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Nocturne Review
Of Threat and Threnody
Imagine a digital afterlife, a post-mortal coil of 1s and 0s within which dwell the mental shades of folks willing to pay for the right and the upkeep. That is Maya, and it's been a thousand years since all contact with the physical world was severed following a mysterious blackout. Just restoring the sun to its proper place took thirty-three years to accomplish, and corrupted data floods the bandwidth every four years to cause even more chaos. This is news to the protagonist, a young, newly deceased cancer patient named Karma, as he has roughly eight minutes on his personal record when he hears about it. Somehow, he is the first client to be uploaded into the system since the blackout, and this causes issues with his registration that make him uniquely suited to surviving the mess of a situation that is Maya and its presiding artificial sapience, Nocturne.
The situation grows increasingly grave over the course of the game's eight chapters and roughly ten hours of core narrative gameplay. Automated Crawlers proactively dispatch corruption where they find it, often to the detriment of the remaining digital citizenry. Of the four appointed system admins, three are at odds over what to do, how to do it, and whether the ends ever justify the means. The fourth is simply nowhere to be found. Through all of this, Karma's one goal is to locate his brother, who uploaded a few years ahead of him, but drama can't help but complicate things.
And what drama it is! In a corrupt world slowly losing its war against decadence and deletion, the themes of cyclical self-destruction are prevalent--a point which Nocturne herself hammers home in the final plot sequence. There is coercion, betrayal, strange revelations and things better left unknown. In his quest to locate his brother, Karma sees it all, and the question in the end may well be, "Which is more important, the family you seek or the family you find along the way?"
[caption id="attachment_202028" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Someone should reboot the Sun.[/caption]
Combat in Nocturne takes center stage in the most literal way possible, as everything is beat-rhythm based. The developers recommend a keyboard for this game; however, as my laptops are either underpowered or overheated, the Steam Deck was the only viable option, and that worked quite well for me. The main beat-rhythm sections feature four lanes of notes, mapped to the left shoulder, right cursor, X, and right shoulder buttons. This looks rather random in the game's battle tutorial explanation, but the four buttons align perfectly with the thumbs and pointers on both hands. The A button for attacks is a little harder to work with, but it can be reassigned to another button if necessary.
In battle, the main goal is to survive to the end of the song. While it plays, energy bars for both Karma and the enemy will charge up. Karma can stock up to three hits, then unleash all stocked damage at once with the A button, while the enemy usually only attacks when its energy reaches full. Just before an enemy attacks, there will be a flash and a chance to strike for a critical hit while its guard is down. Reducing an enemy to zero health won't end the battle, but it will stagger the foe for a short while, during which time Karma can stock more energy and regenerate health.
[caption id="attachment_202027" align="aligncenter" width="640"] No, this is not a boss. Things just get hairy in the later chapters.[/caption]
The beat-rhythm aspect is what helps keep things going. The penalty for missing beats or hitting mines (red notes) is that Karma's energy gain is momentarily paused, and the enemy's energy may receive a boost at the same time. Playing the game well increases his ability to attack and reduces how often he gets hit. Every enemy has its own tune, with non-boss mobs having two bonus tunes that can be unlocked with high performance grades. Additionally, there's an arcade in the main town with a record of all battles and tunes unlocked thus far for the player to enjoy during or after the main game. There are also many types of specialized equipment and other secondary systems available, including a riposte mechanic, but these aren't necessary for the basic gameplay at Beginner level.
Difficulty can be changed at any save point, thankfully, but it's important to note that difficulty is mainly scaled by the frequency and pattern of notes in the battle sequences. Some songs will still be fast and furious at the lowest difficulty. For the non-combat rhythmic sequences, clearing out corruption or doing the occasional special skills check, the base difficulty appears to be set, which makes these some of the biggest challenges in the game. In combat, it's not uncommon for specific mobs to mess with the lanes in some fashion, making them temporarily shorten, clog, vanish, or otherwise be obscured. In one particular major battle sequence, it even becomes a five-lane setup with A as the middle lane. But in the non-combat sequences, things get wild and weird, with the lanes shifting, bending, rotating, or wandering off elsewhere as the player is trying to hit all the right notes. The skill check in the middle of Chapter 4 is a high-speed, five-lane nightmare for those (like this reviewer) who found Beginner difficulty enough of a challenge for the main game.
[caption id="attachment_202024" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Retreat in F-this-minor.[/caption]
Music is obviously the most important aspect of this game, with strong tunes for all enemies, and lyrics sung during some of the major boss battles, but the art aspect is equally well-matched to the game's narrative. Scenery gradates between the soft, soothing colors of an intended virtual Eden and the jarring dark shades of things going off the rails. The art style largely forgoes outlines in the scenery, lending an element of impressionism as well. The scenery itself appears strongly coded towards Japanese and Chinese design aesthetics that match up with the narrative's philosophical leanings.
Nocturne manages a tight narrative in its ten-hour run, and the beat-rhythm aspect both helps to pad out the relatively small number of mobs in the game and keep things interesting. The spritework is fluid, and the animation poetic. While the concept may sound like an odd mash-up, genre-wise, Pracy Studios makes it work.
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
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