I finally spoke to the director of the 21-year-old JRPG that kicked my teeth in, and I didn't expect an apology: "Shin Megami Tensei 3 is the hardest game I think I've ever made"
Jun. 18, 2024Katsura Hashino explains Nocturne’s reputation
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On hard mode, this JRPG kicked my ass for about 130 hours when I played it back while I was still in college, which must’ve been at least 10 years ago now. I have fond memories of using a fusion calculator to min-max my way through. Obviously, I still thoroughly enjoyed the game, but I’ve held onto that grudge ever since. I finally got to air it out in a recent interview with Nocturne’s director, Katsura Hashino, who’s since become the director of the Persona series and now the upcoming new IPMetaphor: ReFantazio(which is what we were really talking about), and who was joined by Persona character designer Shigenori Soejima.
After an hour of hands-on time with Metaphor, I mentioned that Hashino’s latest JRPG – and both Hashino and Soejimasaid they don’t mind the term JRPG– feels a lot more welcoming than something like Nocturne. I told him that Nocturne is still probably the hardest JRPG I’ve ever played, which is of course his fault, and he had a great response. We’d been speaking via interpreter thus far, but as my question was being relayed, Hashino replied in English: “I’m sorry!”
I wasn’t expecting or hoping for an apology, but I have to admit, Hashino’s response feels like a healing salve for the scars I’ve still got from Nocturne. “I’m going to give you an excuse once we finish this question,” he added, returning to Japanese. I was almost relieved to hear that Hashino reckons “Shin Megami Tensei 3 is the hardest game I think I’ve ever made.”
“Sorry about that,” he continued. “I felt like it needed to be a hard game. The Shin Megami Tensei series in general is quite hard. I felt like 3, specifically, we wanted to make it hard. We felt that unless it’s challenging, unless it’s really meaty, it wouldn’t be rewarding enough.”
Reader, it was definitely meaty. Don’t take my word for it – try the Nocturne remaster for yourself. The game holds up well and hasn’t lost its mojo on hard mode. There’s also a “Merciful” difficulty setting if you just want to soak up the world, which helped define the style that’s still trucking along in modern releases like Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance.
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