, and what works or doesn't in one encounter probably won't in another even with the same demon. Just say yes to everything (unless they want an expensive item) and hope for the best. The only choice that makes a difference is when you're given the choice of acquiescing to the demon's request or declining. Assuming you want to recruit the demon, sometimes saying yes will cause them to leave, but reload the save state on an emulator and saying no will progress to a new question and give you another chance to recruit. Sometimes the demon is not recruitable no matter the negotiation path. But there are certain skills you and your demons can learn which makes negotiations in certain situations easier (or harder in others), but that's it.
-For some reason they are still using compressed music. Is it so hard to simply port over the uncompressed music from the OST?

Regarding the price I feel it's totally worth it. The only ones who have the right to complain are the ones where the international pricing is way out of proportion. If the price is comparatively reasonable where you live then I feel this game is worth it.

For an RPG-Maker game this is pretty good overall, especially for the price of under a buck when on sale. The setting is fairly unique in that it's sci-fi in space, rare for RPG-M games. Furthermore, the Galactic Foxian Empire you're a part of, is bloodthirsty and warlike, and the game treats this as normal. Kimi, who you play as, even gets in on it and is excited to invade natives on their own planet for her first mission. Once the war gets going if you talk to a certain npc they will tell you as part of the war effort they are looking to conquer more natives of different planets to put them to work farming and such. In other words turn them into slaves. The idea of stuff like this just isn't seen very often in games, let alone spoken of so casually. I do wish this kind of stuff was expanded upon.

Pros:
A fun, interesting story with twists that will keep you hooked until the end.
Will take you about 5-6 hours to beat if you talk with everyone you can and interact with everything you can. Not bad for under a buck.
A lot of interactables, and they usually change as the story progresses.
You get choices, and sometimes those choices are simply inactions, that slightly change dialogue and things that happen.
An ending that no matter what you do is not "happy". Rare to see in any game.
Combat is challenging and forces you to take advantage of stuns, and to know the basics of turn based combat. There's even ship combat.
Free DLC that is short but fun.
can get paid to let a guy stroke your tail.

Cons:
- The story isn't as fleshed out as it should be. There are various plot happenings that you have to infer yourself why they happened. Other plot points aren't explained at all with nothing to help you with an answer.
- A lot of grammatical and spelling errors, but this is the norm for RPG-M games.
- Once you understand it, combat is rather simple. It stops becoming challenging once you get stun bomb. The only ailment you can inflict is stun or defense down (besides ship combat). Limited number combat abilities. Draw Fire is useless. Enemies also have limited abilities. To be fair the game is more about the story and characters.
- Items are mostly useless as I almost never used them.

The game is worth it, and I really hope we see a sequel.